Introducing Adobe InDesign

Available Files

The following files are available for download:

Download Exercise Files

Adobe InDesign is a page layout program that allows us to design print and digital publications such as books, newsletters, brochures, and posters, among other things. Using InDesign, we can precisely lay out text and graphics on a page, as well as adjust many advanced formatting options for a document's text. Additionally, we can prepare a document for professional printing as well as digital viewing.

In this course, we’ll be creating a four-page newsletter for a local animal shelter that will be printed and mailed to shelter supporters. While creating the newsletter, we’ll gain familiarity with the InDesign interface and the most commonly-used tools for creating a layout.

We’ll start with a short introduction to the InDesign interface before learning more about the project we’re working on today.

Making sure you’re using the most current version of InDesign

This course was developed using Adobe InDesign CC 2023. While you’ll be able to complete many of the exercises in this course using older versions of InDesign, your interface may look different than the interface shown in the screenshots and videos used in this course. If you are working with InDesign CC 2022 or older, you may want to update InDesign to the latest version for the best experience.

The following instructions will walk you through how to update the Adobe Creative Cloud program you're working with if it’s out of date. To check for updates, you'll need to open Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop, which is separate from the Adobe application you're working with.

Open Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop.

The Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop app will open:

Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop application. On the left side of the screen is the navigation bar, where we can access all the apps in Creative Cloud and check for updates. The main section of the screen currently shows a list of installed applications.

Here, we can see what applications we have installed and which of them need to be updated. If there are updates available for any of the installed applications, a blue circle with a number in it will appear to the right of Updates in the navigation on the left side of the screen.

To see which Adobe Creative Cloud applications need to be updated, in the navigation on the left side of the window,
Click

Any applications with updates will be listed underneath the New Updates heading, similar to the image below:

Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app showing the Updates list, indicating that Illustrator has an update that needs installing.

To update an application, to the right of the application’s name and update description,
Click
To continue the update process, if necessary,
Click

The selected application will then start downloading and applying the update. This may take some time to complete, depending on the size of the update being downloaded and your internet connection speed. When the update is finished, the application will disappear from the New Updates list and appear under the Updated Recently heading, as seen in the following screenshot:

Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app displaying the list of recently updated apps. Illustrator is at the top of this list, as it is the most recently updated app.

Exploring the InDesign interface

Let’s take some time to familiarize ourselves with the InDesign interface. InDesign’s interface is complex and may be overwhelming to new users, so before we get started working on the newsletter we’ll take a quick tour of the different interface elements. We’ll start off by opening InDesign, then we'll open an example newsletter so we can fully explore the application's interface.

NOTE: The following steps assume you have downloaded and extracted the exercise files to your computer’s desktop. If this isn’t the case, navigate to the location where you extracted the exercise files instead of your desktop.

Open Adobe InDesign.
To close the What's New dialog box, if necessary,
Click

NOTE: The What's New dialog box will only appear if you've recently installed or updated InDesign.

To open the file Example Newsletter.indd, in the Menu bar,
Click File, Click Open…
To navigate to the desktop, in the left-hand side of the Open dialog box,
Click
To open the appropriate folder,
Double-Click the InDesign Basics folder
To navigate to the folder holding the example newsletter,
Double-Click the Example Newsletter folder
To open the file,
Double-Click Example Newsletter.indd

At this point, you may see one of two dialog boxes mentioning missing links. We'll leave the links unchanged at this point and continue opening the file.

To dismiss the dialog box that appears, if necessary,
Click or , depending on the dialog box that appears
To dismiss the missing font dialog box, if it appears,
Click
To dismiss the Welcome dialog box if it appears, in the upper right corner of the dialog box,
Click

With a file open, we can now take a closer look at the interface. If you’ve used other programs in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, the interface may look familiar to you, as many of Adobe’s graphic design programs share similar interface elements and a similar layout.

The following video shows the InDesign interface in detail. If you’d rather have a text-based introduction to InDesign, scroll past the video for a diagram of the interface with a detailed description of the individual parts.

Learn more about the InDesign interface in this video.

Description of the video:

[music] In this video, I’ll be introducing you to the different elements of the Adobe InDesign interface. For today’s demonstration, I’ll be using Adobe InDesign CC 2023. If you’re using a different version of InDesign, your interface may look slightly different than mine, but all of the interface elements I point out today will be in roughly the same locations. The InDesign interface is composed of various panels in different locations on the screen. These panels contain a wide array of tools and features that will help us in the process of laying out a document. We’ll start out in the top right corner of the screen with the Workspace menu. InDesign has a collection of workspaces available that collect panels focusing on specific types of tasks, such as digital publishing and working with typography. To switch workspaces, in the upper right corner of the InDesign window, click on the name of the active workspace. A dropdown menu will appear - from here, click on the name of the desired workspace to switch to it. I’ll switch to the Typography workspace here, which is the workspace we’ll use in the InDesign: The Basics course. Next, let’s look at the Tools panel. The Tools panel contains all of the various tools used to complete tasks in InDesign, including selection tools, type tools, frame tools, and more. To activate a tool in the Tools panel, click on its icon. I’ll demonstrate this by activating the Type tool. Each tool has a keyboard shortcut associated with it as well. To see the keyboard shortcut for a specific tool, hover your mouse cursor over the tool and a tooltip will appear with the shortcut. Here, we can see the keyboard shortcut for the Type tool is T. You may notice that some of the tools in the Tools panel have a little triangle in the lower right corner of the tool’s icon. This indicates that there are multiple tools stacked together. The Type tool is one of those tools – to view the tools that are stacked with the Type tool, I’ll click and hold on the Type tool in the Tools panel. A menu will appear, showing the other tools in the stack. I want to switch to the Type on a Path tool, so I’ll click on it in the menu to activate it. The Control panel is located across the top of the screen underneath the menu bar. The Control panel is context-sensitive - in other words, the contents of the panel will change based on what tool we have selected in the Tools panel. In InDesign, some tools have so many options that they may have multiple sets of controls. For example, the Type tool has a set of character formatting options as well as paragraph formatting options in the Control panel. We can switch between these two sets of options by clicking on their respective icons on the far-left side of the Control panel. Not all workspaces in InDesign show the Control panel by default. To make the Control panel appear if it’s not on screen, in the Menu bar, click on Window, then click Control. On the right side of the screen, we have the Panel dock. This is where the majority of the panels we’ll work with are located. If you’ve worked with Photoshop and Illustrator previously, you’ll notice the panel dock looks a little different in InDesign. The panels here are collapsed by default, and listed by name. To open a panel, click on its name. The selected panel will display until we switch to a different panel or collapse the open panel by clicking on the panel’s name again. We can expand or collapse the panel dock by clicking on the icon in the upper right corner of the panel dock – right now, it says Expand Panels when I hover over it. I’ll click on the icon to expand the panels, then click on it again to collapse the panel dock. If you’re looking for a specific panel, or accidentally closed a panel, you can open it by going to the Window menu – all of the panels available in InDesign are accessible here. The document window, located in the center of the InDesign interface, displays the file that you’re working on. Inside the document window, one or more pages may be visible, depending on the specific layout of your document. The Pasteboard is the empty area to the left and right of the page. We can use this area to store layout elements we’re not currently using. Anything that’s kept on the pasteboard won’t be visible when printing or exporting to PDF. At the bottom of the document window is the status bar, which displays information about the currently open document. Here, we can see the zoom level of the document, what page we’re working on, and whether or not there are any errors in our document. We can have multiple files open at the same time in InDesign. To switch between open files, at the top of the document window, click on the tab for the file you want to switch to. Now that you’ve been introduced to the InDesign interface, you’re ready to start laying out documents in InDesign. [music]

NOTE: Depending on the resolution of your computer's screen, your interface may look slightly different than the examples shown in the previous video and following diagram.

To learn more about the interface elements in the following diagram, expand the appropriate accordion fold below the image:

Diagram of the InDesign interface. A description of the interface elements is included in the accordion folds below.

NOTE: Your screen may look different than what's shown in the screenshots at this point, depending on whether or not you've used InDesign previously on your computer and what workspace is currently active. In the screenshot above, the Typography workspace is the active workspace – if you've just installed InDesign, your active workspace will be the Essentials workspace and some of the interface elements shown here may not be present on your screen.

InDesign has a collection of workspaces available that collect different interface elements and tools that focus on specific tasks, such as creating a book or an interactive PDF. These workspaces are available through the workspace switcher located in the top right corner of the InDesign window, and can also be accessed through the Window menu. The workspace shown in the above diagram is the Typography workspace – if this is the first time you're using InDesign on your computer, you're likely seeing the Essentials workspace right now, which looks different than the above diagram.

The Tools panel is located on the left side of the InDesign window, and contains all the tools you’ll need to lay out text and graphics in a document.

There are two ways to activate a tool — you can either click on the tool’s icon in the Tools panel or use the tool’s keyboard shortcut. To find the keyboard shortcut for a specific tool, hover over the tool and a tooltip with the tool’s name and the keyboard shortcut in parentheses will appear, as shown in the following screenshot:

Pen tool displaying a tooltip that says "Pen Tool (P)".

In the image above, we see that the keyboard shortcut for the Pen tool is the P key.

The Control panel, when present, is located at the top of the InDesign window underneath the Menu bar. (Not all workspaces display the Control Panel.) The Control panel is context-sensitive, meaning that the options visible will change depending on what tool we have selected.

For example, the following image shows the available options in the Control panel when the Selection tool is active:

Control panel displaying options for the Selection tool.

When the Type tool is active, a different set of options are visible in the Control panel, as shown in the following image:

Some tools may have multiple sets of controls available - for example, the Type tool has a set of controls for formatting characters and a second set for formatting paragraphs. We can switch between the two sets of options by clicking on the appropriate icon on the far left side of the Control panel, as highlighted below:

Close-up of the icons for the Character Controls and Paragraph Controls visible on the Control panel when the Type tool is active.

NOTE: In the Essentials workspace, the Control panel is not shown by default — to show the Control panel, in the Menu bar, Click Window, Click Control.

The paneldock is located on the right side of the screen, and contains the various panels needed for laying out a document.

If you’ve worked with Photoshop and Illustrator in the past, you might notice that the panel dock looks different in InDesign. In some workspaces the panels are listed by name and collapsed by default — to open a specific panel, click on its name. The selected panel will display until we switch to a different panel or collapse the open panel.

There are more panels available than what is currently shown in the panel dock. All of the available panels are located in the Window menu, and clicking on a panel’s name in the Window menu will open the panel in the InDesign workspace.

The document window is located in the middle of the InDesign interface, and displays the file you’re currently working on. Multiple files can be open at the same time - you can switch between open files by clicking on the document tabs at the top of the document window.

Inside the document window, you’ll see one or more pages - this is where you’ll lay out your individual pages of content. The gray area surrounding the pages is called the pasteboard, and we can use this space to store layout elements we’re not currently using. Objects that are on the pasteboard won’t print or appear in an exported PDF version of the document.

At the bottom of the document window is the status bar. This gives us some information about our document at a quick glance, including the zoom level, what page we're working on, and whether or not there are any errors present in the document. We can also quickly navigate to different pages in the document here, and open the Preflight panel to fix any issues in the document.

A note for MacOS users about keyboard shortcuts

As we work through the content, we'll be utilizing a large number of keyboard shortcuts, many of them involving the Control key on Windows. For those using MacOS, in any instructions that reference the Control key, you'll use the Command key instead. If there are any keyboard shortcuts or other differences between Windows and MacOS aside from the Control key/Command key swap, those will be noted in the materials.

Changing the interface color

The default InDesign interface is a medium-gray color — if desired, you can change the color of the interface to a lighter or darker color to make things easier to see. There are four different brightness levels, ranging from dark gray to light gray, and the options for changing the interface color are found in the Preferences dialog box.

If you want to change the color of the InDesign interface, you can follow the instructions in the following accordion.

1. To view the InDesign preferences, on the Menu bar,
  Click Edit, Point Preferences, Click Interface…

NOTE for MacOS users: To view the preferences on MacOS, on the Menu bar, Click InDesign, Point Settings..., Click Interface.

1. To change the interface color, at the top of the Preferences dialog box under the heading User Interface,
  Click the swatch for your desired color
2. To accept the changes made, in the bottom right corner of the Preferences dialog box,
  Click

Changing a document’s view size and position

When working with a document, we may want to zoom in so we can see and work with some of the details on a page. Additionally, we may want to move around in the document without zooming back out. Let’s take a moment to see how to zoom in and out of the document with the Zoom tool, as well as how to use the Hand tool to move around in a document. Additionally, we’ll also learn a shortcut for viewing a page at 100% or making a page fill the screen.

To activate the Zoom tool, in the Tools panel,
Click
To zoom in on the photo of the student at the computer on the front page, with the Zoom tool active,
Click the picture multiple times until it takes up most of the screen
To zoom out slightly, on the keyboard, press & hold:
Alt key, Click the photo once

To activate the Hand tool, in the Tools panel,
Click
To move to the second page, with the Hand tool active,
Press & Drag the page upward multiple times until the second page is visible

To zoom out and view the page at 100%, in the Tools panel,
Double-Click
To view the entire page in the document window, in the Tools panel,
Double-Click

Now that we’re a little more familiar with the InDesign interface, let’s learn more about the project we’ll be working on today. We’ll leave Example Newsletter.indd open for now, as we’ll be coming back to it later in the course.

Introducing Adobe InDesign

Available Files

Making sure you’re using the most current version of InDesign

Instructions for updating Adobe Creative Cloud applications

Exploring the InDesign interface

Step 1. Open InDesign, then open the file Example Newsletter.

Workspaces and workspace switcher

Tools panel

Control panel

Panel dock

Document window, pasteboard, and status bar

A note for MacOS users about keyboard shortcuts

Changing the interface color

Step 1. If desired, change the InDesign interface’s brightness level to one of your choosing.

Changing a document’s view size and position

Step 1. Activate the Zoom tool, then zoom in on the picture on the front page.

Step 2. Use the Hand tool to move to the second page.

Step 3. Explore using the Hand and Zoom tool shortcuts to make a page fill the screen and to view a page at 100%.