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 to the week prior, we revisited 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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