Indesign / Photoshop
This week I attended an Indesign masterclass and a photoshop session. Both sessions actually became very useful as I was a little bit adamant about the Indesign session because I’ve been using it for so long now. I didn’t think there would be that much to show me, but boy I was wrong! It was as if all the skills I had developed over the past years were just simplified. I felt like everything I had been doing was correct but I was doing everything the manual ‘complicated’ way. All those times I had sat there and thought, ‘god it would be so much easier if I could just do this…’ was exactly what happened. Every step had been shortened and I felt like I was using Indesign as it should be used, simple things like adding page numbers that altered automatically which I had never achieved before. Using master pages and paragraphing styles. All of these simple, basic tactics have amazed me and made life easier when laying out a document!
The photoshop session covered a similar range of skills actually, we learnt quick ways of exporting canvases by using the history tool, which again just cut out those extra minutes (…hours) you spend opening a file, changing the canvas size, changing the resolution and the file type etc. aIt simplified those painful moments which you wished you didn’t have to do!
So overall these 2 sessions actually were extremely useful – although I do feel like these sessions could have been done in 2nd year because layout and the logbooks become more important, they were such basic tools.. but maybe I needed to understand the adobe software at a higher level in order for it to seem so simple? Whatever the case I really appreciated these session and throughout the rest of university and into my career these little bits of information are going to completely change the way I work on these programs.
I also found it really inspiring hearing from a graphic design perspective and stripping back to the principles of design and really thinking about how layout can convey a meaning. I think as a designer it’s fundamental to gain as much knowledge from as many different areas of design as possible and I do feel as if my understanding of design and visual communication is rapidly improving so again I feel inspired and educated!
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