Cengage Course Tech. Book: Exploring InDesign CS2 by Terry Rydberg

In the real world, page layout projects don't come with directions and the recipe book approach of most software books does little to prepare designers for the demands of a highly competitive industry. Exploring InDesign CS2 takes a different approach.

With an emphasis on typography and critical thinking, the book transforms the novice into a professional typesetter, one who is grounded in industry-standard design principles. In addition to gaining professional proficiency while using the new features of Adobe InDesign CS2, users learn to begin a project while visualizing the end design, to identify the project pitfalls and challenges, and to independently strategize the best production sequence.

Chapters and projects are carefully ordered to move readers from basic operations to creating complex documents using multiple master pages and paragraph and character styles, with each chapter building upon the skills presented in the previous chapter. As in industry, the emphasis throughout is on productivity, including preplanning and utilizing keyboard shortcuts.

About the Author:  Terry Rydberg is an instructor at the Harry V. Quadracci Printing and Graphics Center at Waukesha County Technical College, a state-of-the-art graphics program in Wisconsin. Ms. Rydberg has extensive experience working in industry, as a page layout professional and as a corporate trainer.

Teaching page layout programs in college-level settings has given her the opportunity to observe how students learn and has moved her teaching away from an overview approach to a focused, proficiency-and production-based style of teaching