The InDesign Field Guide

The InDesign Field Guide is a one-of-a-kind online course that teaches you how to use Adobe InDesign like a professional, focusing on real-world layouts for your business such as PDFs, ebooks, planners and marketing materials. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by a complex interface and dozens of tools you never touch, this program walks you through exactly what you need to know to design clean, on-brand documents that look like they came from a professional studio.

Created by designer and educator Kelsey Baldwin of Paper + Oats, The InDesign Field Guide has helped hundreds of students move from “avoiding InDesign” to using it confidently in their everyday work. Through a structured, self-paced curriculum broken into five clear sections—Logistics, Pages, Typesetting, Objects and Production—you learn how to build documents from scratch, manage pages and styles, and prepare polished files for print or digital use without guesswork.

The course is designed with creative business owners and non-designers in mind: lessons are practical, beginner-friendly and focused on efficiency. You learn industry-standard habits and workflows that save time on every project, so you can spend less time fighting your software and more time sharing your ideas and serving your clients.

What is The InDesign Field Guide course?

The InDesign Field Guide is a self-paced, online e-course that teaches you the essentials of Adobe InDesign from the ground up, using a workflow tested in real publishing and client projects. Rather than acting as a random collection of tutorials, it delivers a complete path: from opening the program for the first time to exporting press-ready PDFs and digital assets you can confidently send to printers, clients or online platforms.

Inside the course, the content is organised into five main “chunks” that mirror the natural life cycle of a project: Logistics, Pages, Typesetting, Objects and Production. Each chunk focuses on a specific stage of your layout process so you always know what to work on next. The goal is to give you the skills and structure to use InDesign like a pro without needing a full design degree or agency experience.

What will you learn in The InDesign Field Guide?

• How to navigate the InDesign interface with confidence, set up your workspace and understand the key panels and tools you will actually use.
• How to set up new documents correctly from the start, including page size, margins, columns, bleed and other logistics for print and digital projects.
• How to organise multi-page documents using the Pages panel, master pages and automatic page numbering so that long documents stay consistent and easy to update.
• Typesetting best practices for characters and paragraphs, including line spacing, alignment, hyphenation and hierarchy, so your text is clean and readable.
• How to use paragraph and character styles to speed up your workflow and make global text changes in just a few clicks.
• How to add and manage footnotes and endnotes, and how to work with OpenType features to get more out of your chosen typefaces.
• How to work with shapes, colours and object styles to build layouts that feel cohesive and on brand.
• How to place and link external files (such as photos, graphics and logos), keep them organised and update them without breaking your document.
• How to use layout tools, grids and tables to structure information-heavy pages like price lists, menus, planners or workbooks.
• How to prepare your final files for print or digital use, including preflight checks, packaging files for a printer and exporting PDFs for web or email delivery.
• How to apply the same workflow to different project types—ebooks, magazines, worksheets, opt-in freebies, planners, media kits and more—so InDesign becomes a flexible tool in your business.

Who is The InDesign Field Guide for?

The InDesign Field Guide is ideal for creatives and business owners who want to design professional layouts without hiring a full-time designer. It is a strong fit for graphic designers expanding into layout work, online business owners, course creators, bloggers, authors, virtual assistants and marketers who need to produce polished PDFs and documents regularly.

The course is also a great match if you have used Photoshop or Illustrator for documents that would be better built in InDesign, or if you have opened InDesign before but quickly closed it because it felt too complicated. Whether you work in a creative studio or run a solo online business, this program helps you add professional InDesign skills to your toolkit.

How does The InDesign Field Guide course work?

The InDesign Field Guide is delivered as an online, self-paced course with recorded lessons, supporting materials and downloadable resources. After enrolling, you access the content through a dedicated student login area, where the lessons are organised into the five main sections mentioned earlier, plus bonuses that deepen your skills in specific areas.

Each core lesson focuses on a single part of the InDesign workflow and is designed to be followed step by step. You watch a concise video or series of videos, then apply what you have learned to your own practice file or real project. The structure allows you to move at your own speed: you can binge-watch an entire section in an afternoon or work through one lesson at a time as you build your next workbook, ebook or client project.

Key benefits of The InDesign Field Guide

One of the main benefits of The InDesign Field Guide is that it removes the overwhelm of learning a professional layout program. Instead of trying to figure out every tool, you are guided straight to the features that matter most for real business projects, so you can start designing usable materials quickly.

Another important benefit is the focus on clean, efficient workflow. The course shows you how to structure documents, use styles and manage links properly, which pays off every time you need to update text, swap images or reuse layouts. This means less time redoing work and more time creating new products, content and services.

Finally, The InDesign Field Guide gives you the confidence to say yes to more complex design projects—like multi-page ebooks or magazines—because you understand how to control InDesign instead of letting it control you. That new skill set can directly support your business growth, whether through better-looking marketing materials or new digital products you can sell.

Prerequisites and recommended profile

This course is designed for beginners and intermediate users of Adobe InDesign. You do not need previous formal design training, but you should be comfortable using your computer, installing software and working with files and folders.

To follow the lessons, you will need access to Adobe InDesign (as part of Adobe Creative Cloud or a compatible version) installed on your computer. Because this is an independent training, The InDesign Field Guide has no official affiliation with Adobe Systems Incorporated, and all examples are provided for educational purposes only.

About the creator and Paper + Oats

The InDesign Field Guide was created by designer and author Kelsey Baldwin, the one-woman studio behind Paper + Oats. She specialises in Adobe InDesign, book design and educational resources for creatives, helping them use design software to grow their businesses and communicate their ideas.

Through Paper + Oats, Kelsey has developed online classes, guides and workshops on layout design, marketing and productivity, as well as offering custom book design services and sharing content about creativity and single motherhood. The InDesign Field Guide is her flagship InDesign course, distilled from years of client work and teaching experience.

Why buy from our online course platform?

Centralize your digital purchases in a single account, keep your history, and access them whenever you want to watch online or download. Plus, you’ll always find courses on our platform at affordable prices.

When you get The InDesign Field Guide through our platform, you keep all the training videos, downloads and bonuses together in one organised library. That makes it easy to revisit specific lessons on pages, typesetting, objects or production whenever you start a new project or want to refine an existing template.

Course content

• Logistics: introduction to InDesign, setting up your workspace and preferences, understanding panels and tools, and creating new documents correctly for print or digital use.
• Pages: organising multi-page projects, using the Pages panel, creating and applying master pages, and setting up automatic page numbering for long documents.
• Typesetting: character and paragraph formatting best practices, building and managing paragraph and character styles, adding footnotes and endnotes, and using OpenType features to elevate your typography.
• Objects: working with shapes, lines and colour; placing and linking external images and graphics; using alignment tools, grids and tables to build balanced layouts.
• Production: preflighting documents, packaging files for print providers, exporting print-ready PDFs and creating optimised PDFs for digital delivery and email opt-ins.
• Bonuses and extras: reference cheatsheets, extra tutorials, project planners and other supporting resources that help you put your new InDesign skills into practice on real-world projects.

Bring your ideas to life in Adobe InDesign and start creating polished, professional layouts for your business with The InDesign Field Guide.

Downloadable Course Content