This is one of those careers that allows you to either work from home and have a paid lifestyle or work from an office being paid by someone else.

You don’t need to be artistically talented to do graphic design and desktop publishing. However, you do need an understanding of the elements and principles of design so you can produce quality work that people will appreciate.

In the comfort of your own home you will learn how to design brochures, video covers, CD cases, posters, and a whole range of artwork. This course is specifically designed for the home learner, so it takes you step-by-step through each project. And you will have your work reviewed by a professional designer every step of the way.

This is a fantastic course if you have little or no design experience and want to learn these skills from scratch, right up to the point of being a professional and setting up your own graphic design and desktop publishing business. And the course uses the acclaimed Adobe Indesign software so you know you are learning with the best.

InDesign is now the most used magazine design software worldwide. Harpers Bazaar is produced using it. And Australian Consolidated Press (ACP), Fairfax and other publishing and printing companies in Australia have moved over to it.

ACP (publisher of Australian Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Day, Cleo, Cosmopolitan, Wheels and The Bulletin ) is the largest InDesign user in the world.

"Using Indesign, our editorial people can now do more of the creative work such as drop shadows and transparency effects directly on the Indesign page." (ACP)

Career opportunities include: Graphic Designer, Desktop Publisher, Freelance Graphic Design and Desktop Publisher.

Industries include: all businesses, particularly the printing and publishing industries, but graphic designers can specialise in the music industry, advertising, corporate, and so on.

Graphic designers and desktop publishers produce designs and layouts of text and images for reproduction in print and electronic media such as advertising and promotion, events and exhibitions, packaging and product covers, magazines and newspapers, books and websites, and for corporate stationery and branding materials.

The beauty of Adobe InDesign and the reason why it is so popular and has become the industry standard is because it can be used for both graphic design and desktop publishing.

Essentially, graphic designers will plan, design and produce the material, getting it ready for reproduction (print or web). This is called 'prepress' and usually involves a combination of text and graphics, though it can be just text or graphic in nature. In 1922 William Addison Dwiggins, a book designer, coined the term ‘graphic design’ to describe his role: bringing structural order and visual form to printed communications. So the term took hold.

This is how the dictionary defines graphic design: "The practice or profession of designing print or electronic forms of visual information, as for an advertisement, publication, or website."

A desktop publisher, on the other hand, means to use a computer to produce high-quality printed documents. Desktop publishing software allows you to use a variety of typefaces, specify different margins and justifications, and embed photographs, images and graphs directly into the text. So a desktop publisher lays out the text and/or graphics on the page.

Graphic designers may:

·         talk to clients or colleagues to gain a clear understanding of their requirements and sketch 'roughs' of the design

·         prepare quotes for work to be undertaken

·         prepare layouts of the design using a graphic design application

·         provide design to clients for their approval

·         prepare final designs ready for print

·         obtain quotes from printers

·         flight-check files for readiness and export to Acrobat

·         transmit design files in PDF format to printers

·         check proofs for correctness: colour, layout, bleed, etc.

·         sign off poofs for final production (web, print or other media)

Desktop publishers may:

·         talk to clients or colleagues to gain a clear understanding of their layout requirements

·         prepare quotes for work to be undertaken

·         set up the document and pages according to the requirements

·         prepare and insert word processed text and other images provided

·         format the text and images according to the design requirements

·         proof text format and layout (and sometimes content if the role includes proofreading)

·         transmit design files in PDF format to department or send straight to print

·         check proofs for correctness: format, layout, correctness, etc.

·         sign off poofs as checked

You can now see the difference between these two roles but also the close relationship in the tasks. In most cases, a freelancer or in-house designer will combine both jobs, doing graphic design and desktop publishing. This person will usually start out doing desktop publishing while they build up their graphic design skills through experience. This is because graphic design requires a higher skill level than desktop publishing.

Finally, many people ask what the different is between the common applications. Adobe Creative Suite (which has: InDesign, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Acrobat and other applications bundled in) is the industry standard for graphic design, desktop publishing, photo editing and illustrating.

Graphic Design applications: InDesign, QuarkXpress, CorelDRAW (QuarkXpress and CorelDRAW are direct competitors of InDesign).

Desktop Publishing applications: InDesign, Pagemaker, MS Publisher (though MS Publisher is nowhere near the level of InDesign and Pagemaker doesn't have InDesign's graphic design capabilities).

Photo Editing applications: Photoshop (there is no question that Photoshop is the leader here).

Painting and Illustrating applications: Illustrator, CorelPainter (some painting/illustrating applications offer some things that others don't so many illustrators/cartoonists/digital painters and drawers will jump between one or two applications).

Document Portability: Acrobat PDF is the standard. Acrobat comes in both the professional version for creating/writing PDF documents and the free Acrobat Reader version. InDesign includes the professional version for creating/writing and exporting documents for e-mail and print.