Hitting the Books . . . and Videos

Talk about a crazy, crazy month. Isn’t December always that way? In the middle of all the Christmas craze, I’ve been watching InDesign videos on Lynda.com so that I can gain more than a working knowledge of the program. Much to my surprise, I retained more than I realized when I started working on a self-initiated book design project yesterday afternoon. It took me half the time than it normally did to format and design the first section of the book, thanks to this training.

I’ve taken other Lynda.com training courses and have to say that I enjoyed most of them. The course for Excel 2003 was excruciatingly dry, as was the 2002 version of a typography principles course. My favorite teachers are David Blatner, who teaches InDesign, and Deke McClelland, who teaches Illustrator and Photoshop. Their voices are lively and engaging, which is vital in keeping my attention.

Lynda.com offers a subscription-based service that is quite reasonable. $25 per month gives you access to every video on their site. However, you’ll have to upgrade to the premium subscription if you expect to download the exercise files. One feature I really like is the transcript. If I’m at a place where I can’t watch the videos, I can read the narrative. The big disadvantage to that is that I can’t see what the instructor is talking about.

Neither can I download the transcript or the videos for offline viewing. If there is one feature that I would love to have it would be that, to download the videos to my computer so that I can watch them offline.

While these videos are very good, I’m not limiting myself to just this one resource. I’ve found others that look very promising, such as Aquent’s Digital Classroom series and Shangara Singh’s Exam Aids. I have a very clear goal in mind for 2010; getting Adobe Certification so that I may qualify for a career change in the design field.

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