Desktop publishing training may lead to an optional professional certificate (certification programs usually take up to a year to complete), or to the attainment of an Associate Degree in Applied Sciences or Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Arts, Graphic Communications or Graphic Design. Desktop publishing training regularly encompasses concentrated instruction in an assortment of desktop publishing-related software, terminology and press training, as well as arts and design training.

Desktop publishing schools teach students to proficiently use desktop publishing software to format and combine text and numerical data, charts, photographs, and visual graphics for publication. A quality trade school that offers desktop publishing training will provide a comprehensive curriculum in text writing and editing. They will teach students how to create graphics to go along with text, as well as art, film, video and photograph conversions, web design and multimedia training, digital imaging techniques, HTML coding, and other electronic publishing technologies. Students will also learn page layout design and commercial marketing and business aspects relevant to desktop publishing.

What is desktop publishing? This question was put to me a while back and it took me some time to find an easy answer. The closest I can come to it is this: publishing using computer software is desktop publishing. Why a desktop? Because a personal computer is a desktop, isn’t it? Work like page layout, margins, typesetting etc. which was done manually was being handed over to the computer. Desktop publishing does all those things right on the Desktop as in a printing press. Computers had been introduced to the printing technology way back in the early nineties. But it was a costly affair. Macintosh computers working on exorbitantly priced software were deployed. Obviously only the very big and moneyed publishers and printers could afford the technology. Slowly things started changing. Flash forward to the present and there is an assortment of desktop publishing software available at reasonable and affordable price.

Desktop publishing has revolutionized the print technology. The tedium of manual typesetting has been replaced by a creative and exciting alternative which has boosted productivity to unimaginable levels.