No matter what your level of expertise, you can produce a great desktop document by focusing on page layout, typography, graphics, and printing. Even the pros need a little refresher or extra assistance sometimes. Find design inspiration, use type creatively, go beyond graphics plug-ins and filters, and explore the prepress potential of PDF.
1. Grab a Pencil, Create a Collage
Sketch out rough ideas to save time and get a new perspective on your work.
When you suffer from white page syndrome or you find yourself repeating the same basic designs over and over, get out of the designer doldrums by stepping away from the computer. Rediscover the power of thumbnail sketches as a way to quickly explore layout options.
"Creating thumbnail sketches is a crucial part of the brainstorming aspect of your design work. Don't discount the value of this step in the design process." — Sketch This: The Art of Thumbnails"The mood board is a tool that can help you and your design client get a better understanding of what they want, what's needed, what can be done, what works and what doesn't before you spend hours, days, or weeks coming up with designs." — How and Why to Use a Mood Board2. Experiment with Type
MIT OpenCourseWare on Digital Typography
Beyond the rules of typography are the emotions of typography. Express yourself by exploring the many moods of type, bold or unusual ways to use type creatively, and interesting individual characters. Go back to school for free by taking the MIT OpenCourseWare class on Digital Typography.
"This course is best attempted by those with a strong interest in typography and communication beyond the basics and beyond the more traditional use of digital type and text composition in print or on the Web. I recommend the Intermediate Course of Study for those not interested in digging into Java. Using the Advanced Course of Study is a way to combine an interest in typography with a desire to learn how to use Java." — About.com Desktop Publishing Overview of Digital Typography course3. Get Back to Image Basics
© Samantha D. Bear
There are so many special effects and cool tools for customizing images that it is easy to get totally lost in the fun of photographic edges, magic morphs, and click-of-a-mouse editing. After you've played with all your plug-ins it's time to re-evaluate how you are using (or abusing) these nifty tools and explore alternatives to altered (or unaltered) stock images.
These graphics tutorials and ideas aren't just for beginners:
4. Explore PDF for Prepress
Creating a press optimized PDF from QuarkXPress.
Just as many desktop publishers shy away from PostScript files, others are leery of PDF — beyond using it to share files electronically or use for proofs. While it's not without limitations, don't miss out on the prepress potential of PDF. In fact, more and more commercial printers prefer to receive a properly prepared PDF file. There's more to a PDF for prepress than just saving a file as a PDF.
"Prepress PDFs should have high-resolution images; simplified flattened, RIP-Ready images; high-quality embedded fonts; CMYK or spot color assignments; no lines that are less than 0.25 pts; and need to have large enough dimensions to accommodate crop marks and color bars." — Prepress-Perfect PDFs by Taz Tally"...using InDesign’s Export Adobe PDF feature and PDF presets make it quick and easy to create a PDF for a particular workflow—commercial printing, a desktop printer or the web." — Creating PDF: Export or Use Distiller? InDesign Secrets