Plano Learns: InDesign: Create a Book

Learn the basics of formatting a book in Adobe InDesign. You can sign up for a free trial of the Adobe Creative Cloud to follow along with the class.

On July 22, 2020 Plano Public Library hosted a virutal workshop on using Adobe InDesign to create a book.

Below is the recording of this workshop, along with additional online training resources to continue developing your Adobe InDesign skills.

Additional Library Resources 

Lynda.com 

Provides online training courses that cover a variety of topics (including business, design, web development and multimedia skills) and software (including Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite and open source applications). Requires a Plano Public Library card.

• See our Polish Your Skills with Lynda blog posts, with recorded video tutorial by our staff, to understand how Lynda works. 
• In Lynda.com, there is an entire section dedicated to InDesign Training and Tutorials – with more than 100 courses and nearly 5,000 videos. See the latest releases, learning paths and any weeky series available.
• You can choose your skill level (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and the version of InDesign you are using to better tailor which videos you see in the list. Here are some courses we suggest: 

InDesign Quick Tips by Chad Chelius, released 9/2019. This collection of videos shows workarounds, tricks, and useful features in InDesign.

InDesign 2020 Essential Training by David Blatner, released 11/2019. Topics include basic faeatures, creating documents, managing panes, working with text, working with graphics, working with color and transparency, working with frames and paths, managing objects, formatting text, styles, tables, interactive documents, and packaging, printing, and exporting.

Designing a Book by Nigel French, released 3/2019. Topics include document setup and strategy, placing text, styling the text, working with images, finessing text composition, creating the front matter, creating the front cover, and preparing for print.

Editing Ebooks by Laura Brady, released 9/2019. This course explores editing the compontents of ebook files to publish in electronic publication (EPUB) or Mobipocket (MOBI) files.

Additional Online Resources 

Need more help? Try the Paper & Oats glossary of InDesign terms to brush up on your vocabulary.

You can also access great tutorials and instructions directly from Adobe. Just search the InDesign User Guide for relevant topics.