Everyone who engages in any aspect of desktop publishing (print or Web) should know about the resources offered by Noble Desktop

On the Noble Desktop website, you can point and click your way to the names and bios of these instructors. At third from the left, by the way, that's Dan Rodney.

Joke of the Month

A helicopter is flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disables all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communications equipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot cannot determine the helicopter's position.

The pilot sees a tall building, flies toward it, circles, and holds up a handwritten sign that says "WHERE AM I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and hold it in the window.

Their sign says "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER." The pilot smiles, waves, looks at his map, determines the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and lands safely. After they are on the ground, the copilot asks the pilot how he had done it.

"I knew it had to be the Microsoft Building, because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer."

-- from the Noble Desktop May 2012 e-newsletter,
which notes, "We first used that one back in 2001!"

by Ken

Sorry, I couldn't resist sharing the Microsoft joke. It may have entered its second decade, but I still love it.

Now, I realize that this post is going to sound like a paid promotion. I can only tell you that it isn't. As I've written before, I've been using invaluable Noble Desktop resources for years now, almost all of that without paying a cent. This isn't so much "payback" for that as another attempt on my part to spread the word to other potential beneficiaries. If it should happen to bring them some new paying customers, that would be a happy outcome for both parties.

Noble Desktop, in case you don't know --

has been teaching courses in desktop publishing and web design since 1991. We currently offer comprehensive day and evening classes in Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Web Site Creation (featuring HTML and Adobe Dreamweaver), Adobe Flash, and Final Cut Pro.

Now the classes are Noble Desktop's reason for existing, but to cheap people like me they're almost the least of its attractions. The website is a cornucopia of design resources (there are, for example, Keyboard Shortcut Guides for a host of programs, Quick Guide to HTML, and HTML Special Characters, and tips on some fundamental Typograhically Correct characters), and in addition they offer frequent free -- yes, absolutely free -- two-hour seminars on a range of print- and Web-publishing subjects, with a recent explosion of offerings for mobile devices, both phones and tablets. Oh yes, there's also the e-newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

The obvious way to make use of Noble Desktop, if you're in the NYC area and have a bulging checking account (or a corporate sugar daddy) is to take their on-site, hands-on classes, which cover all the widely used programs in all areas of design and publishing, both print and Web. But as i suggested, that's only one way that Noble Desktop can be an invaluable resource. I'm kind of embarrassed to own up that I haven't actually taken a course since the one that introduced me to the place a bunch of years ago, when my company sent us there to prepare us forthe switch -- one apparently made by hordes of corporate and individual designers and publishers -- from Quark XPress to InDesign.

The courses aren't cheap, but they are, as I mentioned, hands-on, they're devised with large quantities of expertise and care, and they're taught by instructors who (I'm assuming, since I haven't experienced many of them) are up-to-their-ears-working professionals who are up to the standards of the people I have experienced, who are very, very good at what they do.

There are standard discounts, by the way, for individuals paying on their own (rather than by corporate patronage), and also discounts for the provably unemployed. There are discounts on additional courses after your first.

The resource I've made most use of is those abundant free seminars I mentioned. Obviously these are seminars and not hands-on classes, but you see everytning demonstrated and explained, and the seminar instructors make themselves bravely available for questions -- and considering the no-slouch caliber of people who attend these seminars, the questions and answers themselves can be fascinating, ranging from things you wished you'd asked to things you never thought of.

The instructor I've encountered most often is full-time staffer Dan Rodney, and the simplest thing to say about Dan is that he has infinite stores of both subject knowledge and patience. You don't have to take my word, though. You can check out Dan own website, danrodney.com, which has its own reference section -- in categories Mac Central, PC Central, InDesign Central, and Miscellaneous ("recommended websites"). He's also written a number of InDesign scripts that are available on the webstie, including proper fractions.

Also, for those stymied by the price of the courses, the workbooks used for them (naturally, included in the price of the courses for those who take them) are sold separately, and I'm guessing are one of the better training resources you can find. They're all developed in-house for practical and effective training.

The people at Noble, by the way, in addition to being massively well-trained themselves, are some of the nicest folks you'll meet. Even to those of us who, you know, basically freeload.

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