Indesign 1.0/1.5 for Macintosh and Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide

This is the best yet book in this series. It is arranged logically and begins at the beginning in simple English and takes one through the program step by step, each step building on the one before it and adding to your proficiency level. I have sat with this book and followed it exactly and I think that it has been excellent in getting me started. Now I actually know enough to ask questions and look things up in the index! It truly is an easily understood book and very comprehensive and if you have any prior experience with Quark or Pagemaker, it will be a breeze to get up and running with InDesign. This book is an excellent value and the one you should really buy first. I doubt you'll need any of the others after reading this one.

This is my favorite book in the "Quick Start" series; as a novice typesetter and Adobe products users, I have them all. This is written in plain, everyday English, not tech-talk and begins at the beginning of the layout process with getting your first page formatted with margins and other variables. It also includes a quick start for Pagemaker and Quark users who might be more familiar with page layout programs. Numerous illustrations on each page help one figure out, among other things, what the buttons look like and what a baseline guide is. While InDesign borrows much from Pagemaker, Photoshop and Illustrator, it combines them into one program so one doesn't have to switch from one program to another to perform a task. This is my choice for InDesign books, although as the program matures, many others will surely follow. If you buy only one book about InDesign, buy this one. Aside from its' usefulness, it is an outstanding value, too!

Ms. Cohen's Quickstart Guide to InDesign was perfect for me to get a, er ... quick start in learning this sophisticated design tool. I write this as someone who's had lots of experience with other computer tools, but who's new to page layout; although I expect it'd be equally helpful to anyone who'd dare to approach anything as complex as a desktop page layout program.The book's strengths, for me, are that it stays to the essentials (while including all of the essentials), is clearly and abundantly illustrated with screen shots, and focuses on a how-to approach with concise and consistently clear explantaions throughout. A perfect combination for me was to use this book to get started ... quickly ... and to refer to the Adobe manual and on-line help to research specific features in more depth. Another of my favorite features is Ms. Cohen's informative, engaging and often amusing commentary in the chapter intros and sidebars. These lend a personal and welcoming touch to her deft and experienced treatment of her information-dense topic, and remind us that words can be fun, too.