Where to Find InDesign Classes

With so many different schools offering InDesign classes nowadays, it can be confusing to figure out which ones are worth your time and money. First, you’ll need to understand the different types of InDesign education providers and their pros and cons, and from there, you’ll have an easier time sifting through the mass of options out there to find your perfect fit. In addition to explaining the differences between program types, this article will also offer a few resources for discovering and comparing new classes. 

Noble Desktop and Other Vocational Training Schools

When aided by Noble Desktop’s free classes near me tool, it’s easy to find and compare local InDesign classes offered by vocational schools. Oriented toward career development, certificate and bootcamp classes are usually comprehensive in nature, aiming to provide you with all the skills you need to secure a good job after graduating. This type of program might be a good match for you if you’re keen to start your career (or pivot to a new one) quickly and are more interested in practical skills than creative theory and history. 

To help you launch your career faster, certificate courses typically compress a lot of information into an accelerated curriculum, and this can leave you feeling more confident about some skills (the ones you’ve practiced most) than others. In addition, these programs focus little on creative design theory and art history, preferring instead to help you develop technical skills you can use right away. 

Design Schools and Universities

If you’re a highly artistic designer who wants to explore the subtleties of artistic theory with practical training from experts, university design programs aren’t a bad way to go. After being accepted to one of these highly selective schools, you can earn a BA or MFA in a wide range of InDesign fields, including graphic design, editing and publishing, user interface (UI) design, and user experience (UX) design. If you choose to apply for an even more competitive MFA program, you’ll likely be expected to have an undergraduate degree already.

When it comes to university design programs, you can expect to commit a hefty sum of time and money. While these programs are more expensive than any other form of InDesign training, they make up for this by being significantly more comprehensive, offering hundreds more hours of experience than your average bootcamp. To provide this thorough education, design degrees are a multi-year undertaking. As a university student, you can attend school full-time or part-time, but bear in mind that if you want to take advantage of financial aid, you may need to maintain full-time attendance. 

On-demand Education Platforms

With the Internet making it easy to share information, online training is now one of the most popular ways to learn new skills. All around the globe, learners are exploring InDesign through platforms like Udemy, Masterclass, Skillshare, and Coursera which offer pre-recorded tutorials and other self-study resources on topics as disparate as publishing with InDesign and styling an Instagram grid. The lack of scheduled meetings in these courses makes them highly flexible and an ideal option for self-motivated students with hectic schedules.

However, on-demand education isn’t a perfect system, and may not work well for everyone. In addition to being challenging for procrastinators, on-demand classes lack the experiential component that enables students to acquire skills quickly in other class formats. If all you have to learn from is a video—no hands-on practice assignment and no instructor to ask for help—it becomes much harder to figure out what you’re doing in InDesign and work out kinks as you design. 

Apprenticeships

Although apprenticeships aren’t as common as they once were, you can still become an apprentice to an expert in your area of interest and learn InDesign in the process. Among the experts who may take you on as a student include Designers, Graphic Designers, UX Designers, UI Designers, Web Designers, and Editors. Because every apprenticeship is headed by a different expert and receives funding from distinct sources, the pay, expectations, and accessibility can differ significantly, making it important to take your time when assessing your options. 

Today, apprenticeships are generally viewed as a subset of paid internships and offer entry-level job experience. For this reason, you’ll likely need to gain prerequisite design skills (unique to each apprenticeship) before you can qualify for a position. In fact, apprenticeships are a great follow-up to certificate training, as they can further your experience in the early stages of your career.

Free Education Resources

On YouTube, blogs, and other free platforms, InDesign users have plenty of tips to offer on layout design, and there are just as many others commenting on the history and theory of design. This wealth of resources means that when you have a specific question (such as how to add a table of contents to a book or magazine spread), you can easily search and find an answer to your query. If you’re new to InDesign and not sure where to start, however, the number of free InDesign resources can feel overwhelming. Not knowing what’s what can even result in you choosing a low-quality tutorial and ending up with bad design habits picked up from another novice on the Internet. For this reason, you may want to stick with free seminars from InDesign authorities like Adobe and Noble Desktop when you’re just starting. 

As another form of on-demand class, free InDesign resources come with all the same pitfalls as a paid on-demand class minus the fee. Free resources also come with an additional disadvantage in that unlike on-demand classes, the curriculum isn’t carefully curated by an instructor, leaving you to devise a curriculum of your own making. 

Learn InDesign at Noble Desktop

If you’re on the hunt for the perfect InDesign class, Noble Desktop offers top-rated InDesign classes at multiple levels. Because they provide hands-on classes in NYC and live online, you don’t even need to leave home to reach your goals. If you’re looking to explore InDesign as a hobby, the InDesign in a Day class offers a low-stakes introduction to the software. Contrastingly, you can ace all of InDesign’s functions by participating in the immersive Adobe InDesign Bootcamp. This longer course offers project-based training to help you master the InDesign skills needed to create any type of layout. 

For even more comprehensive training suitable for career preparation, Noble Desktop also has a selection of career training programs that cover InDesign as one among numerous design skills. In the hit Graphic Design Certificate, you’ll tackle InDesign with Illustrator, Photoshop, and applied design theory as you complete hands-on team projects built to mimic a real professional environment. Even as you develop technical skills, you’ll also grow soft skills in team communication, gain real experience, and refine a job portfolio. To help you through the challenges that come with learning and launching your career, you’ll also have the support of a one-on-one mentor and Noble Desktop’s career support team.