Three Great Resources to Learn More About Design Software

At Blue Star Design, we use Adobe Creative Cloud applications to create everything from app avatars and email graphics to ads, brochures, and trade show booths. Click here to see our portfolio. 

Some of our favorite design applications include InDesign (for page layout), Photoshop (for photo editing and manipulation, Illustrator (for vector art drawing), and Acrobat (for creating PDFs and interactive tools). These applications help us use our creativity to the maximum. 

While there are many great online resources to learn about design and the Adobe Creative Cloud, there are definitely some that are better than others. Here are three of our favorites:

Adobe

In addition to being the home for purchasing and downloading the Adobe Creative Cloud applications, Adobe.com offers tutorials and a link to the Adobe Forums—a community of staff and real world experts to help answer your questions. Adobe even offers workshops each year that are targeted towards designers working to better their Adobe expertise. The largest Creativity Conference of the year is Adobe MAX, being held this year in Las Vegas from October 16-20^th. In the meantime, these resources are helpful tools to answer questions and give basic skills: 

• Adobe InDesign Tutorials
• Adobe Photoshop Tutorials
• Adobe Illustrator Tutorials

InDesign Secrets:

InDesign Secrets is a website chock full of countless tips, tricks, news and more. Thanks to the expertise of Anne-Marie Concepcion and David Blatner you can learn about all things InDesign. Here’s a list of steps you can take:

• Sign up for the email tip of the week (enter your email address in the blue box on the home page)
• Subscribe to InDesign Magazine
• Listen to the InDesign Secrets podcast. The latest (February 28, 2017) episode talks about their upcoming conferences
• Attend one of their Creative Pro Week conferences, May 22-26^th, in Atlanta:
  • The InDesign Conference
  • PepCon: The Print + ePublishing Conference
  • PsAi: The Photoshop and Illustrator Conference for Designers

Lynda.com:

Lynda.com is one of the best online learning resources for all things digital and design. In addition to step-by-step video tutorials on using Adobe Creative Cloud applications, you can watch in-depth videos about design (over 600 courses), photography (over 1700 courses) and much more. When you browse the Lynda tutorials, you’re bound to come across one or two that interest you. Here are some particularly intriguing topics:

• Foundations of Graphic Design History: The Bauhaus Movement
• Foundations of Calligraphy
• Shooting a Photo Essay: Documenting an Event
• Color for Design and Art

With their free trial, you can watch as many videos as you want for 10 days. After that you have to pay; however, considering their extensive collection of tutorials, it is definitely worth the price.

Even though it might seem like a daunting task, learning to work with design software is rewarding. Not only will you learn a new skill to help improve your performance, but you’ll also be able to better analyze your design choices and make small changes that create a big difference.