The 2011 Advertising Design Championship contestants will create advertisements using Adobe InDesign CS5. If you do not have a copy of this software, click here for a free 30 day demo. Many of them come with standard templates you can modify. In the design profession we do not use templates but actually design the ad from scratch. One software package used in particular is Adobe InDesign CS5. InDesign is one of the industries standard software package developed to create stunting and powerful ad designs you see today in magazines. Many student competitors may already have experience using this computer program of other Adobe products such as Acrobat, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash or AfterEffects.

InDesign CS5 is conceptually a simple program to use. We recommend checking out some easy to use tutorial books on online tools to show how to use this program successfully. Familiarize yourself with how to create a textbox, add new colors, place a photograph or graphics in your layout and most importantly how to save it and export as a PDF. Below is a list of recommended sources to assist you in learning InDesign.

RECOMMENDED SOURCES:

Real World Adobe InDesign
by Olav Martin Kvern and David Blatner