How do you design? Free-form, creating one-of-a-kind pieces? Or would you love a highly formatted template that you could modify as needed for regular periodicals? InDesign is the right tool for both approaches, and this is the right book to help you master the essentials. Learn to set up your documents, prepare them for output, and get creative!

• Take a tour -- navigate around InDesign's menus, dialog boxes, panels, and panes, and customize preferences

• Master the template -- set up and modify templates, use master pages, build libraries, and work with color

• The essential object -- manipulate, organize, align, and arrange design objects

• Terrific text -- see how to import and thread text, edit and style it, and finesse characters to make your words look great

• Must-have graphics -- prepare graphics files, work with image layers, and create a clipping path

• Get down to business -- create manuals and annual reports with tables, footnotes, and indexes

• Pretty in print -- calibrate color and prepare your document for printing

• Present your project -- export your work to the Web or make it an interactive presentation with animation and sound

Open the book and find:

• Tips on modifying defaults for views, colors, and styles

• How pages and layers work

• What you can do with color swatches

• When to align objects and when to stack them

• How to customize the spelling and hyphenation dictionaries

• Import options for Word, Excel, and RTF files

• How to handle automatic text

• Tips for cropping and positioning graphics

Learn to:

• Navigate the interface and set up reusable master pages

• Work creatively with lines, text frames, and graphics frames

• Manipulate text and spiff up your documents with graphics

• Create PDFs, Web pages, and Flash files from InDesign