ART-1200: InDesign

Students learn the skills, tools and procedures needed to create electronic page layout files for output using leading industry software. It is recommended that students take ART 1120 and ART 1135 in the same semester as this course.

In ART 1200 InDesign Software, students learn the skills, tools, and procedures needed to create electronic page layout files for output using leading industry software.

Introduce Yourself to the Class

In this assignment we were expected to use our recently obtained knowledge of shapes, containers, text and pen tools to create a page with some facts about ourselves. We were given 3x3 grid and had to fill out each one with something about ourselves. The purpose of this assignment was to both familiarize ourselves with out peers, but also with InDesign.

Designing with Spot Colors

This assignment tasked us with creating a simple design using only two spot colors. We could use tints and knockout or overprint to make a more complex design. This section taught us about spot colors and color separations, and we got to practice those skills here.

Creating Vector Art

Here we were further working on our pen tool skills. We were asked to make a little themed card using primarily the pen tool. We did a front and a back, both with original art. We were also asked to set the file up for printing, which is why the printer marks are included.

Styles for Efficiency

Here we got to play around with character and paragraph styles. We were to take a chunk of a published text and dress it up. We created title and body paragraph styles, and even touched on threading text containers together.

Multipage Newsletter


We were given articles and asked to create a small faux newsletter. We were asked to include columned text containers, parent pages and progressive page numbers and a table of contents. We also went back to double down on paragraph and character styles. I also used some object styles to keep my backgrounds consistent.

Interactive PDF


For this assignment we got to rework our "Introduce Yourself to the Class" assignment and flex some of our new skills in the process. We most recently touched on interactive elements in InDesign and were asked to include them. Some of these were bookmarks, buttons and hyperlinks.