Adobe InDesign CS4 for Typography

Course Description:

Type is the area where many designers have had no formal training and often have the least knowledge.

Good typography can transform an ordinary document or design into an outstanding piece of communication. This one day Adobe authorised course explorers the principles of type, covers what works and what doesn't and provides practical examples of how to produce typographically excellent documentation using the powerful set of typographic controls in Adobe InDesign CS4.

This course includes the following modules:

Introduction

• You already know more than you think about type
• Case study: newspaper mastheads
• What do typefaces say?

The character of type

• Different type personalities
• Classy, serious, fresh, authoritative or fun typefaces
• Examples of type that really works

Serif and sans serif

• The origins of the serif
• Classic serif typefaces
• Classic sans-serif typefaces

Measuring type

• Traditional conventions; points, picas and ciceros
• Leading and kerning
• Ways of controlling the vertical space between text
• Ways of controlling the horizontal space between characters
• Smart guides and smart spacing
• Troublesome kerning pairs
• Optical kerning in InDesign

Legibility issues

• What the Swiss school can teach us
• Choosing a typeface
• Typefaces that work well together
• Using white space effectively
• Font families

Typographic elements

• Using rules, dingbats, symbols and glyphs
• Ligatures and hanging indents
• Examples of great typography

Type and colour

• Using contrast
• Type for on-screen display
• Colour theory

Font issues

• Font problems
• Font conversion
• Buying fonts
• Free fonts
• Trouble-free printing
• Embedding fonts
• Using Live PreFlight

Building a consistent, appropriate style

• Creating a coherent style