This course reinforces the students' skills learned in their Visual Communications Studies technical courses. Students are introduced to procedures that are used in an actual graphic communications production environment, including the cost of doing business, estimating procedures, and production and quality control requirements. This course enables the student to develop and apply individual and team-building problem-solving skills as they are guided through integrated activities from creation to final product in both print and non-print media production workflows. Students work in a simulated design and production environment where they can develop their technical skills, work habits, and customer relations.

In this course, focus will be placed on design of multi-paged printed graphics including brochures, booklets, catalogs, menus and editorial designs using grids to organize information. Issues such as page sequencing and pagination, readability, design flow, consistency and preparing documents to meet industry standards will be addressed. Assignments will be completed using page layout software consistent with industry standards.

This course builds on topics presented in Page Layout I. Students will define and apply techniques and procedures for optimizing document design and production efficiency. Topics include defining paragraph, character, and object styles; making and using templates; saving and accessing object snippets and libraries; accessing and using database information to create documents, recognizing and applying proofreaders marks and notations; defining and applying advanced typographic techniques, advanced page layout procedures, object transparency and other image effects; building and editing tables; and, defining and applying color specifications and effects; and using document output procedures. Students will continue to develop knowledge and skills in the industry leading page layout software applications.