Complete Guide to Adobe InDesign

Radu walks through InDesign's workspace using a recipe book example file. You'll learn the menu bar, application bar, tools panel, and dock panels on the right side. The lesson covers how to drag panels to rearrange or collapse them, and how the pasteboard works as an overflow area outside your page edges.

Creating a new A4 portfolio document with facing pages enabled. You'll set up columns with 5mm gutters, configure top, bottom, inside and outside margins (with extra inside margin for binding), and add bleed space for print output. The lesson explains the difference between bleed and slug areas.

Adding content to your portfolio: text with the Type tool (T), images via File > Place (Ctrl+D) or drag-and-drop from File Explorer. The lesson demonstrates importing Foster Partners and Zaha Hadid project imagery. You'll also create basic graphics using the line, pen, pencil, and shape tools with fill and stroke controls.

Managing pages with the Pages panel (F12). You'll insert new pages, move them via drag-and-drop or the Move Pages dialog, duplicate pages with Alt+drag, and delete spreads. The lesson explains master pages and how the A-Master template automatically applies to new pages you create.

Navigation and layout design techniques. You'll learn scroll shortcuts, panning with spacebar, zooming with Alt+scroll, and view options like Fit Spread in Window. The main focus is using placeholder frames (F key) to plan layouts before adding real content—snapping them to columns, margins, and page centres.

Placing images with import options enabled. You'll see how to select specific pages from multi-page PDFs, replace images inside existing frames, and generate automatic captions from file metadata. The lesson covers fitting options: fitting images proportionally versus filling frames with cropping.

Frame appearance and the Stroke panel (F10). You'll control fill and stroke colours, line weight, cap styles (butt, round, projecting), join conditions, and stroke alignment (centre, inside, outside). The lesson shows how to create dashed and dotted lines, and change gap colours between dashes.

Character formatting with the Type tool active. You'll change typeface, font style, size, and leading from the application bar or Character panel. The lesson covers all caps, small caps, superscript, subscript, underline, and strikethrough. Paragraph alignment options include left, centre, right, and four justification modes.

Creating character styles to save font, size, leading, and colour settings for reuse. You'll define styles based on existing text, apply them from the dropdown, and see the plus sign that indicates manual overrides. Paragraph styles add alignment, indents, and spacing rules on top of character formatting.

Final checks and export. The Preflight panel catches overset text and missing fonts before you export. You'll use Presentation mode to proof your document, then export to PDF using presets like High Quality Print (300 DPI) or Smallest File Size (100 DPI). The Package feature bundles fonts and linked images for handoff.