Build your InDesign skills through multi-level classes on document layout and creative structure. You’ll design cohesive materials for professional publication.
Learn how to design professional page layouts with text & graphics in Adobe InDesign. This course covers styling, importing, packaging, and advanced techniques like styles, master pages, and tables. Perfect for creating books, magazines, and ads.
Begin your journey as a professional graphic designer by learning the essential skills and tools used by industry experts. Gain hands-on experience in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, and create a stunning portfolio to showcase your talent to potential employers or clients.
Advance your layout and design expertise while preparing for the Adobe Certified Professional exam in this hands-on InDesign Certification Program. Through expert-led classes, personalized tutoring, and real-world projects, you'll gain the skills and confidence to create polished magazines, brochures, books, and more.
InDesign is an industry-standard desktop publishing and page layout software. Adobe first released this software in 1999 and it has since gained wide adoption across industries including graphic design, advertising and marketing, and print and digital publishing. InDesign’s strength is creating professional page layouts for a variety of different purposes, audiences, and industries. Individuals can use InDesign to create professional business cards and resumes. Those in marketing can create advertising materials like brochures, pamphlets, and flyers. InDesign users in publishing can develop magazine, newspaper, and book layouts, and many use InDesign for digital design needs like eBook layouts, interactive PDFs, and prototyping webpages.
InDesign started out being used mostly for professional print publishing but in recent years it has gained traction in corporate communications, as InDesign can be used to create dynamic PDFs with multimedia elements, hyperlinks, and page transitions, and to design interactive documents for mobile phones and tablets. Along with software like Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro, InDesign is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud software suite and also integrates well with Microsoft’s products so that users can import content from other programs like Word and Excel easily. Learning InDesign is part of one’s essential training when pursuing a career in graphic design, advertising, or publishing.
Learning how to work with InDesign will give you a way to create clean, attractive, well-organized documents. With training, those in publishing can learn to use InDesign to create book or magazine spread layouts by formatting pages, columns, graphics, and text. Those in advertising, public relations, or corporate communication might instead use their InDesign training to create dynamic, interactive reports and documents to share with colleagues, stakeholders, and customers. InDesign training will teach you how to create a PDF with page transitions, hyperlinks, buttons, and multimedia elements so that readers remain engaged and have access to important information.
Another benefit of learning InDesign is that it integrates well with the rest of the Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft products. With training, one will learn how to import text and data from Excel and Word, or how to use InDesign with other programs like Photoshop or Illustrator. One can create and manipulate a graphic or image in Photoshop, for instance, and then import it into InDesign and format and style it to fit within the page layout one is creating. InDesign also now incorporates Adobe Firefly features like text-to-image generation, making it easy to create unique and memorable graphics to add to a pamphlet, PDF, or webpage.
Due to its ease of use, InDesign training also gives you the skills to create memorable, professional-looking documents for personal use. Someone navigating the job market can create a well-designed resume using InDesign or design their own business cards to hand out at networking events. Impress friends and relatives with your design skills by creating flyers for upcoming events, like family reunions, milestone birthdays, cookouts, or garage sales. Those with InDesign training can even use it to create brochures or infographics that support the work of local organizations or nonprofits.
InDesign is software for designing and creating page layouts, so this is the major skill that students will learn in an InDesign course. Comprehensive InDesign bootcamps and certificate programs will teach you design principles that you can use as you create professional documents in InDesign. Learning how to create page layouts can also involve navigating how to create a new document and adjusting settings for one’s needs. Courses will often also cover using master pages to create a consistent layout and how to set up facing pages, both of which are useful for multipage documents.
As part of creating a page layout, learners will focus on typography, one of the central skills you’ll need to create a professional document. Typography is everything to do with choosing the right font, size, spacing, and text layout relative to other design elements. Learning typography can include working on inserting, formatting, and styling text and using text boxes or frames. Additionally, a class will often teach students how to create a consistent style to use across multipage documents and how to thread or connect text frames for documents that require multiple columns or flowing text.
Along with text, InDesign learners will need to know how to work with all manner of graphics, images, objects, and color. Like typography, students need to know how to import, format, and style images, objects, and shapes in InDesign. Not only will one need to learn how to position visual elements relative to other aspects of a document, but a class will often teach students how to crop, move, and edit graphics, as well. Managing color will have learners focusing on changing image, object, frame, or text color and also learning about topics such as working in different color modes and creating gradients and tints.
InDesign classes will not only teach learners how to create documents and professional page layouts, but courses will also cover how to export and prepare documents for printing or publication. This can include instructing learners about exporting in different file formats and at different resolutions, resolving any errors before printing, and setting up any necessary marks and bleeds. Printing and exporting files in InDesign can be industry-specific, so it is likely that one will need to comply with organizational standards when actually working with InDesign professionally.
Many people find it easy to learn the technical skills and techniques necessary to create professional documents in InDesign. What is more difficult is uniting one’s knowledge about the software with one’s creative vision. An InDesign class will teach you design and composition strategies to bolster your creative thinking skills and your ability to execute an interesting, creative document using Adobe’s software.
It is easy for most people to learn the basics of InDesign. Within a few hours, one can learn how to navigate the software, set up a simple document, and add and format graphics, text, and other elements. How long it takes to become proficient in using InDesign will ultimately depend on whether you’re using it for work or as a hobby and what you want to create using InDesign. Hobbyists and others creating simple documents that rely on built-in templates can learn how to make these in just a few days. It will take months, if not years, of practice to learn how to create complex, multi-faceted documents for use in one’s profession. Using InDesign professionally means not only applying industry-specific design standards but also optimizing one’s workflow, mastering shortcuts, and integrating other complementary programs which can be more difficult to master.
Most InDesign users find it easy to learn the technical skills involved with InDesign. However, it can be difficult to learn InDesign for someone who has not taken any prior design classes. These classes will often teach the fundamentals of design and how to account for features of composition like typography, color, and graphics. With this background, the hardest part of learning InDesign is coming up with creative designs and using your technical skills to bring them to fruition. It can take time to come up with a creative, interesting, and memorable design or graphical layout for one’s document, even with design training.
Within a few hours, you can become familiar with how to create, format, and style professional-looking documents. It will not take long for learners to be able to make simple documents, especially if one relies on templates. It will take longer to master all of the features of InDesign and it can take a few months or longer to become fully proficient in using InDesign to create materials within your industry. For those who need to learn other industry-standard creative and design tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, it will take longer to learn additional programs in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite and to learn how these software programs can all work together.
As you decide whether to learn InDesign in-person or online, consider your own learning needs as well as the availability, schedule, and cost of different training formats. In-person learning is still considered the best way to learn and retain information. Learning in a classroom allows learners to receive hands-on training in a space dedicated to education alongside other students engaged in the same pursuit. Students find it easier to focus and stay on track when learning in-person. In-person classes, however, can be harder to find, cost more than some online options, and might be scheduled at an inconvenient time for some learners.
There are two types of online learning to consider, live online classes and on-demand, asynchronous classes. Live online classes are instructor-led and offer a similar level of training to in-person classes. It is more common to find live online classes being offered in the evening, on the weekends, or part-time, making them a more accessible option for working professionals and others with busy schedules. While live online training is useful for some, others find it harder to focus and stay engaged with classes and course material when learning online.
Unlike other training formats, on-demand classes are self-paced, meaning that students are given access to course material that they can work through at their own speed and on their own schedule. These types of classes are great for learning the basics of InDesign as they are the most flexible for those with incredibly busy schedules, and they can be much less expensive than other training options. One can find free and low-cost introductory on-demand classes from providers like LinkedIn Learning or Udemy. While there are distinct benefits to on-demand classes, many learners find this style of class challenging. Students need to be highly motivated to complete a course without any concrete deadlines or an instructor guiding them through the material.
InDesign beginners and those with an intermediate knowledge of this software should consider checking out Noble Desktop’s free InDesign seminar. This online seminar consists of four video tutorials to get learners started with the basics, including formatting and working with images, type, and spacing. Noble Desktop’s YouTube channel contains more resources for InDesign, including a playlist for learning the full Adobe Creative Cloud. Noble’s blog also has additional free tips and tutorials for learning InDesign.
There are additional online resources such as video tutorials, blogs, and short workshops that learners can explore. YouTube has many comprehensive and document-specific InDesign video tutorials. Adobe also has short tutorial articles for many InDesign skills. Public libraries often provide access to LinkedIn Learning, an on-demand learning platform with basic InDesign classes that library card holders can access for free. While free resources will get you started, it can be useful to take a class to learn advanced, up-to-date InDesign techniques and design theory, and receive career support and mentorship.
It is common for someone learning InDesign to also learn other Adobe Creative Cloud programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. All three programs work together and can enhance someone’s design process. Many people learn InDesign as part of a more comprehensive graphic design course or certificate program. In these classes, InDesign becomes a way to implement the design theories and principles you will learn, and most graphic design courses will also teach Photoshop and Illustrator along with InDesign.
Illustrator is a vector graphics editor that is commonly used to create brand or product logos, icons, and other graphics and illustrations. Photoshop is a program that allows one to edit and add effects to images. It is common for a Designer or artist to end up using all three programs to create a document. For example, a Designer or artist might create a product logo in Illustrator, edit product images in Photoshop, and then import both into InDesign to create a promotional brochure, or so they can be added to a dynamic PDF that will share information about a brand’s upcoming product line.
InDesign can be used in most industries, and designers and artists can work for larger design firms, agencies, or in-house for a company or organization. In Washington, DC, someone with InDesign training can find themselves working in advertising or public relations, for an advocacy group, an educational organization, a business, or in publishing.
One of the most common industries that use InDesign is advertising, marketing, and public relations. DC’s public relations sector is especially strong, as many major players in politics, advocacy, and education live, work, and create interactive documents in the nation’s capital. InDesign is an essential skill for professionals creating marketing and promotional materials for print and digital publication. Professionals in this industry often create brochures, flyers, and advertisements using InDesign and need to know how to import brand logos from Illustrator or product images from Photoshop into page layouts in InDesign.
Along with advertising, advocacy, research, and education industries thrive in Washington, DC. DC is home to a large number of think tanks, educational institutions, and paid and free museums. Each of these varied sectors will use InDesign to create documents for the public, to communicate ideas to stakeholders, and for their own internal communications. Museums like the National Gallery of Art will use InDesign for pamphlets and brochures explaining their collections or promoting specific seasonal exhibits. Those at Georgetown University can use InDesign to create flyers directing the public to an important talk or event hosted on campus. Like other industries, InDesign is also used for important reports and internal documents that need to present information in a memorable and dynamic format.
Washington, DC, is also an important city for the business industry. While InDesign was first used by the publishing industry for book, magazine, and newspaper layouts, many use it today for corporate communications. The business industry needs individuals with InDesign training who can create dynamic slideshows with creative transitions in PDF form or create interactive PDFs with multimedia elements that can add more detail and sources to complex informational documents. Professionals with InDesign training can also create more traditional print or digital documents for companies and organizations, as well.
Along with these other industries, the publishing industry retains a strong presence in Washington, DC. Publisher’s Weekly has suggested that DC has an eclectic publishing industry, as it includes a variety of different publishers and products. Publishing endeavors in DC include those from think tanks like the Cato Institute, international organizations like the IMF, academic publishers like the APA and Georgetown University Press, nonprofits like Island Press, and even graphic novels and comics from those like Diamond Book Distributors. InDesign skills are especially welcome in the still-thriving publishing industry, where these skills are used not only to create effective page layouts for print publications but also to format them for readers who access texts on their phones or tablets.
Washington, DC is a great location for current and prospective InDesign learners. Most individuals who work in design or marketing roles, which commonly require InDesign knowledge, tend to earn salaries above the national average. Graphic Designers, Digital Designers, Social Media Managers, and Production Artists will all learn InDesign as an essential part of their training as they will be tasked with planning, creating, and editing visual materials for different purposes and clients.
Graphic Designers are responsible for creating visual materials that communicate ideas and messages. They often design and work on both physical and digital materials including advertising and promotional campaigns, websites, logos, and products. Graphic Designers will need to know InDesign and often also work with Photoshop and Illustrator as part of their daily work.
Entry-level Graphic Designers can expect to earn an average of $46,000 a year, while more experienced Graphic Designers are often earning around $98,000. In Washington, DC, the average yearly salary of a Graphic Designer is $65,000, which is above the national average.
Digital Designers also focus on creating visual materials for specific purposes, like Graphic Designers. Digital Designers create visual assets for websites, applications, or digital user interfaces. This can range from creating banner ads or interactive features of websites and applications to creating visual assets used in email or social media marketing campaigns. Often, Digital Designers will need training in graphic design, including InDesign software, as well as training in web design or coding.
Digital Designers can enjoy particularly high salaries in Washington, DC, where the current average salary is $147,000 a year. There is quite a range between what an entry-level Digital Designer starts making, which can be around $48,000, and what a more experienced, senior Digital Designer can earn, which can be over $200,000 depending on their experience and the industry.
A Social Media Manager is an advertising and marketing professional who plans and designs campaigns for a company or brand’s social media accounts. Many Social Media Managers will need a background in graphic design and knowledge of InDesign, as they will be in charge of designing effective promotional materials that cater to the audiences of different social media applications.
While Social Media Managers often make an average of $58,000 a year, in Washington, DC, this average salary jumps to $68,000 a year. Beginning Social Media Managers are more likely to start off making a salary of around $54,000 in Washington, DC, while more established individuals can earn around $91,000.
A Production Artist is a professional who often works in advertising or the entertainment industry. Like Graphic Designers, these individuals create and edit visual content and might work in both print and digital environments. Production Artists are often tasked with reviewing visuals and graphics to make sure all elements of a design meet a client’s standards and will need to be able to use InDesign and other software to make changes and edit materials during the design process.
While Production Artists are making a yearly salary comparable to the national average, Production Artists in Washington, DC are earning an average yearly salary of $88,000, which is well above the national average. Entry-level Production Artists are earning around $53,000, whereas senior Production Artists can earn up to $146,000.
Noble Desktop offers a variety of InDesign courses for beginners, hobbyists, and professionally oriented learners. All Noble Desktop classes are led by expert instructors who provide learners with hands-on training in the most important InDesign skills. Classes are kept small so that learners receive individualized instruction and can retake the class to refresh their skills if desired. Beginners and hobbyists should consider Noble Desktop’s course InDesign in a Day. This entry-level one-day class provides learners with the InDesign essentials to start using the software quickly and create simple designs for their needs.
Those looking for more comprehensive or career-oriented training should consider a bootcamp or a certificate program. Noble Desktop’s 18-hour Adobe InDesign Bootcamp is one of the best ways to learn comprehensive InDesign skills in only three days. This bootcamp covers all the basics needed to create page layouts for documents such as brochures, magazines, or books, and teaches learners how to use the software—from setting up a document to preparing it for print or export. The Graphic Design Certificate is another great option for anyone wanting to learn comprehensive InDesign skills alongside two other Adobe Creative Cloud programs, Photoshop and Illustrator. Those seeking Adobe InDesign certification should consider the InDesign Certification Program, which includes Noble’s bootcamp, an additional six hours of one-on-one tutoring, extra study materials, and the exam itself.
Softek Services, Inc. is an IT training center located in Washington, DC that offers two instructor-led, day-long InDesign classes. Their Introduction to Adobe InDesign will familiarize students with the software and provide live instruction on setting up documents and working with objects. Their follow-up course, Intermediate Adobe InDesign, teaches more advanced topics. Students learn how to create flowing text, edit text, work with styles and color, export files, and prepare documents for printing. Interested learners can sign up for public online classes, small group online sessions, or schedule in-person training at their business location. Custom training options are also available.
Located nearby in Maryland, Montgomery College is a community college that offers an on-demand Introduction to InDesign CC course. Signing up for this inexpensive, self-paced course gives learners six weeks of access to lessons and an instructor-moderated discussion board. This course teaches students how to get started designing professional documents, with lessons covering essential technical skills—from setting up a multi-page document to exporting and distributing complex, dynamic designs. Students will create a range of documents including tri-fold brochures, print books, interactive documents, EPUB documents, and eBooks.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Ledet Training offers both in-person InDesign courses in Washington, DC and live online options. Their beginner-friendly Adobe InDesign 501—InDesign Bootcamp is ideal for those seeking comprehensive training in both introductory and advanced InDesign skills. This five-day in-person class offers hands-on training in creating print publications and designing eBooks and tablet documents. Students learn strategies for using InDesign and practice advanced skills including keyboard shortcuts, creating rich layouts, and exporting complex file types. Ledet Training also offers separate introductory and advanced classes for those unable to attend a full bootcamp.
Certstaffix Training also offers online courses in Adobe InDesign. Their Adobe InDesign (2024) Course is a three-day live online class that covers essential InDesign skills for beginners and intermediate learners. Students learn typography and color fundamentals, how to integrate designs from Photoshop and Illustrator, and how to prepare documents for printing or export. This course also prepares learners for the Adobe Certified Professional (ACP) exam in Print & Digital Media Publication using Adobe InDesign.
Another option for live online InDesign training is through New Horizons, an IT training center offering both introductory and advanced InDesign classes. The one-day, live online Adobe InDesign CC—Introduction covers navigating the interface, designing documents, working with page elements, building tables, and preparing files for print or export. The Adobe InDesign CC—Advanced class, also one day, teaches learners how to work with complex documents and file types and how to create dynamic content. Both courses help prepare learners for the ACP certification exam.
For companies and organizations looking to upskill or reskill their employees, Noble Desktop offers corporate training options. Noble’s InDesign in a Day, Adobe InDesign Bootcamp, and Graphic Design Certificate program are all effective ways for employees to learn InDesign and other Adobe Creative Cloud programs. Classes can be taken in-person at Noble Desktop’s Manhattan facility, live online from any location, or scheduled onsite at your business location.
You can also receive a discount by purchasing bulk vouchers for enrollment in regular classes. This allows employers to choose which courses to offer their employees while giving employees the flexibility to pick classes that best fit their schedules and needs. Email corporate@nobledesktop.com for more information about corporate training options and to schedule a free consultation for your organization.