Chapter 5. Working in Color

When I first started in advertising, only the senior creative teams could work in color. The junior teams were assigned only black-and-white ads. Later on they might be able to work on a two-color job, but the four-color work was handled by senior art directors.

Fortunately, you're not limited by such constraints. InDesign gives you, right from the first day you use it, all the color controls you could ever wish for. However, with that power comes some responsibility.

When you define colors and use them on your pages, you are wearing two hats. Your first hat is that of a designer who looks at the aesthetics of the page and then applies colors. This is where you have fun with your creativity.

Your second hat is that of production manager. Wearing that hat you need to understand some of the priniciples of color and printing color documents. You also need to make sure your colors are defined so they print correctly.