I’m a genius.

No, really. I’m a genius. I have an incredible understanding of the difference between my mouse and a hole in the wall. Chances are, if you’re a designer – you’re a genius, too.

But there’s no law keeping you from taking a class or two.

Recently I was gifted with the chance to take an InDesign class. Now, I know InDesign. And I know it well enough that my printer doesn’t cry when I email him files. So taking this class for me was a lot more about having an afternoon off from work than actually LEARNING something. Like many of you, I’m of the opinion that of the 65,000 buttons and icons InDesign CS3, only about 138 are truly useful. The rest are just there to hold their pants up.

And I wasn’t sure that they all actually worked, to be honest with you. I keep clickin’ on them and expecting to get a pop-up that says “please don’t press this button again.”

So I walk in to the class, turn on the computer, listen to the instructor explain (painfully) how to make a new file, and then he said “Now, click this button…”

And he clicked a button I’d never cared to click before. It was a NEW button…a little icon that I had seen a million times but never bothered clicking. I won’t tell you what the button did. But I will tell you that the clickification of this iconic little chap literally abolished about 45 minutes of work out of every file I’ve done since that day.

And the revelations kept coming. Did you know there’s a multilingual spellcheck in there? And buttons that make those little lines on credit card forms line up perfectly? And that text-wrap isn’t actually a 27-step process?

Ladies and gentlemen – ALL those buttons mean something!

The point is, I figured I’d learn one thing, maybe two. But my three-day crash course didn’t just show me the 64,862 other buttons. It showed me ways to streamline my work, increase my rate, and think a little further outside the box. Suddenly I started getting love-notes from my printer. (by the way — Bob, I love you, I really do, but I’m not IN love with you…and my girlfriend’s getting freaked out by the singing telegrams).

So, go out there, folks. Take them classes! Find out the 64,862 reasons to make your business grow! Worked for me. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna leaf through the community college calendar one more time – there’s a Dreamweaver class that can probably fill in the 188,000 buttons I don’t know how to use yet.

Thomas (Tom) Stephan | Director of Something Clever
BoDo Author | Dyer Straits