Goals - Fall 2009

A 16th-century German woodcut engraving showing typesetters in the background and press operators in the foreground. The original set of images shows eight aspects of the nascent printing trade.

Students with rudimentary skills in desktop publishing will learn to manage technical document projects and master a number of digital prepress techniques necessary for working with outside print bureaus. The course builds on the document design lessons of previous classes, giving students more practical experience in dealing with the full range of technical and management issues involved in print production projects.

Students will learn to design a variety of technical documents according to digital prepress standards; manage long-term publication projects; and estimate, schedule, and track document projects through the entire publication process.

Texts

• Felici, James. The Complete Manual of Typography. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2003.
• Kenly, Eric and Mark Beach. Getting it Printed: How to Work with Printers and Graphic Imaging Services to Assure Quality, Stay on Schedule, and Control Costs. 4th ed. Cincinnati: How Design Books, 2004.
• Kimball, Miles A., and Anne R. Hawkins. Document Design: A Guide for Technical Communicators. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2008. Including companion website
• Iowa State now has a campus site license for Lynda.com, a collection of video tutorials for numerous software titles, including InDesign CS4 and other apps in the Adobe CS4 suite. At present, access to Lynda.com is limited to on-campus use only, though a solution for off-campus access is coming soon. Weekly assignments will include video tutorials, so look for them in the course calendar.

Optional

Video tutorials are great, but some learners prefer to have a book in front of them to flip through for a quick overview and for scannable, concentrated study. For those students, I would recommend any of the following optional books:

• Cohen, Sandee. InDesign CS4 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide. Berkeley, CA: PeachPit, 2008.
• McClellan, Deke, and David Futato. Adobe InDesign CS4 One on One. Sebastopol, CA: Deke Press/O'Reilly, 2008.

Policies

Please review all course policies, but for those in a hurry, the rules can be distilled to this one sentence: "Show up, do your work, help others." If you have any questions after reading the fine print, please let me know.