When it comes to digital publishing, Adobe InDesign reigns supreme as the go-to program for producing the very best quality creatives. It has a wealth of amazing features that set it apart from its competitors and is used for everything from posters and brochures to billboards and magazines.
Cool InDesign work is a great addition to your online design portfolio—clients love seeing a design with a wide range of skills. No need to take an InDesign course: we’ve curated a list of fun InDesign tutorials that will help you create some eye-popping stuff for your portfolio. Let’s dig in!
InDesign Tutorials For Beginners
Adobe InDesign For Absolute Beginners
As the title suggests, this InDesign tutorial is fantastic for those with no experience whatsoever. Not sure how to use InDesign yet? You’ll learn how to set up a project, work with the tools, and manage workflow.
See What You Can Create With InDesign
This Adobe InDesign tutorial breaks down exactly what the program is, gives a brief intro to its many uses, and explains the assortment of tools available within it (including details on how they can be utilized to improve your designs). It’s a great way to start getting your hands dirty with new design techniques!
10 Beginner Tips for InDesign
Here’s a fantastic crash course in 10 of the most essential InDesign basics. Once you’ve worked through this helpful video, you should be more than ready to take on projects you’ve been putting off and hammer out some quality designs to make your portfolio shine.
InDesign Basics
Another great tutorial from Adobe, this InDesign training is designed to help guide you through the tools available in this fantastic application, their uses, and how they can be used to craft outstanding designs. After this brief introductory journey, you’ll feel far less lost in the features of the app and will be ready to take on design tasks with gusto afterwards.
Get Started With InDesign
Another super-helpful guide from Adobe, this one is a multi-part foray into just about everything you’ll need to know about to successfully use InDesign. You’ll be guided through creating a document, and how to format pages and text to create attractive designs.
InDesign Basics—Master Pages
Master Pages are a seriously cool feature added in InDesign CS6 that lets you update data and have it reflected throughout your entire document. This can help greatly with formatting consistency and quality. This tutorial will guide you through the best way to use this feature. Don’t skip this one, as Master Pages are essential for streamlining your production and maintaining consistent quality throughout your published work.
Working With Graphics
Mastering graphics is an absolutely essential part of learning how to use InDesign. This guide will help you learn how to import photos, images, and text into your work (as well as methods to manipulate them via cropping, resizing and positioning), and guide you through which formats are supported by the app.
Tips For Working With Images
You’ll take away five handy InDesign training tips that can really help you nail working with images and start producing work that will make your digital design portfolio stand out.
Typography Tips
Your designs are great, but without fantastic typographic talent they’ll never truly reach their maximum potential. In this InDesign tutorial, you’ll be guided through the numerous nuances of text and placement tips. You’ll have a truly polished look to your work in no time—and be ready to wow clients with your beautiful, bold design portfolio.
Amazing Things You Can Do in InDesign
In this video tutorial, Adobe evangelist Terry White and graphic designer Dave Clayton share some stellar work created in InDesign and discuss some of the most useful tricks they’ve developed for working on projects in the app.
Beginners Guide to Font Pairing
Knowing which fonts to choose can be daunting at times—especially when trying to pair them for maximum readability. Sometimes you just can’t figure out if your two preferred fonts truly work together! This tutorial aims to help with that, and gives you a breakdown of exactly how to accomplish this feat.
Beginners Guide to Leading
Your Adobe InDesign training continues with something you can’t afford to skimp out on: typography! We’ll start with leading. This InDesign tutorial for beginners will aid in determining exactly how to properly lead your text to make it as eye-catching and gorgeous as possible.
Beginners Guide to Tracking
Letter spacing, also known as tracking, can make or break your design. A well-designed document needs to have just enough space between letters to catch the eye and promote readability without sacrificing design.
Beginners Guide to Kerning
Kerning matters. Good kerning improves readability and the impact your designs have, and clients will absolutely love your portfolio if you’ve mastered the fine art of kerning.
Drawing in InDesign
Learn how to create wonderful, bold, effective visual designs. Drawing in InDesign is fun.
Widows and Orphans
This Adobe InDesign tutorial details what widows and orphans are in typographic design, and how to avoid tarnishing otherwise amazing creations with them. You’ll be taught how to adjust your formatting so that these ugly ducklings are a thing of the past.
Create a Compliment Slip
You’re here to learn InDesign, so let’s get you actually creating something! Through this simple guide, you’ll be shown how to create an attractive compliment slip (and familiarize yourself with workflow in the program). Tackle this simple tutorial and you’ll be ready to move on to more advanced projects.
Creating an Infographic
This amazing app can produce just about anything you can think of when it comes to publishing, and infographics are a fantastic way to flex your design muscles and try something new. This mini InDesign course will take you through the creation of an attractive and eye-catching infographic.
Create a Simple Index
If you’re looking for InDesign tutorials for beginners, why not start by learning about how to make a clear and effective index? A great index is an essential part of a published design and can give authority and added usability to a piece; the trick is in making them attractive and usable! In this informative guide, you’ll be led step-by-step through forging a simple and effective index.
Intermediate InDesign Tutorials
Control Multiple Page Sizes
It can be tricky to design things with varying sizes, and putting things together in a cohesive way that doesn’t feel disjointed can be a challenge. This guide will set you straight and help turn a complex layout into a bold design capable of attracting eyes…and clients.
Save Time with Master Pages
We touched briefly on Master Pages above, and now we’ll get into the tastier details of them, including how to keep your workflow swift and efficient. Learn how to truly leverage this feature to your advantage and, before long, you’ll be cranking out skillfully rendered documents.
Opening Corrupt Files
You’ve created a masterpiece, spent dozens of hours fine-tuning your work and are finally pleased with your design—then your computer corrupts the file, rendering it unusable. Disaster! Panic! Fear! Worry not: this crucial InDesign tutorial teaches you how to save your hard work and prevent you from needing to start all over again. One of the best InDesign tutorials on this list, it can help you save a lot of time (not to mention your sanity!).
Style Magic in InDesign
With the Styles feature, InDesign gives you a powerful tool to streamline your workflow and add detail to your document (without having to manually adjust individual elements). This downloadable InDesign training will lead you through effective use of Styles.
Creating a Table of Contents
If you aren’t adding a table of contents to a multi-page document, you’re doing it wrong. TOCs are absolutely necessary elements of design in books and magazines. This useful tutorial will train you on learning InDesign to build a gorgeous and scannable TOC that will make your work accessible to all audiences.
Working with Layers
Those among us who’ve worked with Photoshop and other similar applications are well-versed in layers and their power in producing designs that really kick butt. Through this tutorial, you’ll be taught to use the layers feature in InDesign and how to accentuate your work with details and flair that can make all the difference in your creatives.
Improve your Workflow
InDesign hasa number of really awesome features that can really reduce the time it takes to create production-quality documents and maintain a steady workflow, but learning them all can take a fair amount of time. Thankfully, this tutorial will help keep you on-task and improve your understanding of the various ways to maintain speed without sacrificing quality in your work.
Grid-Based Design
When it comes to layout, grids are king. An effective grid can make your piece stand out, and improve readability in your creatives. This Adobe InDesign tutorial will guide you through the process of setting up such a grid and using it to whip up some awe-inspiring documents.
Using the Glyphs Panel
Many fonts contain these, and through InDesign you can use them in interesting ways to help turn a boring and flat bit of typography into something unique and eye-catching that will lure in the reader. This tutorial will train you on how to activate and use these glyphs.
Design a Print-Ready Ad
If you don’t have much experience with print design, then you may be unaware of some of the rules you’ve got to be familiar with when designing for publications. Try your hand at this useful bit of Adobe InDesign training and you’ll have all the necessary information required to create truly inspiring pieces for your portfolio.
Magazine Cover Design
Magazine cover design is both fun and challenging: creating an effective cover than can be scanned from 10 feet away is tough. With the help of this useful InDesign tutorial, you’ll be cranking out gorgeous magazine covers with ease.
Create a Multi-Page Feature
Publishing is a rewarding field for designers, but multi-page designs can be a difficult thing to pull off at first. With this guide, every step of the process is outlined for you.
Distinctive Monotone Layouts
With this handy InDesign training, you’ll learn to handle monochromatic creatives and craft layouts that really stand out—despite using only a single color!
Multi-Doc Projects with the Book Function
The Book function in InDesign can help you manage a complex workflow of numerous documents in a structured way that can drastically improve the workflow (and quality) of your design process. With the aid of this guide you’ll be creating organised documents, no matter how many parts they may have, in no time at all.
Speed up your Layout Design
Anything that can speed up your work process is useful. It’s one of the best InDesign tutorials, as you’ll be producing quality layouts in half the time: conquer your documents faster, and get paid sooner.
Create Outstanding Layout Effects
This fabulous Adobe InDesign tutorial goes over several methods to create striking and effective layouts using effects, aided by Photoshop. By pairing the two apps, you can take your designs to the next level. The results can only serve to increase the potential hiring power of your portfolio.
Magazine Design with InDesign
As you learn InDesign, it’s important to try various types of creatives to broaden your design horizons. This three-part tutorial delves into working with spreads, visually pleasing layouts, and layer effects that, when combined, can help you create production-quality magazine design.
How to Batch-Replace Characters and Glyphs
Another useful tutorial to help save you a lot of time and effort, this Adobe InDesign training will teach you how to replace entire font-sets and glyphs across numerous projects simultaneously. When you are designing for several languages, this is a truly invaluable feature that will help you hit deadlines and please clients.
Intermediate Guide to Stylesheets
Stylesheets are a feature that can save you hours of fiddling and nitpicking, but they require a bit of InDesign basics knowledge to really take advantage of them. Through this tutorial, you’ll learn how to utilize this tool to apply styles across entire documents.
Create a Newsprint Publication
Sooner or later you’ll get a client who needs a print ad. With the aid of this InDesign training, you’ll get the knowledge required to make print-ready designs that will impress clients. Why stop there? Try sharpening other design skills while you’re at it!
Advanced InDesign Tutorials
Finding Fonts That Have the Glyphs You Need
This brief guide will teach you how to make the most of your fonts by discovering the glyphs hidden within them. Super-useful!
Data Merging
InDesign features a Data Merge tool, but using it properly can be tricky without a bit of know-how. Take a gander at this advanced Adobe InDesign tutorial and you’ll be able to paginate text and images directly from external files and take your designs to the next level.
Create a Fillable PDF
Does your client need a PDF file created that allows viewers to fill in data themselves? This guide will teach you everything you need to create PDFs with fillable data fields.
Using Liquid Layouts
Do you need to create a project that is available in various sizes or orientations? Don’t start on them before reading up on the Liquid Layout feature of Adobe InDesign. This can save you a heap of time and effort and prevent you from needing to do the same task numerous times.
Linking Images
Switching images can be a bothersome task, especially when you’ve used a particular one in numerous locations in a document (such as page-number flair or headers). This bit of InDesign training teaches you how to change every instance of a particular image simultaneously—and spare a bit of sanity and a lot of time.
Creating an Index
We touched on basic use of the Index feature in InDesign earlier for simple indexes. Complicated ones are another matter entirely, and can prove frustrating for those not experienced with this function. In this guide, you’ll be briefed on the proper approach to making gorgeous and visually arresting indexes.
Don’t Forget to Add Your InDesign Work to Your Online Portfolio
Now that you’ve mastered the InDesign basics and have a ton of new InDesign tricks up your sleeve, it’s time to start using them in your work.
Make sure to add these new masterpieces to your online portfolio website. If you don’t have one, then you should definitely create one! Pick a website builder with fresh, modern templates that align with your brand identity to show off all your cool InDesign work.
We can’t wait to see what you create!
Need more design inspiration?
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