There’s a lot to love about InDesign CS4 and given the recent surge in training gigs, we’re sensing some increased adoption and desire to harness some of its very powerful features. While much of the base is intrigued with print specific, long doc intensive features, we’re also seeing InDesign become more of a “hub” or layout engine for multiple workflows than ever before.

We approach training the same way we approach consulting. Since most of our clients enter our services with, “they don’t know what they don’t know,” it’s important to act as advisers and suggest features that will improve process. We want production to be so efficient you have more time to be creative (whatever that might be … strategy, design, business planning) and less time spent on “fixing” what someone in the workflow “broke” in the first place.

Bread and Butter features such as:

• import options
• paragraph and character styles (this assumes you already understand the individual components, many still do not)
• object styles
• lists

Let alone more advanced features including:

• variable data
• conditional text
• anchored objects
• scripting
• xml

But there’s so much more you can do: begin a concept and export to Flash, layout a concept and create an interactive PDF, compose a series of pages and turn it into a presentation, take a newsletter and use crossmedia export to pair your html content with CSS and further develop in Dreamweaver…

As our site evolves we’ll spend time on these individual topics, offer up video tutorials or point you to resources you’ll find valuable. In the meantime, feel free to let us know what features you have found to be invaluable or features you’d like to learn more about…