Creative Tip: Free 10-Week InDesign Course!
Starting this May, CreativeTechs is offering a free, 10-week, worldwide, InDesign course. To make this happen, we need at least 1,000 people signed up to participate, so help us spread the word!
Want to enroll? Sign-up here: InDesign CS4 Course Enrollment.
Jason Hoppe, our Adobe Certified Instructor, has designed a comprehensive course that covers InDesign CS4 in detail. If you’ve been meaning to improve your InDesign skills, now is the perfect opportunity:
Week 1, May 14 – Interface & New Document
Week 2, May 21 – Working with Type
Week 3, May 28 – Shapes, Smart Guides, Pathfinder
Week 4, June 4 – Color
Week 5, June 11 – Images and Links
Week 6, June 18 – Layers, Making PDFs, Printing
Week 7, June 25 – Style Sheets
Week 8, July 2 – Master Pages
Week 9, July 9 – Tables
Week 10, July 16 – Finishing Details.
And yes, you can pass this offer along to friends, or even post it on your blog. Help spread the word. As I mentioned, we need a minimum of 1,000 people enrolled to make this free class viable.
Read on for an extended Q&A, and to ask your own questions in the comments. Jason is currently working on the class materials. If you have a topic you’d like to see him cover, mention it in the comments below.
Q: What Time Do Classes Start?
A: That depends on where you live. People attend these workshops from all over the world. We start at 11AM Thursday mornings in Seattle. Here are the start times for time zones in the United States:
2PM – Eastern (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Florida)
1PM – Central (Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas)
12PM – Mountain (Denver, Phoenix)
11AM – Pacific (Seattle, Los Angeles)
10AM – Alaska
9AM – Hawaii
For international participants, follow this link to see how 11AM in Seattle translates to around time zones around the world: What time is 11AM in Seattle? Here are some example start times for different cities:
7PM – London, Dublin, Algiers, Lagos
8PM – Amsterdam, Paris, Oslo, Prague, Zagreb
9PM – Athens, Jerusalem, Cairo, Kyiv
10PM – Moscow, Dubai
11PM – Islamabad, Tashkent
1AM Friday – Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta
2AM Friday – Hong Kong, Beijing, Perth
3AM Friday – Tokyo, Seoul
4AM Friday – Melbourne, Sydney
5AM Friday – Vladivostok
6AM Friday – Auckland
Q: How Long Are Classes?
A: Each class is roughly 60 minutes long, with an additional 30-45 minutes for audience questions. The Q&A is typically pretty valuable, so plan to stick around.
Q: What If I Don’t Have InDesign CS4?
A: This class is taught with InDesign CS4 on the Macintosh. However most of the learning applies to earlier versions of InDesign, as well as PC users.
Q: How Many People Can Attend Each Webinar?
A: Our Webinar tool, GoToWebinar, has a limit of 1,000 attendees per class. Based on the popularity of our free Photoshop training, we expect to reach that limit on most classes.
Q: Can I Download Recorded Copies of Classes?
A: We record a high-resolution copy of each class, and we plan to make recorded copies available for a slight fee.
Q: Can I Record Copies of the Class Myself?
A: Sure. Once you’ve logged on as an attendee, you are free to record a class using any number of screen recording tools. While we don’t mind you recoding these classes for your own use, we do ask that you don’t post those recordings on the Internet, or share them with others.
Q: How Can This Be Free?
A: We are trying to make a big splash, and we love working with a large audience. Help us spread the word. If we continue to attract a full audience, we’ll be able to keep offering these types of free courses for InDesign, Illustrator, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, and other Adobe products.
Q: Can I Post an Invitation on my Blog?
A: Yes. Please help spread the word. We need as many people as possible enrolled to make this free class format viable for us. You can post a link to the following URL, which we will keep updated as details change:
http://creativetechs.com/freeindesigncourse
As a thank-you, we’ll be posting a regular list of the top blogs and websites where people found out about this unique free Photoshop class.
Popularity: 23% [?]
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:23 am
I really wish that I could participate in this, but it’s during work hours and I can’t take the time off of work to participate. Any chance anyone might offer something like this during non-business hours? :/
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:51 am
ditto what sarakate said
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:29 am
I’ve been enjoying the Photoshop series and I’m looking forward to the InDesign series!
PS-If you’re not careful, you reflection of the InDesign logo might end up on photoshopdisasters.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:40 am
You say you need at last 1,000 people to run this class, but then in another place you say that your webinar software has a limit of 1,000. Which is it? Or are you looking for *exactly* 1,000 people??
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:44 am
p.s. You may want to change your week 2 and 3 dates from Mar. (clearly a typo) to May.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:03 am
Most of us are taking these classes as part of our work, so it makes more sense to offer it during working hours. Also, there is a live audience who is there during work hours as well. Sorry you can’t participate.
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I’ve been taking the PS webinars and love them! This has been a great PS review and continued learning process. Jason is a great instructor–not too slow, not too fast, easy to follow and understand, and very thorough. Date and time has been very convenient. Can’t wait for the ID webinars since I’ve only recently converted from being a die-hard QuarkXPress user. I hope you will include instruction on multi-page catalog/book documents. Would also be very interested in webinars on Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Flash. Thanks!
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:21 am
@somerset – Thanks. The reflection has been fixed! And I just corrected the typo in the dates. Want a full time proofreading gig?
@chrisophia – Our current webinar software has a limit of 1,000 participants. Since we know from experience that typically 30% of the people who sign up for a free event like this don’t show, we need at least 1,000 signed up, and ideally more.
@Julie – We’re working on a Flash course. I have a 90-minute Flash workshop confirmed for the week of May 6th. We’ll promote that shortly. Keep an eye on the blog.
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Looking forward to this class. The photoshop webinar has been extremely informative. Thanks!
April 5th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
The photoshop class has offered the best instruction I’ve ever had. I’m finally learning Photoshop, and I really am glad they will teach InDesign next!
April 5th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Agree with the drop-out rate. I signed up for the Photoshop course and then realised it was at 2am on a Friday morning here in Hong Kong! I wish it was in work time because I’d have a 100% attendance rate!
April 6th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Im so sad you fixed the graphic, it was another reminder that Jason is NOT a image editting cyborg
LOL
April 6th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Importing and exporting data from InDesign to XML.
Object styles.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I am loving the photoshop serie and I’m definitely looking forward to InDesign since I’ve always wanted to learn InDesign and only got to learn a bit about it. I wish There’s Dreamweaver and Illustrator coming up! Thanks a BUNCH guys
This is truly amazingly helpful!
April 6th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
One thing I do wanna point out tho is that some of my friends are very interested in attending this tutorial series but due to the work hours they just can’t join us at work at 11am!
April 6th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I have thoroughly loved taking the Photoshop class! InDesign will be great too! I can’t wait! I’ve already talked a co-worker into joining the online course as well.
For those who are having trouble due to the time these courses are being offered, I’d still encourage you to sign up so you’ll receive the discounted offer for the downloadable version of the courses, Q&A and handouts. I’ve been actually taking the on-site classes in Seattle of Photoshop and realized this week that I definitely want access to all of the course videos and handouts later on for review — the instruction is AWESOME and you’ll want to try the stuff out later on. Just so you know, the Photoshop course is being offered for $50 for all 10 courses plus an extra course they offered last Tuesday. That’s a screaming deal for top-notch material!
Thanks CreativeTechs!
April 6th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
I’d love to see the Indesign series but 4am (Sydney time) is a terrible time!
April 6th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Coming up with a schedule that works across the planet is a challenge. Ideally, if this business model continues to hold for us, we’ll be scheduling future courses in a wide variety of time slots.
I agree with Christi M’s suggestion. If you are interested in this 10-Week InDesign Course, sign up even if you don’t think you can make the scheduled times. We’re playing with some possibilities for scheduling repeats for different time zones. Those repeats wouldn’t be live, but it would allow people to access the free classes from other areas. (It is also always great to purchase the downloads and access the classes whenever you like)
April 7th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
This quite honestly is the answer to our prayers. We are primarily publication designers and have been trying to make the switch from Quark without much success. All of the seminars that I’ve looked into for our company are pricey and few and far between. Hoping you might cover some publication/magazine-related material in the course. Timing works out perfectly for us on the East coast. Can’t wait to get started!! I’m looking forward to finally understanding why everyone seems to prefer ID over Quark, since I haven’t been able to figure that out quite yet!
April 8th, 2009 at 8:39 am
This is perfect timing for me in the UK! 7PM gives me time to get back from work, get some dinner and sit down to watch. Thank you so much CreativeTechs!
April 8th, 2009 at 9:31 am
I’d love to attend, but it’s during work hours. I’m signing up anyway (thanks Christi M!) so I can receive the discount on the downloadable version. Can’t wait!
April 8th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Hi there.
Just signing up for the indesign course. Thanks so much for offering it.
Lillian
April 13th, 2009 at 1:36 am
Hi,
My self Lalit Asrani from India delhi
I want to start Indesign Course online,
thanx
April 13th, 2009 at 6:09 am
Looking forward to it – the Photoshop class has been really good and useful so far.
April 13th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Wish I could, but I can’t since this is taking place during business hours
April 13th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I’m signed up to take your InDesign classes and I really need to learn this program! One thing I would definitely request is that the series actually speak to the needs of a beginner just learning InDesign and not assuming any experience whatsoever with it. If you could please slow it down a little, particularly in the beginning classes when you’re covering the basics it would be helpful. I know the instructors are super knowledgable and informative, but it would be beneficial if you could assume at least some of your audience knows nothing! That would make it a little easier to start. If that’s not possible, maybe put a little more info in the pdf handout?
April 17th, 2009 at 8:23 am
We just purchased In-Design and are very interested in taking your class, but we are on Windows, not a Mac. Does the knowledge still apply?
April 17th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Liz, yes Windows users will get a lot out of this class. This class is taught with InDesign CS4 on the Macintosh. However most of the learning applies to earlier versions of InDesign, as well as PC users.
April 20th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Sign up for the class even if you cannot get off work to watch it. Then buy the downloadable series to watch later. I bought the photoshop course and it is very helpful to go back and rewatch the techniques and pause the recording while I try it out myself in photoshop.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Guys, Thanks so much for all of your hard work
I’m currently taking your PS webinars and they’re phenominal! Jason is an excellent instructor and Craig is equally good at organizing and running the class!
I’ve learned so much already – can’t wait to take the In-Design course as well.
Thanks to everyone at Creative Techs for all of the hard work you do to make these classes available to us!
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:12 am
We’re all looking forward to the InDesign class here. We have some Quark users making the switch and have been looking for this sort of resource for some time. If you could pay special attention to features that are time savers in Indy over Q that would be great.
Can’t wait to see the list of class topics. Will you mention InCopy?
April 25th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Great to see a free training series on InDesign. Thanx. I used the program 5 years ago and QuarkXpress a year prior to that but I never owned them until now. I need a quick brush up on the new features and get re-acquainted. Your schedule works out great for me,too.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:25 am
I really love the Photoshop series, so am looking forward to the InDesign as well. Do you have a breakdown of what you’ll be covering in each seminar yet?
Thanks so much for doing this! It’s a big help in these bleak financial times. I purchased the PS series for $50 so I can review here at home on my own time as well. It’s so much less expensive than traveling to a seminar out-of-town AND it’s FAR BETTER than others I have paid quite a lot of money to attend.
April 27th, 2009 at 10:51 am
let me know whem you start learning
April 29th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I am very, very new to InDesign and am trying to teach myself how to use it. My first project is to format a 34 chapter book. My question has to do with pages. Even though I give the number of pages when I set up a document for each chapter, I get many more pages than I need on the Page Panel. I have tried several things, but can’t get the extra pages to delete. What should I do?
April 29th, 2009 at 11:06 am
I will be in Europe for two weeks in June. I have a laptop, will I be able to attend the class while on this trip?
April 29th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Hi,
I tried to enroll, but the link for the enrollment gave me an error message. Is it set up yet?
peggi
April 30th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I’d like to know how to include different sizes of multiple master pages. Thanks.
April 30th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Another topic for the InDesign class:
How do we make impositions that are still editable (vs. making an imposed PDF)?
April 30th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
In the Colour session, will you be discussing preparing documents for printing? Even better, can you discuss Black and how to deal with it?
…it’d be a life-saver!
May 1st, 2009 at 8:23 am
hey.
well this has been by far the best concept i’ve come across on the internet! since i live in tanzania, graphic design is not a very big thing so there are very few places that offer good classes on anything adobe. i’m enrolled for the Indesign course and I’m hoping you’ll e-mail the details on how the whole thing works exactly because i’m a little unfirmiliar with the process of having online sessions…
thankyou!
May 6th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
This is my first time participating in a CreativeTech course. I am looking forward to giving your InDesign CS4 course a go. Thank you for the invitation!
May 7th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I’m ready to start
May 9th, 2009 at 1:47 am
I have been working with photoshop quite regularly. I also had some introduction to Page Maker. But the InDesign has always been a bit strange. Right now I do a lot of things in Microsoft Publisher, which a lot of friends look down upon but I find it easy to work with and enough for my editorial needs. I am enrolling to see if somebody will be able to convince me of the advantages of InDesign. Knock my socks off!…
May 11th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Please, Please offer these as a recording at a later date…I was going to be able to make this and then things changed at work…I was so very stoked about being able to be a part of it! Pretty Please with a Cherry on Top!
May 14th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Nuts. I really need to learn InDesign for work but and although I’m registered, I missed getting into the class this morning (it was already full). Now what? Am I out of luck on that class or will it be posted online? Will there be a cost?
Adding an early reminder to my calendar for the other classes…
May 14th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I missed CS3, going direct from CS2 to CS4, so this class is a great jumpstart for me. As usual, Adobe seems to be listening more to its engineers and marketing department than end users, but Jason’s presentation is a great decoder ring.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Hey I happen to missed the first class, is there anything I can do to view it again (I really need grounding in this indesign). I am registered.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Ditto to what Paul said.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Will you be running a similar course for Dreamweaver? I’m following your blog, so if you post it on there, I will know.
May 28th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Arati -
We are planning to do a Dreamweaver Course. It’s just going to take a while. If you’re following the blog you’ll be one of the first people to hear when we announce it.
If you have any further questions don’t hesitate to write me at help@creativetechs.com. I’m not Craig but I can shout questions at him from across the room
May 28th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Thanks, David – look forward to it. Hope it will be September onwards – am moving countries in August and may not be able to attend online.
Cheers
June 1st, 2009 at 3:33 am
I get the Information Late. Am I still have the chace to continue ?
I am in Toronto Canada what is exact time for me ?
Zeeshan
June 1st, 2009 at 7:05 am
Zeeshan -
If you’re asking if you can still attend the webinar, the answer is yes. We welcome new attendees this week, next week, anytime until the last class.
There’s a link in the section What Time Do Classes Start that you can check to find the start time in your part of the world.
Feel free to send questions directly to me at help@creativetechs.com
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:35 am
When will the series be available for purchase and for how much? I REALLY need this, but work a few jobs, so need flexibility in viewing.
Thank you!
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:35 am
When will the series be available for purchase and for how much? I REALLY need this, but work a few jobs, so need flexibility in viewing.
Thank you!
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:38 am
Ditto on that.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:54 am
Kathryn / Tim -
The series is available for purchase now at $50. As with our Photoshop Course we will increase the price as we get closer to the end of the Course.
You can purchase the series here.
Feel free to send questions directly to me at help@creativetechs.com
June 12th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Ted Baker sent me here. Looks like I’ve missed the first five classes but I’d like to attend the remaining sessions. Ted’s been tutoring me on text wrap. Any chance you’ll offer the series again?
June 12th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Michael -
We’d love to have you join us for the rest of the series. This course has been very popular so it’s pretty much guaranteed that we will do another InDesign Course soon.
Feel free to send questions directly to me at help@creativetechs.com
July 13th, 2009 at 4:03 am
Any new dates for this course I missed?
July 13th, 2009 at 7:41 am
John -
There are no new dates for this course. At least not yet. When we schedule another course we’ll post the dates in our spiffy new class calendar.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I missed the start of this course and the photoshop one – I see mention of being able to download the sessions for a fee but no where to do that. Where can I download previous photoshop and indesign sessions and how much is it? Thanks!
July 14th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Kaycee -
You can purchase our downloads here.
Please send any other questions to training@creativetechs.com.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Guys
do u have a link to the downloadable class files 4 the Flash course?
Thanks!
July 14th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Kelly -
The downloads are available to people who have prepurchased the Flash Course. You can do that here.
Please send any other questions to training@creativetechs.com.
July 20th, 2009 at 7:33 am
I purchased the 10-week download of the InDesign course that just finished up. I’m only able to access the first five weeks of podcasts through my download link. Am I doing something wrong?
July 20th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Christina -
You’re not doing anything wrong. We’ve been swamped the last few weeks and have fallen behind. We’ll try to get that taken care of later this week.
Please send any other questions to training@creativetechs.com.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
I am trying to sign up for your free 10-week InDesign course, but keep getting forwarded to a bad page (something about a “chimp.”)
Anyway, I would like to sign up for the course if it’s still available, please. Thank you.
March 8th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
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April 6th, 2010 at 6:56 am
good article, i will add my feeds.
April 21st, 2010 at 6:49 am
I’m having the same trouble that Kathy Fitzgerald had in January. I click on the link to sign up and am taken to a bad chimp page… I most definitely want to take this class – please help?
Thank you.
April 21st, 2010 at 6:51 am
aha – after a closer look I see that this was posted in 2009 – perhaps I should pay closer attention in the future
I just got so excited!
April 21st, 2010 at 10:14 am
Jennifer -
We appreciate the excitement. Our current website with our latest class listings can be found here – http://creativelive.com
Come join us!
June 2nd, 2010 at 1:27 am
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June 20th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
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August 13th, 2010 at 9:04 am
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September 6th, 2010 at 6:05 am
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September 11th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
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September 12th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Hey… It looks like there’s a problem with the with the layout of the page. For some reason the text block is getting mixed with the edge. I don’t know if it’s just me or are others reporting the same thing? Just wanted to let you know in case you’ve been in the past couple of days. Thanks! Charity Soshnik
September 15th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
It is nice to stumble across something worth looking at. Seems like everyone is starting a blog and throwing up whatever pops into their mind. Most of the time it does not make good sense. I am pleased to see that is not the case here.
September 16th, 2010 at 3:01 am
Will you be offering this again? I just found you!
September 16th, 2010 at 6:22 am
Laura -
We’re considering doing a class on InDesign CS5 this fall. If you’d like to purchase our recording of this InDesign class please email training@creativelive.com and I can help you out.
September 26th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Create a sense of gratitude for what you have, for what is working, for what is wonderful and sweet in your life. A morning or evening gratitude list, written each day, can do wonders for helping you feel grateful.
October 9th, 2010 at 2:34 am
Any free course in the near future?
October 9th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
As a matter of fact, we’ve got a number of free courses either just starting or about to begin. Please go to our new website http://creativelive.com to see what we have available.