Designing a Book
1h 40mIntermediate2025-01-17
Authors

Nigel French
Graphic Designer, Author, Artist, Trainer
Course details
Learn how to design a book that will be cherished for years to come. Nigel French breaks down the components of an elegant and readable book, starting from the ground up in Adobe InDesign. This class covers setting up your document, placing and styling text, working with images, creating the book cover, and preparing the book for printing. Follow along step-by-step as Nigel goes from a blank page to a beautiful book that proves print is very much alive and well.
Learning objectives
Set up an InDesign workspace.
Adjust the page size and margins.
Place text.
Apply text styles.
Automate formatting.
Add footnotes and headers.
Place images.
Fix text details.
Create the front matter and the cover.
Export the final book.
Learning objectives
Set up an InDesign workspace.
Adjust the page size and margins.
Place text.
Apply text styles.
Automate formatting.
Add footnotes and headers.
Place images.
Fix text details.
Create the front matter and the cover.
Export the final book.
Skills covered
Layout and CompositionDesign BusinessDrawingDigital PublishingInDesignSmall Business and EntrepreneurshipGraphic DesignAdobeAnimation and IllustrationOne-Off
Concepts
0. Introduction
- 01 - Creating a book in InDesign
- 02 - What you should know
1. Getting Started
- 03 - Setting up a workspace
2. Document Setup and Strategy
- 04 - Creating a document and choosing a page size
- 05 - Setting margins and grid
3. Choosing a Typeface
- 06 - Choosing your typeface(s)
4. Placing Text
- 07 - Placing the text
- 08 - Preserving character formats
- 09 - Cleaning up text with Find Change
5. Text Formatting
- 10 - Creating paragraph styles
- 11 - Applying paragraph styles
- 12 - Changing text casing
- 13 - Controlling text flow with Keep Options
- 14 - Hyphenation and Justification
6. Parent Pages
- 15 - Adding page numbers
- 16 - Adding running heads
- 17 - Adding (non-printing) line numbers
7. Text Composition
- 18 - Using a GREP style to fix short last lines
- 19 - Using a GREP style to fix kerning problems
- 20 - Fixing widows and orphans with styles
- 21 - Fixing widows and orphans with tracking
- 22 - Fixing hyphenation
- 23 - Last fixes
8. Creating the Front Matter
- 24 - Sections and numbering
- 25 - Designing the title and half-title pages
- 26 - Creating and applying additional parent pages
- 27 - Front Matter text
- 28 - Generating the table of contents
10. Preparing for Print
- 29 - Last clean up, preflighting, and archiving
- 30 - Exporting to print-ready PDF
Conclusion
- 31 - Next steps
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