Desktop Publishing - By Category

Supplies You Need

Dress up your words with fancy fonts. Illustrate your words with pretty pictures. Organize your words with tasteful templates. Desktop publishing utilizes fonts, images, and templates to create attractive page layouts. Find type foundries and free fonts, commercial image vendors, free clip art or stock photos for print, templates for the major desktop publishing software programs, and other cool tools and essential supplies for use in desktop publishing. Just pick the category from those listed on this page.

Things to Make

What are you going to create? Dig into detailed design tips and tutorials, makeovers, ideas, techniques, and supplies for anything you can do with desktop publishing software. Learn how to create logos, brochures, business cards, greeting cards, Web pages, ads, presentations, annual reports, packaging, signs, business forms, and just about anything that can be designed and put on screen on in print.

Graphic Design Tutorials

Desktop publishing involves the technical application of the elements and principles of graphic design. Discover those graphic design elements and principles and the creative process through graphic design tutorials, free design classes, and graphic design training articles that explore the various theories and processes of traditional and modern graphic design and desktop publishing.

Start with the categories and pages, below, to learn graphic design without design school.

Desktop Publishing Tutorials

At its most basic level, desktop publishing is taking some text and some images and mixing them together on a page then publishing that page in the form of or as part of a flier, brochure, newsletter, greeting card, annual report, business card, Web page, or other common (and uncommon) desktop publishing projects.

In practice, there is much more to learn in order to do desktop publishing. Explore the categories and pages listed below to find tutorials on all aspects of page layout and using desktop publishing software.

Graphics Tutorials

Learn how to use a scanner, get the perfect scan. Explore how to create, edit, and use graphics in page layout whether acquired from scanning, digital photography, or other means.

Typography

In the broadest sense, typography is the design and use of typefaces as a means of visual communication from calligraphy to the ever-developing use of digital type.

Typography is sometimes seen as encompassing many separate fields from the type designer who creates letterforms to the graphic designer who selects typefaces and arranges them on the page.

Explore all the areas of typography important to using and understanding type including the history of typograpy, practical typography tutorials, and creative typography explorations.

Prepress and Printing

Ensure your designs will print as expected by following proper prepress procedures as described in these prepress tutorials, definitions, and articles.

After creating a project you'll want to get the best output whether you use your desktop printer or commercial printing services.

Web Design Tutorials

Electronic publishing includes Web as well as other non-print publishing such as email newsletters, CD-ROM publications, eBooks, video, and PDF documents. When the intended final display is for the screen, it's electronic publishing.

Education and Training

Do you have the knowledge and training needed to get a job doing desktop publishing?

Through the categories and pages, below, discover the educational requirements for working in the field of desktop publishing and graphic design. Obtain formal or informal desktop publishing training, join professional associations or online communities, and read magazines and newsletters on design and publishing topics

Are you a teacher? Explore the teaching and use of desktop publishing in the K12 classroom.

Business of Design

Do you make a living or want to make a living doing desktop publishing? Find professional associations, publications, and career advice for those in the field of desktop publishing including in-house designers, freelancers, and teachers. Find a job in graphic design, desktop publishing, or Web design. Get salary and occupational outlook information. Learn how to start a desktop publishing or graphic design business.

Desktop Publishing Dictionary - Index

Learn desktop publishing one word at a time. More than a list of words and definitions - these are mini-lessons in desktop publishing. Explore definitions, illustrations, and overviews of a variety of graphic design, typography, prepress, and printing terms and techniques by subject and alphabetically. Try some quizzes and games that test your knowledge of desktop publishing terminology.

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