Adobe InDesign all versions of it have been in my opinion surprisingly easy to use. It seems to me to be a very logical program in how it works, however if you don't use all of its features all of the time or if you have no experience with other desktop publishing programs like Microsoft Publisher, Quark Express, etc. then it might not seem so easy to use or logical either. I have been using desktop publishing software since my IBM XT days and version 1.0 of Ventura Publisher (bought and then killed by Corel Corporation). Back then it came on many discs (5-1/4" discs) and you had to swap discs to get it to work since hard drives were still very new, very small and very expensive. So I have to be fair I have a good deal of experience with how desktop publishing applications work. If you aren't so lucky then even Adobe InDesign could seem large and confusing and you might even find yourself lost within it.

Thankfully there are a good number of books available on InDesign. One good choice is Deke McClelland's Adobe InDesign CS3 one-on-one from Deke Press. This moderate sized full color book is very well laid out, very easy to read and understand thanks to Deke's natural simplification of even complex topics and his wit. There are tons of illustrations and samples and the book even comes with a DVD-Rom with over 3 hours of video hosted by Deke from Lynda.com. So you can not only learn from the book you can learn from watching as well, a very good combination in my opinion.

Lessons:

Lesson 1: Starting a Document
Lesson 2: Creating and Flowing Text
Lesson 3: Basic Text Formatting
Lesson 4: Lists and Tables
Lesson 5: Drawing Inside InDesign
Lesson 6: Importing and Modifying Artwork
Lesson 7: Transparency and Effects
Lesson 8: Using Style Sheets
Lesson 9: Pages, Layers and XML
Lesson 10: Working with Long Documents
Lesson 11: Hyperlinks, Bookmarks, and PDF
Lesson 12: Printing and Output

As you can see from the lessons included in this book Adobe InDesign CS3 one-on-one is very complete and thorough. The only thing it can't teach you is how to use all of these tools creatively, that is something you will have to learn and develop on your own. A good place to get started with creative design is to look at magazines, see what they are doing, how they use color, text, images and how they combine them all to work well. Then with the help of this book you can use what the pros have done and create your own stunning documents.

As for learning InDesign CS3 Adobe InDesign CS3 one-on-one is a great choice. It is a really nice book, complete and as I would expect from Deke McClelland it is very easy to read and understand. The included DVD-ROM of video tutorials is a definite plus in my book.