Fear not! Read on for your straightforward guide to types of digital and print image files, as well as where (and where not) to use them.

Check out how to work with images in InDesign.

1. JPEG (files ending in .jpg)

The most common and versatile of types of image file, JPEG (or JPG) stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. Catchy.

JPEGS are compressed image files, resulting in a smaller file size than the original, pre-exported file. JPEGs are raster files, meaning that they lose quality when scaled, and can appear blurry or pixelated if scaled to a larger size than they have been saved to.

Because JPEGs can be saved with particular dimensions and quality (usually measured in DPI, dots per inch), they are useful for when you have an idea of the space the image will need to occupy. For example, if you want to use an image on a printed magazine cover, you can size the JPEG to the dimensions of the cover, and set the resolution to 300 dpi (see tip, below).

Where to use a JPEG: Photos on websites and print media.

Top tip: For print design, JPEGs are best used at a minimum of 300 dpi. For websites and apps, a 72 dpi resolution will suffice.

2. PNG (files ending in .png)

PNG images (standing for Portable Network Graphic) are essential tools for web design. Able to preserve the quality of text and lines better than JPEGs, they are also able to preserve transparencies.

PNGs are usually larger files than JPEGs, which is why they are not usually used for saving images that are photos only.

Where to use a PNG: Images that contain a mix of photos and text, or logos and other exported vector images, on websites and apps.

3. TIFF (files ending in .tif)

TIFF image files, which stands for Tagged Image File Format, contain a large amount of image data. They are uncompressed, resulting in very large file sizes, but as a result are flexible in terms of color, preserve layers and image tags, and are of a very high quality.

Though usually used for print design due to their large size, TIFFs can be rendered in both CMYK and RGB color.

Where to use a TIFF: Print media and high-quality website images; photos for printing or using online.

4. GIF (files ending in .gif)

Having achieved fame as easily shareable animations, GIFs are probably best known for bringing the antics of household cats to the masses on Tumblr and WhatsApp.

Standing for Graphic Interchange Format, GIFs are compressed image files, but in contrast to JPEGs the compression is lossless, resulting in a larger file size.

GIFs have a limited color range, meaning they are rarely used for photos online, and almost never used in print design.

Where to use a GIF: Low-quality images and animations for websites and apps.

5. EPS (files ending in .eps)

Short for Encapsulated PostScript, EPS files contain vector image content. Compatible with most vector editing software, like Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW, EPS files can be scaled up or down to any size, without compromising on quality. They can also be edited using vector software.

Not usually used on websites because of their large size, EPS files are most commonly used as shareable image files for illustrators and designers. For example, one individual can save a logo or other vector file as an EPS file in Adobe Illustrator, and share this with another individual who can open and edit the file in CorelDRAW.

Where to use an EPS: Use as a more flexible ‘native’ file format (see below), for sharing editable vector files with others or across different vector programs.

6. ‘Native’ and Raw Image Files

One of the most baffling things for novice designers to be faced with is to be asked for a ‘native’ image file. A vague term indeed, but essentially a native file refers to the original file type that the image was created in.

The most commonly requested native file types are those generated by Adobe software, such as PSD (Adobe Photoshop), INDD (Adobe InDesign) and ASE (Adobe Illustrator) files.

Usually native files are requested by designers (or clients) from other designers, so that they are able to access  and optionally edit and re-export the image.

Raw image files are similar, in that they are unprocessed, non-exported images, but raw files are normally used by photographers and photo editors, as these files contain data from digital cameras.

Where to use Native and Raw image files: To exchange original, editable images with other designers or clients.

Learn how to wrap text around images in InDesign in this quick and simple tutorial.

Discover more beginner’s tips and tutorials for getting started in Adobe InDesign, and pick up some essential graphic design skills.

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Types of Image File appeared first on InDesignSkills.

By the end of the tutorial you’ll have a zine template you can customise to make a more unique design.

Suitable for relative beginners to InDesign, this is a great all-round introduction to basic print design techniques.

What You’ll Need to Create Your Zine

As well as access to Adobe InDesign, you’ll need a selection of images and fonts to use in your zine.

To recreate the design pictured here, you can download the following photos and fonts:

• Traditional bohol

• Woman smoking cigar

• Market vendor

• Double exposure portrait

• Cormorant font

Install the font onto your computer and you’re ready to start designing.

How to Set Up the Zine Document in InDesign

Step 1

Open InDesign and go to File > New > Document.

Set up the document for Print, with an A5 page size (148 x 210 mm). Set the number of pages to 10 and make sure Facing Pages is checked.

Add a Top and Bottom Margin of 19 mm, set the Inside Margin to 21 mm and the Bottom Margin to 25 mm.

Finally, add a 5 mm Bleed to all edges except the Inside edge, and click Create.

Step 2

Expand the Layers panel (Window > Layers).

Double-click on Layer 1 and rename this Color.

Create two more new layers — Photos, and Type.

Step 3

Expand the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches).

Choose New Color Swatch from the panel’s drop-down menu (at top-right).

With the Type set to Process and Mode to CMYK, set the levels below to C=96 M=82 Y=3 K=0. Click Add and Done.

Create a second new swatch, C=0 M=86 Y=89 K=0.

Step 4

Choose New Gradient Swatch from the Swatches panel’s menu.

Name the swatch Gradient Swatch. Click on the left-hand stop on the Gradient Ramp, and choose your blue swatch, C=96 M=82 Y=3 K=0, from the Stop Color menu.

For the right-hand stop choose your red swatch, C=0 M=86 Y=89 K=0.

Click Add and Done.

2. How to Edit Your Zine’s Master Pages

Step 1

Double-click on the A-Master icon at the top of the Pages panel (Window > Pages) to bring up the master on your screen.

Use the Type Tool (T) to create a text frame across the bottom of the left-hand page.

Here you can place page numbers. With your type cursor in the frame, go to Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number.

You can format the page number using the Swatches panel and Character and Paragraph panels (Window > Type & Tables > Character / Paragraph).

Step 2

Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste the page number text frame, moving this over to the right-hand page.

Step 3

Use the Rectangle Tool (M) to create a tall, narrow shape across the left edge of the spread, taking it up to the bleed, and allowing a small area to extend onto the page.

Set the Fill Color of this to Gradient Swatch.

Copy and Paste the rectangle, and on the copy, Right-Click > Transform > Flip Horizontal.

Move this over into a mirrored position on the right-hand page.

Step 4

In the Pages panel, Right-Click on the A-Master icon, and choose Duplicate Master Spread “A-Master”.

On the new B-Master, select and delete the page number text frames.

Step 5

In the Pages panel, select the top [None] master page, and choose Apply Master to Pages from the panel’s drop-down menu.

We want to have no master applied to the front and back cover of our zine, which is on pages 1 and 10 of our document. So type in 1, 10 and click OK.

Select the B-Master icon in the Pages panel, and, as before, choose Apply Master to Pages. You want to apply the B-Master to any pages which you don’t want to have page numbers. In this case, I type in 2, 6, before clicking OK.

3. How to Section Your Zine

Step 1

In this zine, I want to split the document into two sections, with page 1 beginning on what is currently page 3 of the document.

To begin a new section, Right-Click on the page you want to start as page 1 (in this case page 3), and choose Numbering & Section Options.

Step 2

In the New Section window that opens, check Start Page Numbering at, and set this to 1.

Then click OK. You’ll get a warning message, but don’t worry about that. Just click OK.

Step 3

On the first page of the document, Right-Click > Numbering & Section Options.

As before make sure Start Page Numbering at is selected and set to 1. But this time choose a different Style for the Page Numbering, such as lowercase roman numerals. Then click OK.

4. How to Create a Front Cover for Your Zine

Step 1

Working on the first page (i) of your document, and on the Color layer, use the Rectangle Tool (M) to create a shape across the whole page, extending the edge up to the bleed on the top, right and bottom sides.

Set the Fill Color to Gradient Swatch.

You can adjust the strength of the gradient from the Gradient panel (Window > Color > Gradient). Here I want to make the gradient blend more abruptly in the center of the page.

Step 2

Copy and Edit > Paste in Place the rectangle shape, adjusting the Fill to your blue swatch, C=96 M=82 Y=3 K=0.

With the blue shape selected go to Object > Effects > Transparency, and bring the Opacity down to 30%.

Click on Inner Glow in the panel’s left-hand menu. With the Mode set to Normal, click on the colored square to adjust the Effect Color to your red swatch, C=0 M=86 Y=89 K=0.

Increase the Opacity to 100%.

Set the Source to Centre, Size to around 55 mm, Choke to 50% and Noise to about 45%. Then click OK.

Step 3

Working on the Type layer, use the Type Tool (T) to add text to your cover, setting the Font to Cormorant and Font Color to [Paper].

5. How to Build Up Content on the Inside Pages of Your Zine

Step 1

Select both rectangle shapes sat on the Color layer on the front cover, and Copy them.

Scroll down to the first inside spread of your zine, and Paste the shapes, moving them over onto the left-hand page.

Step 2

Edit > Paste a second time, and with this copy selected, go to Object > Convert Shape > Ellipse.

From the top Controls panel adjust the Width and Height of the circles to 108 mm.

Then move these over the top of the left page, positioning them centrally. Shift the top circle slightly up and to the right to create a slightly blurry effect.

Step 3

You can add text to your zine using the Type Tool (T), and working on the Type layer.

Here, I’ve added text set in Cormorant and a blue, C=96 M=82 Y=3 K=0, Font Color, to the right-hand page of the spread.

Step 4

Use the Rectangle Frame Tool (F) to create image frames on some of the pages of your zine.

Go to File > Place to drop images into the frames.

Step 5

Use the swatches you’ve already created to format text, adding a touch of color to your typography.

Here, I’ve also set the text to Align towards spine (which you can find in the top Controls panel with the Type Tool selected).

Step 6

Use elements you’ve already created, such as the colored rectangles and circles on the first spread, to create a quick and simple design for your back cover, on the final page of the document.

Make sure to add your website to the back cover too.

6. How to Export Your Zine for Print

Step 1

File > Save your artwork, then go to File > Export.

Choose Adobe PDF (Print) from the Format menu, name your file, and then click Save.

Step 2

In the Export Adobe PDF window, choose Press Quality for the Adobe PDF Preset, at the top.

Make sure the pages are set to Export As: Pages (not spreads).

Click on Marks and Bleeds in the left-hand menu. Check All Printer’s Marks and Use Document Bleed Settings, before clicking Export.

You can send off this PDF document straight to the printers, great job!

Eager to pick up more print design skills? Check out our magazine design tutorials, or download free magazine templates for InDesign.

The post How to Make a Zine in Adobe InDesign appeared first on InDesignSkills.

From magazine cover tutorials to EPUB tutorials, and everything in-between, you might discover something you’d never thought you could create using this versatile layout software.

1. Magazine Design Tutorial (& Template)

One of our most popular InDesign tutorials, this walkthrough is great way to get an overview of all aspects of InDesign. You can use InDesign to create both the interior layouts and covers for magazines. All major magazine titles you’ll see at the newsstand, from Vogue to GQ, will have been created using InDesign.

Get started with creating your own print magazine from scratch with this duo of easy-to-follow tutorials.Download this free template for a magazine cover, and adapt it to create your own unique design.

2. EPUB Tutorial

InDesign isn’t limited to creating designs only for print. The latest version, CC, is perfectly equipped to help you create documents for ePublishing (EPUBs), such as eMagazines, eBooks and interactive PDFs.

This InDesign tutorial leads you through the basics of creating and publishing your own EPUBs using InDesign.

3. Invitation Tutorial (& Template)

Giving you a great overview of how to design pretty documents in InDesign, this InDesign tutorial is a great place to start. With a sophisticated interface designed to allow you to set up high-quality print designs, which include foiling, die-cutting or embossing, InDesign is the perfect choice for creating high-end stationery like wedding and event invitations.

Take a look at this free-to-download botanical wedding invite template, which consists of both an invitation and save-the-date card.

4. Flyers and Brochure Tutorial (& Template)

Looking for a tutorial to help give your marketing materials an update?

You can create flyers, brochures and booklets quickly and easily in InDesign, which is perfectly tuned for creating single-page, double-sided and multi-page documents for print.

This free flyer template provides you with an easy-to-edit foundation for creating your own tri-fold flyer designs.

5. Book Cover Tutorial (& Template)

Creating book covers can be fiddly. But setting up a wraparound cover with a spine and bleed is a doddle using InDesign’s handy grids and guides.

In this InDesign tutorial you’ll learn how to set up a cover design for a paperback book in InDesign to a professional standard.

6. Typeset Pages for Books Tutorial

In this InDesign tutorial we’ll tackle the art of typesetting. Typesetting is the process of arranging long pieces of text on either a single page, or across a long document, such as a book, magazine or report.

While word-processing programs can limit the amount you can do with typesetting, InDesign allows you to typeset to a professional standard. This easy-to-follow tutorial shows you how to get started with typesetting the interior pages of books.

7. Business Card Tutorial

Business cards may be small, but they have to make a big impact. InDesign allows you to create beautiful business cards, perfectly optimised for print, in next to no time.

This InDesign tutorial will help you get started on the right foot by discovering the standard sizes for business cards.

8. Letterhead Tutorial (& Template)

Letterheads have abandoned their dusty reputation, as it’s now easy to achieve a stylish, on-trend look for your business stationery using InDesign.

This free letterhead tutorial and template makes a great foundation for creating your own unique design.

9. Advanced Typographic Layouts

One of the biggest advantages of InDesign over other design software is its unsurpassable functionality for formatting typography. You’ll find a huge range of advanced features for making your text look its very best, from optical margin alignment to drop caps.

This InDesign tutorial shows you how you can create both basic and advanced drop caps in InDesign, to give your paragraphs a stylish twist.

10. Resume Tutorial

In a competitive job market it pays to stand-out amongst the crowd. Creating a resume in InDesign is quick and easy, and allows you to be more experimental with column layouts, colour and typography.

If you’re not sure how to begin, working with an existing resume template is a good start. This free-to-download modern resume template is clean, stylish and easy to adapt with your own fonts and colors.

Don’t miss our other free InDesign tutorials for beginners.

The post InDesign Tutorials | 10 Things You Can Create With InDesign appeared first on InDesignSkills.

But how to get started? Here we look at eight quick-start tips for beginning a new career in graphic design. You’ll also find our edit of the best beginner tutorials and sources of inspiration to get you started on the right footing.

1. Start With the Basics

To become a graphic designer you need to know how to use computers to create layouts for both print and online. However, it can be difficult to know which software to invest in, given that there are tons of options available.

Although there are some good free alternatives available, most professional designers will use Adobe software. The core trio is Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

InDesign is a publishing program, tailored for creating layouts and multi-page documents, such as posters, magazines and flyers. Designers use Photoshop to edit photos or largely raster image-based layouts. Illustrator is used to create vector graphics, such as illustrations and logos.

You can learn more about the difference between design programs, and how to make the best choice for your own needs here.

You’ll find that designers’ preferences for software vary, but generally each designer has their own favorite program which they use on a daily basis. For most print designers, this will be InDesign, which is perfectly suited for print work. Digital designers might also use InDesign, but they may prefer the arguably more digital-friendly capabilities of Photoshop or Illustrator.

The interfaces of InDesign and other design-specialist software can seem a little intimidating at first, but once you know a little more about the basics—such as tools and panels—it’s easy to get the ball running.

Learn how to get started with InDesign here.

Still not sure where to make a start?

Make sure to check out these InDesign beginner’s tutorials to get a flavor of the software. 

2. Fall in Love With Typography

Typography, which describes how type is formatted and arranged on a layout, is an essential building block of graphic design. Every designer has their own fondness for typography, which in some runs to obsession.

With a little know-how, it won’t be long before you too develop a deep and meaningful attachment to all things type. Once you start animatedly telling your friends what the difference between a sans serif and a serif is, you know you’ve been bitten by the bug.

Get started with this helpful guide to formatting type in InDesign, which covers all the basics.

When you’re ready to dive in a little deeper, you can find a range of typography-centric tips and tutorials here.

Soon, you’ll want to develop your typography skills further with more specific training, like this tutorial on how to create simple and more complex drop caps.

3. Become a Master of Working With Images

Images bring an immersive quality to your designs, and can provide inspiration for the typefaces and colors you want to use on your layout.

To get started with using images in your designs, you need to know how to make them work for you. You can edit images using Photoshop but you don’t need to be a Photoshop whizz to get started with using images in your designs. You can place, size and rotate images within InDesign directly, allowing you to use photos in your layouts instantly.

Here you’ll find a beginner’s guide to using images in your InDesign layouts.

Some kinds of layout really allow you to make photography a key part of your design. Magazines are a great place to start honing your image layout skills.

Check out this trio of tutorials on how to incorporate photos into magazine spreads in new and interesting ways.

Vector graphics also play a significant role in graphic design. Vector illustrations can take the place of photos, and vector graphics, like logos and shapes, can bring scalable impact to your designs.

Dip a toe into vector with this introduction to creating shapes and illustrations in InDesign.

4. Understand Color

Type, graphics and color make up the holy trinity of graphic design. You can use these three elements as a foundation for creating any layout.

Color defines the mood and personality of a layout. It’s important to not only develop a good understanding of how colors complement or clash with one another, but also how to set up color on your designs at a technical level too.

This beginner’s guide to color spells out the difference between RGB and CMYK color, as well as advice for using Spot and Pantone colors.

Adobe’s handy Adobe Color CC app allows you to experiment with color combinations and create unique palettes from photos, which you can use directly in InDesign.

5. Learn How to Prepare for Print…

Even if you’re set on digital design, it’s important to have a solid foundation of print design skills. Why? Understanding print design basics will teach you key techniques you can carry forward into digital work, such as how to craft beautiful layouts and how to work with grids.

If you ever want to be able to create print work, such as stationery, signage or publications, it’s essential that you take a little time to read about how to prepare documents correctly for print, such as including bleeds and setting up color spaces correctly.

This indispensable guide shows you how to prepare your designs for print faultlessly every time.

6. …and For Online, Too

Print and digital design share common traits, but generally designers choose to specialise in one or the other. Where print design is in some ways very traditional (which is both its charm and its curse), digital design is ever-changing and exciting.

If you want to dip a toe into the world of digital, learning how to create simple designs for online use is a good place to start.

Learn how to create your own eBooks and eMagazines with this EPUB tutorial.

Or source digital inspiration from our edit of the best email marketing examples.

7. Become a Specialist in one area

Most designers get a sense of whether their strengths and interests lie more with print or digital design, but within these broader disciplines you can also choose to specialise further.

Within print design, for example, you will find designers who focus on branding, book design or typography.

Get started with book design, with this tutorial on how to create a book cover.

Within the expanding field of digital, many designers choose to specialise in app, website, EPUB or UX design.

8. Keep Inspired!

No graphic designer can flourish in a vacuum, and seeking inspiration by looking at the work of others is an incredibly important part of your development as a designer.

Keep your motivation up and your creative juices flowing by looking at our round-up of the best design inspiration.

Balancing trend-driven design with your own style is the key to creating designs that feel fresh and unique.

Make sure to keep abreast of the latest trends across the graphic design world by clicking here.

De 36 frågorna packaging by Martin Ohlsson

The post The Quick-Start Guide to Graphic Design appeared first on InDesignSkills.

What is Kerning?

Kerning is the process of increasing or decreasing the space between individual characters, adjusting the position of letters in relation to others. It’s commonly used on prominent pieces of text, such as headlines and logos. Note that tracking, on the other hand, is used to adjust the letter-spacing uniformly over a range of characters (read more about tracking).

Why Do Designers Use Kerning?

Although the process of tweaking kerning may be very subtle, it can have significant effects on the legibility and overall presentation of text.

Designers kern letters to improve the overall symmetry of a word or phrase, which the default tracking settings provided in the font file may not be able to achieve alone.

As well as having an instant beautifying effect on text, kerning can also have an effect on the readability of the text. When done well, words just read better.

However, a note of caution! There are many infamous examples on the web of kerning gone wrong, when poorly kerned letters have formed unintended or, in some cases, downright rude, words.

How Do I Apply Kerning?

In InDesign, you can adjust kerning from either the Controls panel running along the top of the workspace or the Character panel (Window > Type & Tables > Character).

Select the Type Tool (T), click your cursor to the left or right side of a letter, and increase or decrease the kerning (which is measured in thousandths of an em) by choosing from the default options (which jumps in sequences of 5’s, 10’s, 25’s and 100’s) or typing in a number.

Pro Tips

Observe these top tips whenever you kern to keep your text looking as professional as possible.

• Certain letters require more kerning attention than others. Slanted letters like W, V, K and A tend to sit too far away from other letters when kept to their default spacing. Letters with arms or large serifs, such as T, L and K may suffer from the opposite problem, tending to sit too close to other letters, creating an overcrowded effect. So make sure to comb your designs for these problem letters.
• Flipping your text upside down (or click on a page in the Pages panel, and Right-Click > Page Attributes > Rotate Spread View > 180°) before you kern is an age-old tip beloved of typographers. This allows you to asses the spacing between letters on a purely visual level, without being distracted by the meaning of the word. It’s an eccentric tip that works surprisingly well.

Want more typography tips? These quick and simple tutorials will turn you into a typography pro in no time.

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Kerning appeared first on InDesignSkills.

Here, we’re going to find out more about letter-spacing or Tracking, including what it is and how you can adjust letter-spacing to improve your own design work.

What is letter-spacing / Tracking?

Tracking is the typographer’s term for letter-spacing. Sometimes confused with kerning (which is used to adjust spacing between individual letters), tracking adjusts the letter-spacing uniformly over a range of characters.

Tracking affects the visual density of a word, phrase or paragraph. Decreasing the tracking makes the words appear more compact, while increasing tracking increases the amount of white space between letters and words, creating a more airy effect.

Why Do Designers Use Tracking?

Designers apply tracking for two main reasons:

• Firstly, when tracking is increased it can improve the readability of text. Letters and words are more visually distinguished from each other, allowing the eye to process them more easily than if characters were pushed closely together.
• Many designers apply tracking to improve the look of typeset text. Increasing or decreasing tracking has the power to reduce the amount of hyphenation in a paragraph, and banish widows (lone words at the end of a paragraph) and orphans (lone words at the top of a page, which should belong on the previous page).

In the second image the tracking has been reduced. This pushes all the letters closer together, causing the same number of words to fit onto less lines (which removes the widow ‘eat’).

How Do I Apply Tracking?

In InDesign, you can adjust kerning from either the Controls panel running along the top of the workspace or the Character panel (Window > Type & Tables > Character).

Use your Type Tool (T) cursor to either highlight the text or use the Selection Tool (V, Escape) to select the whole text frame*.

The tracking option is indicated by an ‘A V’ symbol with an arrow sitting below, and is found alongside the other most commonly used text formatting options in the Controls or Character panel. Measured in thousandths of an em, you can either choose a positive (to increase the spacing) or negative (to decrease) value from the drop-down menu, or type in a numeric value in the text box.

*For a linked sequence of text frames selecting the first text frame will apply the tracking settings to the text flowing across all the frames.

Pro Tips

Tracking may be simple to do, but professional designers still have a few tricks up their sleeve for making the most of this type technique.

• Tracking may be a quick-fix for line-spacing, but combining tracking with kerning will really lift your typography to a professional standard. As tracking affects the spacing between all characters, it won’t take into account specific spacing requirements between particular letters. So make sure to combine these two techniques for maximum effect.
• Tracking goes hand-in-hand with leading, which is the space between lines of text. Generous tracking requires generous leading; otherwise you may end up with paragraphs that appear stretched horizontally and look disproportionate.
• Sometimes it just doesn’t look right to apply negative tracking to your text, which can make paragraphs appear squashed. If this is the case but you still have widows or orphans ruining the look of your typesetting, apply optical margin alignment to try to shift outlying elements, like serifs and apostrophes, to the outside of your text frames, giving yourself a little more breathing room. Go to Window > Type & Tables > Story and check Optical Margin Alignment.

Want more typography tips? These quick and simple tutorials will turn you into a typography pro in no time.

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Tracking appeared first on InDesignSkills.

Here, we’re going to find out more about leading (or line spacing), including what it is and how you can apply it in your own design work.

What is Leading?

The definition of leading is: the distance between two baselines of lines of type. The word ‘leading’ originates from the strips of lead hand-typesetters used to use to space out lines of text evenly. The word leading has stuck, but essentially it’s a typographer’s term for line spacing.

Why Do Designers Use Leading?

Leading is one of the quickest and simplest tweaks you can do to make your text look instantly better.

If you’re working in design software like InDesign, the program will set a default leading value whenever you type up more than one line of text. However, this is not usually generous enough, and can make paragraphs look squashed. This works fine if you’re creating a crammed front page for a newspaper, but less well for most other purposes.

Increasing the leading allows the text to breathe and makes it appear instantly more attractive. For readers it has practical advantages too—increasing leading makes text easier to read, and it’s also kinder on reader’s eyes over longer periods of reading.

So if you’re designing a book or magazine layout, increasing your leading will ensure your audience is captive for longer.

How Do I Apply Leading?

When working in InDesign, once you’ve created a piece of text using the Type Tool (T), you can adjust the leading from either the Controls panel running along the top of the workspace or the Character panel (Window > Type & Tables > Character). To edit the leading across a whole section of text, either highlight the text or click on the text frame to select it.

Leading is always positioned below or next to the Font Size option. Setting the leading to Auto will apply InDesign’s default leading for the font size you currently have applied. You should see this as a minimum value for your leading. Increasing the leading (which is measured in points, pt) will increase the line-spacing across your paragraph.

To apply a particular leading value to just one line of text (e.g. if you want to separate a paragraph visually from a heading positioned above), highlight the line you want to shift downwards and increase the leading.

Pro Tips

Leading may seem straightforward enough but designers have all sorts of tricks and tips for making the most of this simple type technique.

• While generous leading can improve the look of paragraphs, making the leading overly generous can disrupt the flow of the text and impact on legibility. Print out different leading settings before going to print, to make sure you can read the text comfortably.
• Setting text against a colored or dark background? Apply slightly more generous leading than normal to make the text ultra-clear to read.
• Different fonts will suit different leading settings, as the x-height (the height of lowercase letters) will vary between fonts. Fonts with shorter x-heights won’t require as much leading as those with taller lowercase letters.

Want more typography tips? These quick and simple tutorials will turn you into a typography pro in no time.

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Leading appeared first on InDesignSkills.

This guide shows you five easy ways* to create a failsafe font combination every time, and suggest appropriate ways to use each font pairing style. Read on to find your font dream team…

* These five font pairings are based on using one font for the headline (the main title on your page) and another font for the body text (the longer paragraphs which make up the bulk of content on your page). If you want to add sub-headings or pull-out quotes setting text in an italic weight is always a wise move, or try using a bold or condensed version of your body text font to add contrast while keeping the typography looking polished.

1. Sans Serif Headline + Serif Body Text

This is the most common font pairing style designers will use when they want to make their typography look instantly more polished and professional. Why does this font pairing work so well? Firstly, the pairing has high contrast, which creates interest and stimulates the eye. Secondly, this pairing feels at once both classic and contemporary, which makes it suitable for all sorts of layouts. Finally, bookish serifs tend to be easy to read, while sans serifs add a more modern, sophisticated flourish, making it a pairing that’s both functional and stylish.

Within this font pairing style, you’ll find that certain sans serifs look better teamed with particular serifs. A good starting point is to decide on a headline sans serif that you really love, and then rotate the serif body text through several options until you find the font that looks just right.

One of our favourite font pairings is headlines set in Bebas Neue, with body text set in Caslon. A sub-heading set in Adobe Caslon Pro Italic adds the perfect finishing touch.

2. Headline + Body Text Fonts From the Same Font Family

Most fonts belong to a typeface family—a group of fonts which vary in weight (e.g. bold, italic, book etc) but ultimately have the same base design. A family may also include more stylised variations of the original roman weight, such as condensed, outlined and expanded.

Some font families contain as few as three fonts, while others might extend to include dozens of fonts. These larger font families are known as ‘superfamilies’.

Pairing two fonts taken from either the same family or superfamily is a quick route to creating a design that feels pulled-together and elegant. The success of this sort of pairing rests on the shared similarities between the chosen fonts, rather than contrast, which has a calming effect on the eye. For layouts which require a more traditional, formal or conservative style, this sort of font pairing is the perfect choice.

That’s not to say that sourcing two fonts from the same family needs to be dull. In fact the vast range of font styles you can track down within a superfamily can give you plenty of variation, to keep your design looking playful. We love the combination of a Roboto Slab headline with Roboto body text. These fonts have very different weights but share the same rounded-geometric form.

3. Headline + Body Text Fonts Which Share the Same Mood

All fonts have a personality, whether it’s the bouncy optimism of a rounded sans serif or the serious conservatism of a traditional serif. Each font brings its own personality to a design, helping to give the whole layout a certain mood or vibe.

Professional typographers call this evasive sense of mood that a group of fonts share a ‘sub-category’. Some serif fonts, such as Bembo and Garamond, fall into the Old Style sub-category, with these fonts tending to have an old-fashioned, dignified personality. These work well paired with Humanist sans serifs like Frutiger and Gill Sans, because these too have an old-fashioned, serious mood.

Here a Garamond headline and sub-heading makes a great team alongside Gill Sans body text.

Transitional serifs have a more modern mood than Old Style typefaces, which makes them a suitable pairing for Geometric or Rounded sans serifs, like Futura and Avenir. Here, a headline set in Mrs. Eaves is stylishly offset by Futura body text.

Modern serifs, such as Didot and Bodoni, have a classic elegance but feel more fun and fashionable than their Old Style relatives. Because they are more contemporary in style, they team best with Geometric sans serifs.

In this example, Bodoni and Open Sans make for an elegant font pairing.

4. Display Headline + Humanist or Transitional Body Text

You don’t always need to rely on blowing your headline up to large size to make an impact. Display or Headline fonts are specially designed to make text really shout for attention. These heavily stylised or chunky display fonts, such as FF Scala and Eczar, look fantastic paired with Humanist or Transitional body text, whether in serif or sans serif styles.

If you’re putting together a more design-forward layout which needs to grab a viewer’s attention, such as a poster or magazine cover, this font pairing won’t fail to turn heads, and it looks super-stylish too.

Here a headline set in Scala Sans Black is the perfect foil to the simple charms of Gentium Basic.

5. Round Sans Serif Headline + Old-Style Serif Body Text

Rounded fonts are youthful, and used alone give an almost childlike quality to a design. Pairing a rounded sans serif headline, like Woodford Bourne or Quicksand with more traditional serif body text exaggerates further the contrast that we looked at with the serif/sans serif font pairing at the start of the article.

This is a more space-age version of that pairing rule, giving layouts a futuristic spin that feels clean and cutting-edge. In this example the exaggerated tracking of Quicksand as the headline makes the ultimate contrast with neat and pulled-together Garamond.

Still feeling overwhelmed with the sheer choice of fonts on the web? Check out our pick of the best fonts for every purpose and budget.

The post The Beginner’s Guide to Font Pairing appeared first on InDesignSkills.

You’ll find all of these beginner-friendly tools in the Tools panel, which is docked to the left-hand side of the InDesign workspace.

Image used throughout: Shutterstock

1. The Selection Tools

Top beginner tool number one – the Selection Tool (Shortcut: V, Escape), which is the tool activated by default when you first open up InDesign. You can find it at the very top of the Tools panel. Use this tool to, you guessed it, select things! This is your go-to tool for when you want to move or scale items. Grab text frames, image frames and shapes with this tool to move them elsewhere, or click and drag corners of objects to adjust size.

Top tip: Hold down Shift while using this tool to keep the proportions of an element fixed.

Next is the Direct Selection Tool (Shortcut: A), which is the white arrow sitting below the Selection Tool on the panel, is better suited to adjusting the position of individual points. I tend to use this when editing the anchor-points of shapes or vector elements. Click on the object with the Direct Selection Tool and you’ll notice that small white squares appear around the edges. Click again on one of these white squares to select the anchor-point directly, and drag or use the arrow keys on your keyboard to adjust.

2. The Type Tool

As a beginner to InDesign, you’ll want to get to grips with creating text. InDesign is a publishing program, and as a result is perfectly designed for creating pro-standard typography. The Type Tool (T) is your gateway tool to putting together your very own text-based designs. Select the Type Tool and drag onto the page to create a new text frame, or click into an existing text frame to activate editing. You can also transform any shape into a text frame by simply double-clicking your type cursor onto the shape.

You can also turn any shape or line into a text path by activating the Type on a Path Tool, which you can find inside the Type Tool’s drop-down menu.

Once you have the Type Tool selected InDesign will switch to the Character Formatting Controls panel at the top of the workspace, allowing you to adjust Font, Size, Leading, Tracking, Kerning and other typography settings. By clicking on the paragraph symbol below the ‘A’ at the far-left of the panel, you can also access the Paragraph Formatting Controls panel, which gives you access to options for formatting larger sections of text, including Hyphenation, Alignment and Indentation.

Get to grips with typography basics in InDesign in this quick tutorial.

3. The Frame Tools

The Frame Tools are all marked out by the ‘X’ across their symbol in the Tools panel. These tools are essential if you’re a beginner looking to create image-based designs. Frames are used to insert photos, illustrations or backgrounds into InDesign (which can be done using File > Place). The Rectangle Frame Tool (F) is the most commonly used frame creator, but you can also choose from an Ellipse Frame Tool and Polygon Frame Tool, both accessible from the Rectangle Tool’s drop-down menu.

Simply choose your tool, then click and drag onto the page to create an image frame. Hold down Shift while you drag to create a perfect square, circle or polygon.

Raster images in InDesign are always placed inside frames, allowing you to apply effects to either the containing frame or the image itself, or both. To select the image directly, double-click inside the frame. The edges of the image will be made visible and you can adjust position or scale if you wish. To apply effects to your image frame, head up to Object > Effects on the top menu.

Learn more about working with images in InDesign here.

4. The Shape Tools

Although vector software like Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape are perfectly tuned for designing vector illustrations, you can do a lot of vector work directly in InDesign too. The simplest way to create vector shapes is to use the Shape Tools. These can be found at the bottom of the second section of the Tools panel, just below the Frame Tools. As with the Frame Tools, you can choose from a Rectangle Tool (M), Ellipse Tool (L) or Polygon Tool. Click and drag onto the page to create a shape, holding Shift to create perfect proportions. You can also create simple lines using the Line Tool (\). Using Shift alongside the Line Tool creates perfectly straight horizontal or vertical lines.

Once your shape is created you can edit color using the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches) and adjust the width and style of the stroke of your shape using the Stroke panel (Window > Stroke).

As with image frames you can also apply effects like transparency, gradients and drop shadows using the Effects window (Object > Effects).

You can create more advanced vector designs by using the Drawing Tools, which make a great team alongside the Shape Tools. Use the Pen Tool (P) to create custom anchor-points or the Pencil Tool (N) to create more fluid designs. To have more control over these tools, a graphics tablet is always more helpful than a mouse. Our old friend the Direct Selection Tool (A) can be used to select and move individual anchor-points, so don’t worry if your drawing didn’t turn out quite as well as you hoped on the first go.

5. The Page Tool

Our final essential beginner tool is the Page Tool…it’s hands-down one of the most useful tools, and has been a lifesaver of mine many a time. Ever wanted to switch a document to landscape? Or quickly change an A3 page to Letter size? The Page Tool allows you to quickly change the orientation and/or size of pages. Select the Page Tool (Shift+P) and click onto the page you want to change.

The Controls panel at the top of the workspace will adjust, showing you options for size, orientation and how you would like the content on the page to be repositioned. I think one of the handiest options in InDesign must be the Scale option from the Liquid Page Rule menu. This allows you to keep the proportions of your content intact, and scales it up or down to suit the new page size. All elements, including images and text, will be resized to fit. When you’re short on time and somebody wants the document at a different size, this can save hours of work.

Discover more advice for InDesign beginners on our Tutorials page. Or why not seek out inspiration about typography, layout design and much, much more right here.

The post 5 Essential Tools for InDesign Beginners appeared first on InDesignSkills.

To explain how it works, we’ll walk you through the process of creating a Table of Contents for a short book.

1. Prepare Your Page Numbers

Before you begin putting together the table of contents, you need to make sure you’re happy with your page numbering. InDesign will use your page numbering information to make your table of contents, so it’s important to get it accurate.

You may have already introduced page numbers into your InDesign document by placing markers onto the Master pages. If not, and you don’t know where to start, make sure to check out this quick tutorial first.

The page markers will reflect the page number as listed in the Pages panel (Window > Pages), and not necessarily the page number you want it to be. So this is the first thing to address before you put together a table of contents.

Step 1

I’ve created a document in InDesign, made up of facing spreads, for the inside pages of The Great Gatsby.

My document has three chapters, with each new chapter page defined by a chapter heading, graphic and half-page text frame.

At the moment the first page of Chapter One is on page 7 of the document, which the marker has rendered as a ‘7’ on the page. I want to change this and make this page show up as page 1 of the document.

Expand the Pages panel (Window > Pages) and Right-Click (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac) on the page you would like the numbering section to start from, in my case Page 7. Then click on Numbering & Section Options.

Step 2

In the window that opens, select Start Page Numbering at: and type in 1. Under Style choose 1, 2, 3, 4… and then click OK.

A warning message will flag up, reminding you that by making this change you will have created a duplicate of pages 1-6 in your document. We can rectify that, so just click OK.

Step 3

In my book document, I have designed it so that no page numbers appear on the introductory pages of the book. This is quite common for novels, with numbered pages only beginning on the first page of the first chapter.

Irrespective of whether the page numbers are visible or not, to avoid duplicate page numbers in the document I can set these first few pages to have a different numbering system.

Right-Click (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac) on Page 1 in the Pages panel > Numbering & Section Options.

Again, select Start Page Numbering at: and type in 1. Under Page Numbering, choose a different Style for the numbers—roman numerals are usually a good choice for introductory pages. Then click OK.

Now you have two separate numbered sections in your book. Once you have decided on all the numbering for your document (for example, you may also want to have a different numbering system for the final pages of the book, as part of an index or bibliography) you’re almost ready to create a table of contents.

2. Set the Style of Your Contents Title

There’s one more ‘prep’ stage before you create a Table of Contents and that’s to create a Style for the title of your contents list.

Step 1

You can do this either from the Paragraph Styles panel (Window > Styles > Paragraph Styles) or from inside the Table of Contents function directly. Let’s do the latter, so we can take a look at the TOC window.

Go to Layout > Table of Contents.

In the Table of Contents window that opens you’ll notice a Title text box at the top-left of the window. This is where you can set the text for the title of your contents. A simple ‘Contents’ is pretty failsafe, but you might want to customise this to fit your own project, such as ‘In This Issue’ or ‘List of Entries’.

Step 2

To the right of this text box is a Style drop-down menu. From here you can either choose a pre-created Paragraph Style or create a New Paragraph Style. In this case let’s create a new Style.

I’m going to name it ‘Contents Style’ (or something like ‘Contents Title’ might also be a good fit), and set the Font to Aleo Light, Size 12 pt to match the formatting I’ve used for headers in my book design.

Clicking on Indents and Spacing in the left-hand menu allows me to tweak the Alignment of the Style to Center. Then I click OK.

Back in the Table of Contents window there is a Styles in Table of Contents section in the center. You can see that we can’t create a new Paragraph Style for the body of the Table of Contents directly in this window. We’ll need to create them first, then return to the TOC window to add them to the Include… list. So click OK for now.

3. Set the Style of the Body of Your Contents

Styles are one of the most useful functions in InDesign, but are often underused. Creating a Paragraph Style allows you to reproduce the exact formatting of your text elsewhere in your document, so it’s a great timesaver when you’re creating text-heavy documents like books.

We can create a new Paragraph Style for only the chapter headings in the book, and then tell InDesign to only use these styled items of text to create the contents list.

Step 1

Click to select the Chapter One heading text frame in the body of your document. Open the Paragraph Styles panel (Window > Styles > Paragraph Styles) and click on the Create New Style button at the bottom of the panel.

Step 2

Double-click on the new Paragraph Style 1 name in the Styles panel to open up the Options window. Rename the Style as something like ‘Contents Headers’ and click OK.

Step 3

Scroll through your document, clicking on each new chapter heading and then clicking on the ‘Contents Header’ Style to apply it.

If you’ve already formatted all your chapter headings in the same way this won’t affect the look of the text, but it will tell InDesign that all the chapter headers now have their own distinct style which sets it apart from other content in the document.

4. Create your Table of Contents (TOC)

Now that you have your numbering system and Styles in place, you’re ready to create your contents list.

Step 1

Go back to Layout > Table of Contents. As before, set the Title and title’s Style, choosing the original Style you created for this (e.g. ‘Contents Style’).

Then from the selection of Other Styles below, click on the new Style you just created, the ‘Contents Header’ Style.

Click the Add button in the center of the window to add it to the Include Paragraph Styles list.

By clicking the More Options button you can customise your TOC as you like, defining how the Page Numbers appear, how these are styled and whether there appears any symbol, such as dashes or dots, Between Entry and Number.

Explore the options, and customise as you like it, before clicking OK.

Step 2

A small text preview will appear next to your cursor, indicating that the cursor is loaded with the created table of contents and is ready to place.

Navigate to the page of the document where you would like the contents to be and click once onto the page to create the contents list in a new text frame.

Step 3

Now you can tweak the formatting of the contents if you like, using the Paragraph panel (Window > Type & Tables > Paragraph) to adjust alignment.

Or use the Character panel (Window > Type & Tables > Character) to adjust the Font Size, Leading or Font Weight (e.g. Light, Bold) of the text.

Format the rest of your contents page as you would for the rest of your book, and there you have it! A simple, quick-to-create table that shows all the page numbers of your chapters accurately without needing to manually type them all up.

Delve deeper into book design with our selection of publishing tutorials and inspirational articles for book fonts and book cover designs.

The post How to Create a Table of Contents in InDesign appeared first on InDesignSkills.

Here we break down the basics of Masters, and share some tips on how to get the most from one of InDesign’s handiest features.

1. What is a Master Page?

The basic principle of a Master page is this:

Whatever you place onto the Master page will be visible on all the pages of your document that have the Master applied to them

You can edit the Master, and add elements to it that you want to appear across multiple pages, such as page numbers, running headers and borders. Masters are indispensable when creating multi-page documents like magazines, books, reports and brochures, allowing you to add design elements across a number of specified pages, creating a sense of consistency and professionalism in your document.

You can also create multiple Master pages, each with different design elements. A good example for when it would be appropriate to use multiple Master pages is when you’re designing a book that’s split into chapters. You might have one Master page for the opening page of a chapter, and another Master for the pages that sit within the chapter. You can also add different Masters for index pages and contents pages, which may require different page numbering systems or headers.

2. Where Do I Find the Master Pages?

When you create a new document in InDesign, the software automatically creates two new Master pages for the document, which are visible at the top of the Pages panel (Window > Pages).

One of these Masters is called, by default, the ‘A-Master’, and depending on whether you’ve set the document up with single pages or facing spreads, will be made up of one or two pages.

The A-Master is automatically applied to all the pages in your new document, which means that anything you put onto the A-Master will show up on all pages of your document.

The Master page above the A-Master in the Pages panel is, in fact, not really a Master. It’s called [None], and by dragging this down onto a page icon in the panel below you can wipe the page of any applied Master.

3. How Do I Edit a Master Page?

Masters are quick and simple to edit—simply double-click on one of the Master page icons in the Pages panel to bring it up on screen. You can now edit the Master as you would a normal page. Let’s walk through the steps of editing an A-Master for a magzine, and look at how to add simple features like page numbers, running headers and background color.

Step 1

In this document, I want to create a Master that will add a few consistent elements to the pages of articles in the magazine. To do this, I double-click on the A-Master icon in the Pages panel (Window > Pages). This is a two-page Master as the document has been set up with facing pages; clicking on either the left or right page of the Master will bring up the full spread on screen.

Step 2

Now you’re ready to start editing your Master!

Think about the elements that will remain consistent across a group of pages. You can only edit these elements on the Master, and they will all sit behind the page content, so try to focus on elements that make up the background and basic template of your page.

For the A-Master for this magazine I’m going to add background color, page numbers and running headers. First, I take the Rectangle Tool (M) and drag onto the Master to create a rectangle that fills the entire left-hand page. Using the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches) I give the shape a black color fill.

I Copy > Paste the rectangle and place the pasted shape on the right-hand page of the Master.

By keeping the color in separate shapes on each page I can apply only the left- or right-hand page to a spread in my magazine. If I was to extend a single shape across the whole of the spread, the color would be applied to both pages of a spread automatically.

Step 3

I can also add page numbers to my A-Master. To do this, I zoom into the bottom left-hand corner of the left page, and use the Type Tool (T) to create a text frame. Placing my type cursor into the frame, I head up to Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number. As this is the A-Master InDesign flags this up as an ‘A’ (this will adjust to the correct page number in the pages of my magazine).

I can format the page number using either the Character window (Window > Type & Tables > Character) or the Formatting Controls panel running along the top of the workspace.

Then I Copy > Paste the page number’s text frame and manouver it over onto the right-hand page of the Master. I switch the text to Align Right using the Paragraph window (Window > Type & Tables > Paragraph).

Step 4

Using the Type Tool (T) I create a long text frame at the top of the right page, adjusting this to read the issue’s date, and then format the text to adjust the size, font and color. I rotate the frame 90° (Right-Click [Windows] or Ctrl-Click [Mac] > Transform > Rotate).

I Copy > Paste this text frame, moving it over to the top of the left page, and adjusting the text to read the magazine’s title. Then I rotate it 180°.

4. How Do I Apply a Master to Pages in my Document?

By clicking on one of the page icons in the lower part of the Pages panel I am taken back to my document. I can see that the pages have all been updated with the edits I made to the A-Master. This looks great on some of the article pages…

…but I don’t want to have this Master applied to all the pages. I then have two choices. I can either click and drag down the [None] Master page icon in the Pages panel, dropping it onto pages which I don’t want to have a Master.

Or I can create a new Master page to apply to different pages. For example, I might want to create a second Master which has the same page numbers and headers, but has a white background and black text instead.

To create a new Master you can go to the Pages panel’s drop-down menu and choose New Master.

This opens up a New Master dialogue box. From here you can set the specs for your new Master. If you want to create a new Master that contains all the elements of an existing Master and you simply want to build on this you can choose the appropriate Master from the Based on Master menu.

However, as here I want to create a Master with similar elements to the A-Master but I want to be able to edit them too, I can simply create a copy of the Master by selecting both pages of the A-Master (hold down Shift while you do this) and dragging it down onto the Create New Page icon at the bottom of the Pages panel.

From here I can edit this new B-Master, such as removing the colored background and editing the text to a black color.

To apply this B-Master to other pages in the document, I select either the left or right page of the B-Master in the Pages panel and drag and drop it onto the relevant pages.

5. Pro Tips for Using Masters

Master pages can be as simple or complex as you like. If you want your document to look extremely consistent, you can edit the Master to include elements that will help your whole document feel even more uniform. Here are just a few things you can do with Master pages that will help take your designs to the next level:

• You can add linked text frames to your Master. This is particularly handy for typesetting long, text-heavy documents like books. Place a series of linked text frames on the Master page, but don’t fill them with text. When you return to the document’s pages, you’ll be able to feed text into the Master’s text frames without needing to add new text frames to each new page.
• The elements sitting on your Master page don’t necessarily need to sit behind the content of your pages. By placing some or all of the elements on your Master page onto a separate, top layer in your document (Window > Layers) you can ensure that page numbers and headers will always sit on top of other content.
• You can create as many Master pages as you like. For long documents some designers will use a wide range of Masters, treating them as templates for specific sections of a book or magazine.
• You can delete Masters by selecting the Master and either Right-Clicking (Windows) or Ctrl-Clicking (Mac) > Delete, or dragging the Master down onto the trash can icon at the bottom right of the Pages panel. You will be prompted with a warning message if the Master is applied to pages in your document. If you go ahead with the deletion, InDesign will apply the [None] Master to the affected page(s).

Want free InDesign templates? Of course you do! Find a range of ready-to-edit templates for book covers, business cards and more.

Find more InDesign tutorials here, and make sure to check out our edit of the best design inspiration to keep your ideas flowing.

The post InDesign Basics: A Quick Guide to Master Pages appeared first on InDesignSkills.

If you’re new to the EPUB game, this article will take you through the process of getting started—from which software to use to design your EPUB, to where to sell your work.

1. What is an EPUB?

An EPUB (Electronic Publication Format) is a broad term which applies to a range of different digital publications. The most commonly known and commonly used EPUB format is the eBook, which can be read on EPUB-compatible devices, like readers and tablets.

Just like a web page, the structure of an EPUB is based on HTML, and the EPUB can be viewed on a number of digital devices, including tablets, laptops, desktop computers and specialist eReader devices.

If you’re looking to create your first EPUB, there’s something important you need to be aware of—that EPUBs come in two different formats, called Reflowable and Fixed Layout.

What is a Reflowable EPUB?

A reflowable EPUB contains ‘live text’, which you can select, highlight and search.

You can also change the size of the text and even the typeface in a reflowable EPUB. This will force the lines of text to expand and break onto other lines; to ‘reflow’.

Most text-heavy publications, like novels and textbooks, will be set in a reflowable EPUB format.

What is a Fixed Layout EPUB?

A fixed layout EPUB is just that—the layout is fixed and doesn’t behave responsively when the reader views it.

This actually works really well for more complex eBooks and eMagazines, that perhaps contain a lot of images and have intricate layouts that would suffer if they had a reflowable digital format. The final result may appear a bit more like a PDF (though take note that a PDF is different to an EPUB).

Design: Eleanor Rogers

Which Format Should I Pick?

Both reflowable and fixed layout EPUBs are in line with the most recent specification for EPUBs, which is 3.0.1. So, if you export your EPUB to one of the above formats, you’re ready to go ahead and sell your eBook on a commercial eBook or eMagazine site.

But how do you know which of the two EPUB formats is right for you?

If you’re designing a visual-heavy EPUB, like a magazine or photo book, a fixed layout EPUB format is probably going to give you the best result. Your layout arrangements and effects, such as transparencies and gradients, will remain intact.

If you’re typesetting a novel, a reflowable format is probably going to be best; readers will be able to blow up the size of text to help make it more legible; and they’ll also be able to search the book to find particular words, passages or chapters.

2. How Do I Create an EPUB?

EPUBs are designed using a layout software of your choice, that’s suitable for exporting to an EPUB format.

The field of digital publishing is relatively young, and as a result there’s no single market leader in digital publishing software. That’s great for you, as this gives you lots of choice, and depending on your budget and skillset you can choose a software that’s going to suit your needs perfectly.

Here are some of the popular options for creating EPUBs and eMagazines, some of which are paid-for and some free:

Adobe InDesign

An (obvious) favorite of the InDesignSkills team, this print publishing giant has been adapted for designing EPUBs (look to the most recent CC version of the software for the most updated EPUB adaptation), and you can export existing designs to both reflowable and fixed layout formats.

InDesign CC is subscription-based, with different payment options for schools, individuals and businesses, but if you’re looking for complete control and professionalism in your EPUB design, InDesign certainly won’t disappoint. It also interacts fluidly with other Adobe software, like Photoshop and Illustrator, allowing you to move content easily between the programmes.

Adobe Digital Publishing Solution

Adobe has also created this software, which is aimed directly at digital publishers.

Perfectly suited to creating apps and EPUBs, DPS allows you to design complex layouts for digital devices without the need for coding.

BlueGriffon

BlueGriffon is another great software choice for creating EPUBs, and is probably best suited to more traditional, text-heavy publications. It’s a WYSIWYG editor, like Sigil, and works for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

BlueGriffon is a paid-for subscription-based programme.

Sigil

A great choice if you’re on a tight budget, Sigil is completely free to download and use.

It’s an open-source EPUB creation software package for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This software is great if you’re going to be creating more traditional EPUBs, with less interactive content, and it also gives you direct control over the code, which is a handy option to have.

Apple iBooks Author

For all you Apple lovers out there, this is a great little free app, aimed at designers wanting to create EPUBs for iPads and Macs.

iBooks Author is an easy-to-use, intuitive and stylish app for creating EPUBs.

3. How Do I Add Interactivity to my EPUB?

Interactive elements, such as video content and animation, add an extra-special touch to EPUBs. They can liven up educational eBooks, and keep eMagazine readers engaged with an extra level of content to explore.

There are now so many ways to integrate more interactive content into your EPUB designs.

Once you have your basic EPUB layout in place you can add animations (try out Adobe Edge Animate), interactive engagement and eLearning content (Adobe Captivate is perfect for creating quizzes and tests) and videos.

Adding touch-sensitive page-turning to your EPUB can also make the reader’s experience more immersive, and imitate that real-life page-turning action.

4. Where Can I Sell My EPUB?

Once you’ve designed your EPUB, you’re ready to share it with the rest of the world!

Some EPUB softwares are designed to link you directly with an eBook store, such as Apple iBooks Author, which encourages you to upload your completed EPUB for sale on the Apple iBooks Store.

Other major eBook stores* that you can check out are:

• Amazon (Kindle)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Lulu
• Smashwords

*A word of caution—different eBook stores may require different sizes and resolutions for your EPUB cover, so be sure to check out the store’s requirements before uploading.

Once you’ve picked your design software, created your EPUB, added a dash of interactivity, and sized your cover for your eBook store of choice, you can officially crown yourself as an EPUB expert!

Whether you’re aiming to be the next eBook sensation, or just looking to dip a toe into the world of EPUB design, it’s certainly an expanding and exciting world to be a part of.

Read up on tips for creating books in Adobe InDesign, or discover our dedicated book design section to find even more inspiration for your next project.

The post A Quick Guide: Creating & Publishing EPUBs appeared first on InDesignSkills.

In this, the second part, we’ll delve further into the world of typography and look at the ‘Big Four’ – the four special typographic effects you can apply to your InDesign layouts to make them really stand-out…

1. Leading

Leading is the unsung workhorse of typography. If you’re looking at a paragraph of type and thinking “That looks great, but I can’t put my finger on why it looks so great”, it’s probably because the designer has applied some generous Leading to the text.

Leading is the word used to describe the space allocated between the lines of text in a block of type. Take a look at this example – at the top you’ve got a body of text with a default amount of leading applied, but the text on the page below that has a more generous leading. And it’s clear to see which one looks more clear and legible…

Leading is super simple to edit in InDesign; you can find the option to adjust it in the Character Formatting Controls panel, below the Font Size option:

2. T r a c k i n g

Tracking is the second of the typography ‘Big Four’ you should make a note of. Tracking defines the space between all characters (letters) in a section of text.

Upping the Tracking of type can make it instantly more legible, attractive and high-impact, without needing to increase the Font Size or adjust the Font Weight (e.g. to Bold or Black). Take a look at these two example chapter headings from the typesetting for an edition of Moby Dick. The lower example, with its increased Tracking, looks a bit more interesting, no?

You can find the option to adjust Tracking in InDesign, up in the Character Formatting Controls panel (when you have the Type Tool (T) selected), just along from the All Caps section. It’s symbolised by a two letters, ‘AV’ and a double-ended arrow. Hover over the icon and you’ll see that InDesign reminds you that this is for increasing or decreasing Tracking. 

By default, when you create any new text, the Tracking will be set to 0. But you can pick from a range of options for the spacing of your letters. You can reduce the space by picking from the negative values, giving the text a more compressed appearance, or you can choose to increase the spacing.

3. Kerning

Kerning is a much more subtle typographic technique, but it can really transform your type, and elevate it to a super-professional level. Kerning increases the space between individual characters, and it’s a great technique for evening out text that looks a little off-balance. It’s a particularly useful feature for transforming logos and headings.

Take a look at this example and play a game of ‘spot-the-difference’! If you think the lower heading looks a little more even and symmetrical you’d be right – a little bit of kerning between a couple of the letters has helped space out some of the characters that were a bit closer together.

To adjust Kerning in InDesign, set your type cursor between the two letters, head back up to the Character Formatting Controls panel and find the Kerning option just above the Tracking option. Click the arrow to the right of the text box to increase the space between the two letters by 10 units at a time.

4. Drop Caps

Another really cool typography feature in InDesign which can really pull your designs together is the option to apply a Drop Cap to your text.

A Drop Cap pulls out the first letter or few letters of a paragraph to a larger size, in units of lines of text. You can find the Drop Cap Number of Lines and Drop Cap One or More Characters options in the Character Formatting Controls panel, just along from the alignment and indent settings.A Drop Cap is a great technique for drawing attention to the start of a large body of text, and gives books, magazines and brochures a formal, elegant appearance. In this example, I’ve set the Drop Cap Number of Lines to 4.

For a quirkier typographic effect, you can increase the Drop Cap One or More Characters to pull more characters into the Drop Cap. Here, I’ve increased the Drop Cap One or More Characters to 4.

PRO TIP: Give your Drop Cap more breathing space by pushing the rest of the text further away from the Drop Cap. Set your cursor between the Drop Cap letter and the first letter of the remaining text, and increase the Kerning to move all the text adjacent to the Drop Cap.

Refresh your knowledge of typography basics with Part One of this tutorial or find some font inspiration for magazines, books, or print design to get started with using your typographic skills!

To learn more about using InDesign and expanding your skillset pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post Crash Course: How to Format Text Part 2 appeared first on InDesignSkills.

In the first part of this two-part tutorial, we’ll give you a crash course in the basics of typography in InDesign, and find out:

• What ‘Typography’ actually is, and how you can create it in InDesign
• How you can format your text using the Character and Paragraph Formatting Controls panels

1. What is ‘Typography’ and How Do I Create it in InDesign?

InDesign is designed to give you flexibility and professional control over your typography.

What do we mean by ‘typography’? Well, typography is a term we use to describe text that has been specially formatted to create a particular look—typography can transform text from dull and illegible to beautiful and clear to read.

Here, the designer has transformed the text on this magazine cover to give it a playful, lively and 3D appearance. Check out more examples of creative typography in print design here.

Magazine: Harper’s Bazaar España; Publisher: SpainMedia

InDesign is designed to give you flexibility in formatting your typography. Because it’s a publishing design application, InDesign’s main focus is on helping you to create layouts, and text is a fundamental element of any layout. Master the basics of typography and there’s no limit to what you can produce in InDesign.

To create typographic effects in InDesign, you first need to select the Type Tool (T) from the Tools panel, and drag onto the page to create a text frame.

Place your type cursor into the frame to type some text, or import a Word document. Now you’re ready to apply formatting, and transform your text from simple type to extraordinary typography!

2. Get Familiar with the Character Formatting Controls panel…

…Let’s take a good look at the Controls panels which are going to allow us to apply formatting to text. You can find these up at the top of the InDesign workspace.

Just below the Application Bar, where you can see the InDesign logo, is the Controls panel. With just the default Selection Tool active, the Controls panel just shows navigational options, such as the position of your cursor on the page.

If we go over to the Tools panel, which is docked on the left-hand side of the Workspace, and click the ‘T’ symbol to select the Type Tool (T), and then click and drag on the page to create a text frame, you’ll notice that the Controls panel has suddenly changed.

Now there’s a small ‘A’ symbol to the far left of the panel. This indicates that the panel is now showing all the Character Formatting Controls. This includes all the options you need for formatting type.

So if I click into a text frame I’ve created and type in the word ‘Foodie’ and then highlight the word, I can start to play around with the look of the text using what’s available to me in this control panel.

First up, you can change the Font of the text. Click on the little arrows symbol to the right of this box, which should have Minion Pro set as its default, and you’ll find a long drop-down menu of all the fonts you have installed on your computer.

Let’s scroll down to ‘G’ and pick Gill Sans. And then just below the menu of fonts, or from the drop-down menu next to the font itself in the font list, we can also pick the Weight of the font – such as Bold, Italic, Light, SemiBold, etc.

We can adjust the Size of the text from up here too, which is measured out in points, by either selecting a value from the drop-down menu or by manually typing in a size directly into the box. 

3. Expand your Typographic Know-How with the Paragraph Formatting Controls panel…

…Now take a look at the far left of the Controls panel, where you can see the ‘A’ symbol. Below that there’s a little paragraph icon. Click on that and the Controls panel shifts again. Now we’re viewing the Paragraph Formatting Controls panel.

This panel has everything you need to use to format a whole paragraph of text. There are some things that are repeated here with the Character Formatting Controls panel, things like Font and Font Size options are still here, but they’ve been shifted over to the right side of the panel. Back over to the left-hand side, we’ve got all these new options to play with.

There are lots of new options that apply to larger sections of text. So if I just click my type cursor into this ‘New equipment and fittings for the home’ section of text in a text frame I created earlier, from the Paragraph Formatting Controls panel we can adjust things like the Alignment of the text, from this first section of the panel, and also apply things like Indents from the next section along.

Further along, you can also see a little check-box next to ‘Hyphenate’ which you can uncheck if you don’t want InDesign to split your words with hyphens, and instead tell it to push whole words onto the following line.

Basically whatever you set here, up in the Controls panel, will apply to just the paragraph of text that you have either highlighted or positioned your cursor into.

To recap, if you want to format isolated pieces of text, whether that’s several characters, words or phrases, you can use the Character Formatting Controls panel options, which will appear automatically when you select the Type Tool from the Tools panel.

If you want to format larger portions of text, like whole paragraphs, and be able to effect things like Alignment of text and Indents, you should click the paragraph symbol in the panel to switch to the Paragraph Formatting Controls panel. 

Get friendly with both of the Controls panel, and you’ll be able to format your typography really quickly and easily!

Check out Part Two of this tutorial to find out why you should get friendly with the Big Four of Typography: Leading, Tracking, Kerning and Drop Caps.

For more useful InDesign tutorials and tips pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post Crash Course: How to Format Text Part 1 appeared first on InDesignSkills.

Consider everything listed here and in Part One, and there’s no need to fear sending your work to the press. Here in Part Two we’ll take you through:

• Why you should export to ‘Reader’s Spreads’

• How to accommodate for trimming and binding

• Choosing paper weights and finishes

• How to export and package your InDesign work

• Asking for a proof and providing a mock-up

• How to pick the right printing method for the job

1. Why you should export to ‘Reader’s Spreads’, not ‘Printer’s Spreads’

If you’re creating a document with multiple pages, such as a book, for sending to print, you might notice from existing examples of printed books that a page in the first chapter of a book is often physically connected to a page in the last chapter, forming a single spread.

The printed book has been put together by the printer using ‘Printer’s Spreads’. This is when the printer rearranges the order of the pages in order for the book to be bound.

Your job, however, is not to export your ‘print-ready’ file set up as Printer’s Spreads. It’s much simpler, both for you and the printer, if you set up your document as ‘Reader’s Spreads’, i.e. how the reader would actually view the document, page 1, then page 2, then page 3 etc.

Let the printer do their job (they’re pretty good at it, after all) – they will be able to arrange your print-ready file in the way that will work best for them to print and bind.

As a bonus, you’ll spare everyone a whole load of confusion at the press when you try to explain why page 2 is sat opposite page 15 (even more confusing if you haven’t included page numbers on your design!). This little parrot is just really confused about your attempt at Printer’s Spreads…

So don’t even go there – just export the file in the same page order that you’ve been working on in InDesign.

You should also include any blank pages that feature in your multi-page document, whether it’s a few pages at the beginning of a book, or the reverse side of some pages in an annual report. Sure, they don’t contain anything that needs to be actually printed, but including them in your exported file will help your printer understand the structure of the document, and accommodate for any blank pages you want included in the final print product.

2. Accommodate for trimming and binding

Once your design is printed, it will be trimmed. The excess parts of the paper (including the Slug and Bleed) will be cut away, leaving your final layout intact, up to the trim edge.

You should be aware that trimming errors can and do happen (printers are only human after all), but you can minimise the visibility of any slight trimming errors by doing two things. Firstly, as we mentioned over in Part One, you should include a Bleed.

A bleed is an extra space around the perimeter of your layout that extends past the edge of the page(s). You should always include a bleed if any elements (e.g. images, colored backgrounds) on your layout will cross the edge of the page (also known as the trim edge).

The second thing you can do to minimise trimming errors is to make your Margins lovely and wide. Margins that are narrow will appear even more narrow if the trim is out by a millimetre or two. So make sure you give your document generous margins (at least as wide as the InDesign default width of 12.7 mm). If in doubt, make them wider – while also minimising the visibility of a poor trim job, wide margins will also give your layouts room to breathe and make them look instantly more attractive.

3. Choose the right paper weight and finish

When you first start to draft your design on the computer, consider what sort of material your design will be printed on. Different paper weights and finishes can dramatically effect your final print result, and you should have a good idea of the sort of ‘look’ you’d like to achieve before you commit the work to print.

Design by Rita Neves

Firstly, you should choose a suitable Paper Weight (and I don’t mean a nice weighty stone that keeps your desk papers together). Paper comes in a large range of different ‘weights’, measured in GSM (Grams per Square Meter), which will effect how thick the paper feels. Thicker papers tend to be of better quality (and are therefore usually more expensive). You should feel confident selecting an appropriate paper weight that’s going to suit the item you’re printing (and your budget!).

Here are our recommendations for paper weights:

• If you are printing a newspaper a low GSM would be suitable, something between 35 and 55 GSM.
• Flyers or low-market brochures might need a slightly heavier paper, around 110 to 160 GSM.
• Magazine covers tend to be on the heavier side, from around 180 GSM for a mid-market title, edging up to over 250 GSM for a high-end glossy.
• For a sturdier card weight, like a business card, you should be looking at upwards of 350 GSM to give a luxurious, weighty feel.

You also should know a bit about Paper Finishes. Your printer will ask you to provide a combination of paper specifications for the job – your desired weight and finish. Finishes fall into two main categories – Coated and Uncoated.

Uncoated paper is a suitable choice for printing letterhead, stationery or lower-quality leaflets and flyers. The feel of the finish is smoother and stronger than standard copy paper.

Coated paper falls into two sub-groups – matte-coated and gloss-coated. Matte-coated gives a smooth, unglossy finish and can give your print documents a modern, pared-back look. Gloss-coated paper is smooth and with a slightly reflective finish, giving your documents a glossy, high-end look. Because the ink sits on the surface of the coating, rather than absorbing into the paper, colors appear more vibrant and rich.

This parrot would love to be printed on gloss-coated paper if possible:

4. Exporting and Packaging your InDesign files

Once you’ve completed your InDesign work, and feel ready to go to print, you can export your design as a print-ready file. In theory this print-ready file is suitable for going straight to press.

It’s a wise idea to get in touch with the printer first and see if they have a preferred format for print-ready files. Most printers would probably prefer a Press Quality PDF (Portable Document Format) version of your design, but they might also accept files in other CMYK-compatible formats, such as high-resolution (minimum 300 dpi) JPEG or TIFF files.

To export your InDesign document, go to File > Export on the main menu and choose Adobe PDF (Print) from the Format drop-down menu in the Export window.

In the Export Adobe PDF window that opens, choose [Press Quality] from the Adobe PDF Preset menu.

You should also make sure to export your print-ready file with the Bleed included. If you’re exporting to a PDF format, you can check the option in the Export window to include a bleed.

You can also choose to include Printer’s Marks in your exported print-ready file, which includes trim and crop marks, center marks, and page information. These can be really useful to the printer when preparing your work for the press.

If your printer has requested the original InDesign, or ‘native’, files, this is because this gives the printer the freedom to re-export the file if they need to make any minor technical adjustments. You will need to Package your InDesign file before you send it. Check out this quick and simple tutorial on how to package your files.

5. Provide a mock-up and ask for a print proof

You can’t expect your printer to be a mind-reader; they can only work from what they have been given, in terms of the print-ready or native (e.g. InDesign, Photoshop etc.) files, as well as from your instructions given over email, phone or face-to-face in person. Before you commit to the print run, there are two things you can do that will really help your printer to complete the job in the way you want it to.

The first thing you can do is to create a physical mock-up of the document you are sending to print and share this with your printer. This is especially useful if your document has multiple pages or complicated elements like folds and die cuts, that might not be immediately obvious looking at the print-ready digital file only.

There’s no problem with your mock-up being a bit rough-and-ready, printed at home or at the office – just make sure it shows the final layout of the document clearly, and be sure to incorporate essential info like page numbers, for example. It might also be useful to indicate where pages should be printed on one side or both sides.

Once you’ve shared you mock-up with the printer, and handed over your print-ready file(s), ask if the printer can give you a professional print proof for checking and sign-off, before proceeding with the full print-run. Most printers will offer a proof at no extra cost to the agreed quote for the full print run, and you’d be amazed at how many errors and mistakes can be suddenly glaringly obvious when down on printed paper! Rectify the file if you need to, get a second proof if you have the time, and give the go-ahead for the full print-run only when you’re happy.

6. Pick the right printing method for the job!

Before you select the printer you’re going to use to print your designs, you should know a little about the main print services commercial printers use. The print process can differ depending on the printer, with some championing more traditional offset printing and others singing the praises of digital printing. Commercial printers generally fall into two camps (though some offer both services): Digital Printing or Offset Litho Printing.

Offset printing is a very common commercial printing process, suitable for high volumes. The image to be printed is burned onto a plate and then transferred (offset) from the plate to a rubber blanket, before transferring to the printing surface. Image quality in offset printing is high and the process is cost-efficient at high volumes, so it’s a popular and usually pretty safe choice.

Digital printing is less mechanical, so it takes less time to prepare for printing. As a result, turn-around times for print jobs are quicker, and printing at low-volumes is also better-value. The jury’s still out on whether image quality is quite as good as that offered by the offset printing process.

Either printing method could be suitable for your job, depending on your project’s requirements. Shop around your local area and check out what different printers are offering, in terms of price and quality, for each print method.

7. You’re ready to print…

…In this two-part tutorial (find Part One here) we’ve taken a look at some of the key things you need to think about when preparing your InDesign documents for print. Use the following as your essential checklist when you prepare and send an InDesign document for print.

• Remember to include a Bleed in your InDesign document
• Optimise colour for printing by using CMYK (and Spot Colours) only
• Check the legibility of type by printing a sample and asking others to read it
• Ensure all the images used in your design are high-resolution (more than 300 DPI)
• Export your InDesign file as ‘Reader’s Spreads’
• Accommodate for trimming errors by including a Bleed and increasing the width of margins
•  Think about which paper weight and finish will suit your print project
• Export and package your InDesign work ready for sending to the printer
• Provide the printer with a mock-up for multi-page or folded documents and ask for a print proof
• Pick the right printing method for the job (Digital or Offset Litho)

If you check off every item in this list you’re guaranteed to have no nasty shocks when the printer drops off that delivery box. And you’ll make this colourful, print-friendly macaw very, very happy…

Check out Part One of this tutorial to find out more about preparing your InDesign work for print. For more handy InDesign tips and tricks head over to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post How to Prepare Your InDesign Work for Print: Part 2 of 2 appeared first on InDesignSkills.

But there’s no need to panic! We’ll take you through the only checklist you’ll ever need for preparing and sending any InDesign document to print. In the first part of this two-part tutorial we’ll look at:

• Why you should never forget about the Bleed!

• How to optimise colour for printing

• How to maximise the legibility of text

• How to print your images at the highest quality possible

Check out Part Two of this tutorial to find out about exporting your work to ‘Reader’s Spreads‘, choosing paper weights and finishes and selecting the right printing method for the job.

1. Don’t forget the Bleed!

It’s a printer’s worst (and without a doubt most common) nightmare – receiving a ‘print-ready’ file from a customer that doesn’t have a bleed. Don’t be that customer!

Be nice to your friendly neighbourhood printer and be sure to include a bleed (and export it) when you set up your document on the computer.

Familiarise yourself with what a bleed is, how to set one up on your InDesign work, and how to export your print-ready file with a bleed included, by clicking here.

2. Optimise your colour for print

Every macaw worth his salt knows that colour is at the heart of the print process.

A combination of coloured inks (even if your document is only in black and white) creates your printed result. Get familiar with the main rules for printing colour, and you’ll feel much more confident about creating layouts that look as good on printed paper as they do on your computer screen.

First up, always remember to render your InDesign work in CMYK, not RGB.

You should (almost; see comments on Spot Colors below) always set colour in your print layouts in a CMYK colour mode. CMYK refers to the four inks that are used in four-color printing, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black). Each colour in your design will be printed using a combination of these four inks.

You should never set your print documents in an RGB color mode (even if you’ve been working in an RGB file, make sure to convert the file on export to CMYK). RGB (which is rendered through interaction of Red, Green and Blue light) is only suitable for layouts that will be viewed online or in digital format on screen.

Though you will almost always print using CMYK, you should also be aware of when it’s appropriate to include Spot Colours in your print-ready files. Spot, sometimes termed ‘Solid’, colors, are created by an ink, either pure or mixed, that is printed on a single print run.

What this means is that if you choose to include a Spot color (e.g. a Pantone color, or metallic or fluorescent inks) in your print design, the printer will have to prepare a completely separate plate for the spot color to be printed.

Including Spot colours in your artwork can have its advantages – the final colour result is often much more accurate (more spot-on!), with less colour variation. On larger print runs using Spot colours can even be more economical (if you’re dealing with three or less than three colors). However, on short print runs including Spot colors in your designs can be pricey; make sure you get a quote from your printer before you incorporate a Spot color into your design.

3. Maximise the legibility of text

This parrot doesn’t have fantastic eyesight.

He struggles to read text set at a small 10 pt size, and he’s certainly not alone. Even if your eyesight is fantastic, others may struggle to read small-size text without some difficulty.

What this ill-sighted parrot demonstrates is that you must aim to get your text sizing right! A common issue you may encounter when sending your work to print is that the size of text appears too big or too small. Type Size is really important to get right, as illegible documents, however good-looking, will be immediately off-putting to a reader.

Also consider choosing appropriate font sizing to suit both the document type and the audience for the document. Who will be reading my brochure/poster/book? Will they be expected to spend more time reading it (e.g. a book layout) or will it only be attracting a quick glance (e.g. a flyer or poster)?

If you’re creating layouts for a book, it’s probably OK to size type a little on the smaller side (pick up some tips on how to create book layouts in InDesign with this tutorial), but you might need to amp up the size of text on a flyer, to make sure you catch and hold the attention of a casual reader.

The best way to make sure you’re using the right font size is to print out a sample of the layout at actual size, and ask a few colleagues or (patient) friends to look it over. How many people in your sample found the size OK to read? If fewer than 90% of your sample had difficulty with the type size, change it!

Related to the size of text, and equally important, is also the Weight of the typeface – is it too thin and faint when printed? Do you need to set that sentence in Bold to make it stand out? Can you draw the eye to something important or different by applying an Italic weight, for example?

4. Ensure your graphics are printed in high-resolution

Every macaw (and I mean every macaw) wants their photos to be printed in crisp and clear high-resolution. Including these two. They’ll get pretty angry otherwise…

If you’re including graphics in your print layout, whether that’s photos or illustrations, you have to make sure they are of high enough resolution to print. Low-resolution images produce blurry, pixelated print results. High-resolution graphics, by contrast, will look sharp and clear when you go to the printing press.

You should be aware from the start, when you begin to put together your layouts in InDesign, that different image formats can appear very different on the printed page.

Photographs often cause the most misery when producing print layouts – this is because they are Bitmap graphics, not vectors. Bitmap graphics (e.g. JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD) are made up of a number of tiny pixels. If you resize a bitmap graphic, and then resave it, some of the quality of the original image can be lost (particularly problematic with JPEG images), which results in a more pixelated image. You should make sure that your bitmap images have a high rate of DPI (see comments on DPI below) before you include them in your print designs.

Vector graphics, like Illustrator (AI) and EPS file formats, are made up of scalable objects, and as a result will not lose their quality if resized.

The final word on image format is as long as the quality of the image(s) is high (the DPI is high [more than 300 DPI as a rough guide]), there’s no reason why both bitmap and vector graphics can’t work equally well in your print layouts.

You must also learn to recognise the difference between image size and image quality. Say a colleague or client has sent over a JPEG image that they want you to use in your design, and from what you can see, the file size is OK – between 3 and 5 MB. But then you open up the file and see that the image appears pixelated and, frankly, a bit rubbish. What gives?

The picture of the parrot on the left is the same file size as the image of the parrot on the right, but the DPI for the left-hand image is higher, which results in a crisper, clearer image.

Even though the file size of the image is usually a good indicator of quality, the quality of a bitmap image is not determined by the size of the file, or even the dimensions of the image. Quality is determined by DPI (Dots per Inch). DPI describes the resolution number of dots per inch that make up the colors and tones of an image.

You should always aim for a high DPI count for any image you’re hoping to use in a print layout. If your options are exhausted, and you have to use a slightly blurry or pixelated image, with a lower DPI, consider first upping the DPI manually in Photoshop and then setting it a reduced scale in your design. Remember that pixelation and blurring will appear much more obvious on the printed page than it will on screen.

Check out Part Two of this tutorial to find out more about preparing, exporting and sending your InDesign work to print. For more useful InDesign tips and tricks pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post How to Prepare Your InDesign Work for Print: Part 1 of 2 appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• How you can use the Info panel in InDesign to conduct a word-count

• How you can find out other information about your InDesign document using the Info panel

1. What is the Info panel?

The Info panel is going to give you a lot of info about your document, unsurprisingly…

…Let’s get the panel opened up. To do this, go to the Window option on the menu bar and select Info from the drop-down menu.

It’s about a third of the way down. Or, you could just tap F8 on the keyboard to open it up.

So here it is – the Info panel.

It’s a tiny little panel but it’s quite powerful, and from this you can do a number of useful tasks to do with text, which can be particularly useful if you’re working with a text-heavy document like a book or a magazine, and you might need to check some details either to pass on to a colleague or to the publisher. 

2. How Do I Use the Info panel?

You can conduct a word-count, a character-count, a paragraph-count and also a line-count from the Info panel.

At the moment, the panel’s looking a bit empty, but that’s because you’ve not got any of the text in the document selected.

Let’s just show you how the Info panel works. To demonstrate, I’m going to navigate to the first page of a magazine document in InDesign (Learn how to create a magazine from scratch with our series of tutorials here).

Select the Type Tool from the Tools panel (or hit T on the keyboard). You can either highlight the text in a text frame, or if you just want to make a count of all the text that’s sat in the text frame, and might be linked to other text frames, you can just simply sit your cursor somewhere in the text in the frame.

So here I click once into the ‘Fresh Autumn Flavors!’ sub-heading, and the Info panel pauses for a moment before the lower half of the panel fills with information about the text in that frame. The Info panel’s telling us that there are 21 characters in this frame, 3 words, 3 lines, and 2 paragraphs.

So that may not be so useful if you’re just looking at a sub-heading, but if we want to find out the word count of a much larger piece of text that can be much more useful.

Now if I take our Type cursor and just highlight all the text in the first column on this page of the magazine document, beginning with the text ‘JO JAN travels to Maine…’, we will just get text counts for the highlighted text only appearing in the Info panel.

In this first column we’ve got about 140 words, and 3 paragraphs.

But if we just place the cursor anywhere in that text frame, or in one of the text frames it’s connected to, we’ll get a full text count for all the text that sits in those linked frames, and it will include text that’s flowing over onto other pages as well. Here we can tell that the article has 837 words, for example. 

Now imagine if you’ve got a scenario where you need to be keeping within a specified word count for a long document, like a book, for example. Just by placing your Type cursor in one of the text frames in the document and opening the Info panel, you’re equipped to find out the total word count of the document instantly (depending on whether all the text frames are successfully threaded to each other).

The Info panel is a useful little InDesign function to be aware of. It can be especially useful when you come to the editing stages of a text-heavy document – it’s good to know that you can retrieve quite a bit of detail about the quantity of text by simply going to Window > Info.

Click to find out more about creating InDesign documents or How to add a bleed to your print designs. To find more useful InDesign tips and tricks pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: How to Conduct a Word-Count appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• The basics of color theory, including the three main color models – RGB, CMYK and Spot Color
• How you can change and manage InDesign’s color mode

1. What is RGB Color and When Do I Use It?

‘RGB’ stands for Red, Green and Blue. RGB color is rendered through the emission of light from the screen of a digital device.

The light generated by your device’s screen, so whether that’s a desktop or laptop computer, a tablet, or an eBook reader, is made up of red, blue and green light, which combine in different ways to create different colors.

Because RGB color is created via colored light, not colored ink, it is optimised for digital and web design, not print design. So, you should only be looking to use an RGB Color Mode when creating designs for digital publishing (e.g. eBooks) or for online use (e.g. web banners).

Skip to the end of the page to find out how you can adjust InDesign’s Color Mode…

2. What is CMYK Color and When Do I Use It?

CMYK color is very different to RGB color, as CMYK is based on a combination of coloured inks, not light.

‘CMYK’ stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (which is Black). These four colours are the base inks which can be combined to create a huge spectrum of different colors.

Because CMYK is based on a combination of colored inks, it’s ideally suited for creating documents for print.

So basically, whenever you’re working on a document you think at some point will be printed in some way or another, whether that’s at home, in-office or through a commercial printer, you should always be working in a CMYK Colour Mode.

When you set colours in your InDesign document to CMYK color swatches, you create a Process Separation. What does this mean? This means that all the CMYK colours on your layout will be printed onto one plate during the printing process, in one single print run. Because CMYK color can be printed in one go, on a single print run, this keeps the printing process efficient and the cost of the print job low (depending on the print volume).

3. What is a ‘Spot’ Color and When Do I Use It?

What can be mind-boggling is that CMYK is not the only type of colour model that is suitable for printing. You can also use something called Spot Colors in your print designs.

OK…so what’s a Spot Color? When you define a color in your InDesign document as a Spot Color, the color will be pulled onto a separate printing plate and the color will have to be printed during a separate print run. This is called a Spot Separation.

So, when would you want to use a Spot Color?

This can be useful if you want to ensure that a particular color is going to be printed very accurately, without any variation, and if this is what you’d like to achieve you can set the Spot Color as a Pantone Color.

Pantone is an international color-matching system, that gives standardised colour pigments a unique number. Pantone colours are more complex than CMYK colors, and can be made up from a combination of 13, rather than only 4 (for CMYK), base pigments. As a result you can source more unique and special colors from the Pantone catalogue.

You can also use a Spot Color in your designs when you want to print a special kind of ink, like metallics or flourescents, which don’t feature in the range of CMYK options.

4. OK…But When Should I Use CMYK and/or Spot Colors in InDesign?

Let’s simplify the CMYK and Spot Color systems, and break down when you would use either of the models or a combination of both on your InDesign work…

…If you’re creating an InDesign layout that uses more than three colours you shouldn’t normally need to use any Spot Color, unless like we’ve just talked about, if you want to create a particularly special color effect with a Pantone, metallic or fluorescent. In most cases, you should be looking at just setting your color in CMYK.

This is because the printer would have to perform a separate, additional print run for each Spot Color you apply to the document. This adds time and money to the print job. So if you’re creating something in full-color, you can feel confident that setting your whole document in CMYK is the best way to go.

If you do want to use a Spot Color in your design and keep your printing costs down, the best thing to do is create a black and white document which just uses one single pop of color, which you can set as a Spot Color. And because you’re not printing a full-color layout, that’s going to keep the print job more economical, particularly if you’re printing in large volumes.

If you’re still feeling a little confused about color – that’s OK, it is a bit confusing – just remember that 9 times out of 10 CMYK color is the way to go!

And the other key thing to remember is that you should never print in RGB color, unless you want some very unpredictable results. And you should only really need to use Spot Colors in special instances.

5. How Do I Adjust the Color Mode in InDesign?

When you first create a new document in InDesign, you can adjust the Color Mode of the document by setting the Intent of the document to Print (CMYK), Web (RGB) or Digital Publishing (RGB).

By choosing Print from the Intent drop-down menu, InDesign automatically sets the Color Mode of the new document to CMYK. All the default colours stored in the Swatches panel are set as CMYK Color Swatches.

However, this doesn’t actually prevent you from creating new Color Swatches that are RGB (not suitable if you’re creating for print) or Spot Color (can be OK, depending on your desired print result) swatches, or prevent you from placing graphics into your InDesign document that have an RGB colorspace.

As you work on your print documents you need to keep an eye out that you’re sticking to CMYK colours. And the best way to do this is to manage colour in InDesign, which you can do from the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches).

Click to find out more about creating InDesign documents or How to add a bleed to your print designs. To find more useful InDesign tips and tricks pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: The Beginner’s Guide to Color appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• What the heck is a Bleed??
• When do I need to use a Bleed?
• How do I add a Bleed to my InDesign document?
• How do I export my document, including the Bleed?

1. So…what exactly is a Bleed?

This is a really common question, so don’t worry if you don’t know (or think you know, but aren’t completely sure!).

A Bleed is the area just extending past the edge of the page, past the trim edge. So here in this diagram you can see the edge of the bleed marked out skirting around the outer edge of the page.

A Bleed acts as a margin of error when the document is trimmed, after it’s been printed. So, if you have any content that will cross the edge of the page, such as a coloured background or maybe an image, you should extend it into the bleed to avoid any white lines appearing around the edge of your document. Printers are human after all – trimming errors can happen, and they are just an inevitable part of the print process. This could just be a tiny millimetre-wide margin of error, but if you don’t extend your content into a bleed, it will still be visible.

By including a bleed in your InDesign documents you can help to make your final print product look flawless, and minimise the visibility of any trimming errors.

2. When do I need to use a Bleed?

A Bleed is essential to include if you’re creating any document for print. The rule for applying a bleed in InDesign is as follows:

If you’re creating a single page document you can set a bleed all the way around the document.

But if you’re creating a document with facing pages, that’s going to be bound, like a book, you don’t need to include a bleed on the inside edge. Firstly, because nobody’s going to see it, as the page edge will be sucked into the bind, and second, because if you export the InDesign document as a spread (not as single pages), the bleeds on the inside edges (the inside is the edge of the page that will be bound) will cross onto the opposite page, which is unsightly, like in the example below.

This magazine spread was mistakenly set up with a 5 mm bleed on the Inside Edge, but on exporting the spread as a PDF, it becomes apparent that the content of the inside bleed has spilled onto each opposing page. You can see that the image of the fish has crossed the central page divider, and spilled into the image of the boats.

If you’re creating a document made up of facing pages, that you’re intending to bind, be sure to set the bleed on the Top, Bottom and Outside edges only. We’ll take a look at how you can set up your bleed in InDesign next.

3. Add a Bleed to your InDesign document

It’s best to set up your InDesign document with a bleed before you start working on your document. You can add a bleed later, by going to File > Document Setup, but it can be fiddly as InDesign will only apply your revised settings to the pages you currently have selected.

The best place to start is right at the beginning of the process, in the New Document window. When you go to File > New > Document to create a new InDesign document (or select New > Document from the Welcome window), the option to apply a bleed to your document is down at the bottom of the New Document window, just above Slug.

In this example, I want to create the inside pages for a paperback book. Because the pages are going to be bound in the center of each spread, I won’t need a bleed on the Inside edge.

I type in 3 mm into the Top Bleed text box, then click the chain icon at the far right of the Outside text box to break the uniform values, and get rid of the bleed on the Inside edge, reducing it to 0 mm. Once I’ve set up the rest of my document I can close the panel and create the new document by clicking OK.

4. Export your InDesign document with a Bleed

Once you’ve finished your InDesign artwork and are ready to export it to a print-ready format, you should ensure that your beautiful bleed is exported along with the rest of the document.

The best way to prepare a print-ready file is to export the document as a PDF. Go to File > Export and select Adobe PDF (Print) from the drop-down menu in the Export window.

Click Save.

In the Export Adobe PDF window, under the General options, select [Press Quality] from the Adobe PDF Preset drop-down menu.

From the menu on the left-hand side of the window select Marks and Bleeds to open up a new set of options.

Under Marks, check All Printer’s Marks.

To ensure your carefully prepared bleed is included in the final exported file, check Use Document Bleed Settings under Bleed and Slug.

Click Export at the bottom right corner of the window to create your PDF file. Your file will now include your predefined bleed, and is ready to send to the printers.

Adding a bleed to your InDesign documents is essential when creating documents that will be printed professionally. Avoid unsightly trim errors (or even worse a lecture from your disgruntled printer!) by being sure to include a bleed in all your InDesign work. To find out more about setting up documents in InDesign, check out our detailed look at the New Document panel here. To find more useful InDesign tips and tricks pay a visit to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: What is a Bleed and When Do I Use It? appeared first on InDesignSkills.

In this article we’re going to analyse what Adobe applications have to offer in simple terms, and look at:

• When to use InDesign for a design project

• The benefits of combining multiple Adobe applications to achieve your end result

• Why we think InDesign is the most versatile and creative Adobe design application available

You may be new to using InDesign and still not feel completely confident that you know when to use InDesign.

Sure, you may have heard that InDesign is the industry-standard software for publishing design – but what does that mean? And what does that blanket term encompass? Let’s break it down into simple, straightforward terms…

When should I use other Adobe applications?

So, say your boss gives you a project that requires some design input. How do you know if you should be firing up InDesign, or looking for a different application to tackle the task? This is a really commonly asked question, because quite simply there are tons of different software options out there for performing design tasks. The range of choices can be overwhelming!

It has to be said that Adobe is king of all that is desktop design. Adobe offers a huge range of applications, which are designed to work together in harmony to produce super professional results.

It’s important to know that there are other Adobe applications out there that can support your InDesign workflow. If you have access to Creative Cloud (CC) you will have access to a suite of applications, all of which are fine-tuned to work in-sync with each other.

First up, quite possibly the most used tool by designers is Photoshop. Photoshop is great for editing images. You can play around with filters and masks to dramatically transform and combine raster pictures (image files made up of pixels); it’s also a great tool for playing around with colour.

Second up, Illustrator. Illustrator is a fantastic image-editing programme designed to work with vector images, not raster. Vector images are scalable and are made up of lines and anchor points.

Photoshop and Illustrator, together with InDesign, make up the trinity of Adobe design applications. If you want to create anything for print, you can get by very well indeed with just these three guys.

Then there’s also Bridge, which, as its name implies, is a bridging tool for use between applications. Bridge helps you preview, filter and organise the contents of your computer, allowing you to easily drop in images into applications while you work.

And then on top of these core Creative Suite programmes, there are all these other extra applications which will make your brain spin! Web design applications are being created and enhanced all the time – Dreamweaver is a code-based web-design programme, then there’s Flash for creating flash video files, Fireworks for image editing for web, and Muse, which is Adobe’s newer web-design offering. Adobe have also released applications specifically designed to engage with responsive and mobile web design – Edge Reflow, Edge Animate, Edge Code and Edge Inspect.

Then you’ve also got applications that delve into photo management (Lightroom), copywriting and editing (InCopy) and video production and editing (Premiere Pro and After Effects).

Phew! That’s a lot to take in! But all you need to be aware of, for any layout* project you’re tackling, is these four programmes – InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Bridge. Plus of course Adobe Acrobat is essential if you’re producing documents that are going to be print-ready.

Photoshop, Illustrator and Bridge all work intuitively with InDesign. You can use Photoshop to edit images before you place them into your InDesign documents. You can create vectors in Illustrator for adding illustrated content to your InDesign layouts. And you can make use of Bridge as a useful go-between for managing your images.

OK…but when should I use InDesign specifically?

It’s great to know you have the option to access all these different applications when you’re working on a design project – it’s like you have a little support network, and with the new release of Creative Cloud 2015 that support base is only going to grow and evolve further. But here’s the big secret that few designers will tell you but many designers know…

…all you need to use is InDesign.

You can apply basic editing and effects to images in InDesign. You can also create simple vector illustrations using the Tools available in InDesign.

If you need to create a layout with a combination of text, images and colour, or with either text or images alone, you can cope without a problem by simply using InDesign alone.

So long as you’re not creating images from scratch, 9 times out of 10 you can just use InDesign and not need to use any other programme.

If you want to focus on the quality of your text and typography, and have maximum control over design and content, InDesign is your new best friend. The formatting options are endless, and you can also exercise control over content with things like the Spell Check and Footnotes functions.

Ultimately, if you want to be creative in your designs and not be limited by performing tasks on a computer, InDesign is superb for enabling your creativity.

It’s just like having a pen or pencil in your hand, and a designer’s worktop in front of you – the flexible workplace means you can play around with different looks and layouts really easily.

And that’s why InDesign is awesome – you can use it in conjunction with other Adobe software, or on its own – either way you’re going to be able to create something both fantastically creative and professionally polished.

So you’re saying I only ever need to use InDesign?

Erm, nope, that’s not exactly what we’re saying…

…This is certainly not a call for you to instantly delete your other Creative Suite applications – just know that InDesign is the most versatile application of the bunch, and as a result can help you tackle a huge range of tasks. If you’re producing layouts for print, digital and even online, Adobe InDesign is your guy.

You should treat other Adobe applications, Illustrator, Photoshop and Bridge, as a support network. Dip in and out of them; using them to edit, create or organise more complex images to incorporate into your InDesign layouts.

Develop a broader and more flexible work pattern, using InDesign predominantly for creating, drafting and finalising layouts, and you’ll quickly see your workflow speed improve and your creative potential expand.

Ready to learn more about using InDesign? To find more useful InDesign tips and tricks head over to our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post The Adobe Overview: When to Use InDesign appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• How to create Character Styles and Paragraph Styles

• How to create Object Styles

• How to apply your saved Styles to elements in your InDesign document

Step 1: Find and Open the Styles panels

You can find all the Styles panels by going to Window > Styles. Here you’ll find five options for applying styles to different elements. When you open a particular Style panel, you’ll notice that they group with other related Style windows.

Character Styles and Paragraph Styles can both be applied to text. A Character Style remembers formatting for single characters, words or phrases. A Paragraph Style will remember the formatting applied to a whole paragraph (a section of text separated from other text by line breaks).

Table, Table Styles and Cell Styles are grouped together in one panel.

Object Styles has its own panel (Window > Styles > Object Styles). You can apply an Object Style to graphics, shapes and frames.

Step 2: Create and Apply a Character Style

Once you’ve formatted a letter, word or phrase, you can save your edits as a Character Style, to apply to other parts of your text with ease. In this example, for a magazine layout, I have set the first word of a short extract in a decorative font, LeckerliOne Regular, and set the size to 32 pt and the colour to a dark red CMYK swatch. The text is also aligned center.

Open the Character Styles panel (Window > Styles > Character Styles). Highlight the relevant text and either click on the small square icon at the bottom right of the panel (Create new style) or select New Character Style from the panel’s drop-down menu.

The New Character Style window opens. You can give the style a recognisable name, and scroll through the formatting options from the left-hand menu; editing them further if you want to.

Click OK and the Style appears in the Character Styles panel. Highlight individual letters, words or phrases in the text of your document and simply click on the Style’s name in the panel to apply it.

Step 3: Create and Apply a Paragraph Style

To create a Paragraph Style, first format a single paragraph of text. You can apply a Drop Cap and Indents, as well as Font, Size, Weight, Leading, Tracking and Alignment.

You can then either place your cursor somewhere in the paragraph or highlight the paragraph before selecting New Paragraph Style from the Paragraph Styles (Window > Styles > Paragraph Styles) panel’s drop-down menu.

You’ll notice there are two sets of menus running along the left-hand side of the panel. The top menu lists the formatting attributes already applied to the text, but you can add further attributes from the bottom menu. Check the Preview box to see your edits as you go.

You can also create a Nested Style by selecting Drop Cap and Nested Styles from the left-hand menu. This allows you to ‘nest’ a Character Style within the Paragraph Style, allowing you to define more specific formatting rules for some characters in the paragraph.

When you’re happy with the settings you’ve defined for the Style and given the Style a name, back under the General options, click OK.

You can apply the Style to a paragraph by resting your cursor in a paragraph of text and clicking the name of the Style in the Paragraph Styles panel.

Step 4: Create and Apply an Object Style

You can apply an Object Style to graphics, shapes and frames. Formatting attributes like Fill, Stroke (colour and weight), gradients and transparencies, as well as text wrap settings, can be saved as an Object Style and applied to objects. Open the Object Styles panel by going to Window > Styles > Object Styles.

As an example, this polygon, with a solid white Fill and a decorative dark red Stroke, is being used as a background shape for a magazine layout (the text frame is separate from the polygon, and layered on top).

Select just the shape alone (you can also copy formatting from a text or image frame) and select New Object Style from the drop-down menu in the Object Styles panel.

In the window that opens give the Style a name, here I’ve named the Style ‘Magazine – Polygon’.

The top left-hand menu lists attributes already applied to the shape, but you can add extra attributes from the bottom left-hand menu, such as transparency, drop shadow, bevel etc.

Once you’re happy with the formatting, click OK to add the Style to the Object Styles panel.

You can then apply the Object Style to other objects (frames, shapes) in your document. Click to select the shape you want to edit, then click once on the name of the Object Style in the Object Style panel.

In this example, you can see how the Style applies all the formatting characteristics of the original shape, such as the Fill Colour, Stroke Colour, Stroke Weight and Stroke Type, to this shape created using the Ellipse Tool (L), but the Style doesn’t alter the original shape of the shape/frame.

Get in the habit of using Styles and see your InDesign documents become more polished and the time spent formatting your designs cut dramatically. Build on your knowledge and develop more InDesign skills using our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: The Beginner’s Guide to InDesign Styles appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn how to Place images into your InDesign document

• Learn how to Link images, and rectify Missing Links using the Links and Preflight panels

Step 1: Understanding How Images Work in InDesign

The first key rule to remember is that images are Placed and Linked in InDesign. They are not embedded, as you might do with a Word Document or in Photoshop.

When you Place an image, InDesign remembers the Link to that image’s location in the relevant folder on your computer. This means you can work quickly and efficiently without dealing with a large quantity of heavy images slowing down your workflow. If you move an image to another location on your computer, i.e. another folder or drive, InDesign will be unable to locate the image and will flag up a warning in the Preflight panel (Window > Output > Preflight).

You can also spot an error relating to an image, which is missing or has been edited since you placed it, from the Links panel (Window > Links).

You can insert an image into an InDesign document by going to File > Place.

Step 2: Working with Frames

The second rule of images in InDesign is to remember that InDesign places images within a Frame. Whether you prepare a frame before placing the image, or you place the image straight into the document (File > Place) InDesign will contain the image within a four-sided frame by default.

You can choose from three Frame Shapes in the Tools panel (Window > Tools), Rectangle (F), Ellipse and Polygon. These are marked out as different to the Shape Tools by a x shape running through the centre of them.

Select a Frame Tool, and click and drag to create a frame (hold Shift to create a perfect shape).

With the frame selected, go to File > Place and select an image. Click Open.

You can arrange the image in the frame by double-clicking to select the image itself within the frame (it will be marked by a brown line around the edges) and holding Shift while readjusting.

Or you can choose from the options available to you in the control panel which appears at the top of the screen. Fill Frame Proportionally is usually a good option to pick; InDesign will resize the image to the size of the frame, and center the content.

You can resize the frame of an image with ease at any time, simply by moving the edges of the frame using the Selection Tool (V, Escape).

However, you will notice that this won’t have any effect on the size or location of the image itself. To select the image directly, double-click on the frame. A brown line will appear around the image, and a small hand icon will also appear, indicating that the image itself is selected.

You can adjust the size of the image, its position in the frame and you can also Rotate it manually or by performing the action Right-Click (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac OS) > Transform.

Step 3: Help! I’ve got an Error in my Preflight panel!

After inserting images, you can go to Window > Links to view the Links Panel and deal with any images that might be missing or images that have been edited since you placed the original file.

These will be flagged up with a ? (which indicates a missing file) or ! (which indicates a changed file) symbol.

Click on the name in the panel to select the missing image and select the chain-link icon at the bottom of the panel to locate the missing image on your computer.

You will notice that the same ‘chain link’ icon appears at the top left corner of an image frame when the image is successfully linked. Likewise, a ? or ! symbol will appear next to the image frame if the link is broken.

To find out about wrapping text around images, try reading this article. You can develop more basic skills from our beginner InDesign tutorials page.

The post InDesign Basics: Working with Images appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn about the InDesign Workspace

• Understand Master pages

• Learn how to navigate through your InDesign document using the Pages panel

Step 1: Locate/Open the Pages panel

When you click the OK button in the New Document window, InDesign creates a blank document set up to your specifications. If you’re used to working in a single-page programme, like Illustrator or Photoshop, or even a word-processing programme, like Microsoft Word or Pages, the way that documents are laid out and navigated through in InDesign can seem quite different and may not be immediately intuitive.

Unless you have set your Preferences to open a pre-defined Workspace, InDesign will open the workspace (the collection and arrangement of panels) in Essentials mode. You can view this, or alter the workspace to suit your specific purposes, from the top right of the control panel running along the top of your screen.

One of the most important, and useful, panels in InDesign is the Pages panel. This will open by default, or you can find it in the Window menu (Window > Pages). You will see that the panel is actually a group of three panels: Pages, Layers and Links.

The Layers panel allows you to manage layers in your document, just as you would in Photoshop or Illustrator. You can choose to View or Hide layers, and Lock or Unlock them, by clicking in the two square spaces to the left of the layer’s name in the panel.

The Links panel keeps track of the images you have placed into your document, and to which folders on your computer they are located (‘linked’ to).

Step 2: Managing Masters from the Pages panel

For now, let’s look more closely at the Pages panel. At the top of the panel you’ll see a section with two default Master pages, one single page named [None], and a second, a two-page spread, named A-Master.

To edit the A-Master, double-click the page icon in the panel to bring it up on screen. You can place elements on a Master page, and these will be applied in turn to all pages in the document that have that Master applied to them.

A letter, e.g. ‘A’, will appear at the top right corner of the relevant page icon in the panel, indicating which Master is being applied to that page. By default, all pages in your new document will have the A-Master applied to them.

To apply [None] (i.e. no Master) or a Master (e.g. A-Master) to a page, simply click and drag the Master’s page icon and drop onto a page in the lower section of the Pages panel.

To create a new Master, navigate to the drop-down menu accessible at the top-right of the Pages panel, and select New Master. In the New Master window you can give the Master a Prefix, a Name, and state whether it should be based on an existing Master (i.e. pick up the elements on that Master, and update the new Master accordingly, if you make changes to the original Master.)

Step 3: Navigating and Editing using the Pages panel

The lower half of the Pages panel shows the actual pages making up the document. When you print the document, only these pages will be printed, not the Master pages.

If you checked Facing Pages in the New Document window, the document will always begin on a right-hand page, whether you have an odd or even number of pages. This mimics the layout of a spread-based document, like a book or magazine.

The first page, unless otherwise specified, will be Page 1. You can navigate through your document by double-clicking on the page icons in the panel. The page which is currently up on screen will be highlighted in the panel.

To create a new page, which will be added after the page that is currently selected, click the Create New Page icon at the bottom right of the Pages panel. To delete a page, click the relevant page icon in the panel, and then click the trash-can icon at the bottom right corner of the panel.

Explore more super quick InDesign tutorials like this.

The post InDesign Basics: The Pages panel appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn how to use a grid as a guide for placing text and images

• Get creative with typography to create a vibrant, eye-catching layout

• Develop an eye for grouping and displaying images for a professional-standard layout

What you’ll create:

In this two-part tutorial we’ll be creating two complete spreads. Sign up to our mailing list to be alerted when the full Magazine course becomes available.

1. Select Images and Fonts for your Magazine Feature

Step 1

Let’s get started. Open InDesign. Go to File > Open and select Foodie Magazine Inside Pages.indd, which you saved at the end of Part One of the tutorial.

You have a 16 page document, with Facing Pages. The A-Master has been applied to pages 4 and 5 of the document, while the B-Master has been applied to pages 6 and 7.

Navigate down to page 4 of your document.

We’re going to apply a really fantastic typographic effect on this page, but before we do that we need to source a selection of photos that we can use across the whole feature. The images need to work well together, not only in terms of subject matter but also in terms of colour and quality. It’s a good idea to look for images which you can reuse, which can have a different ‘look’ if you show just the right-hand side, or the top left corner of the photo, for example.

These are the images I’ve used in this tutorial. You can download these by clicking on the links below, or pick similar images of your own preference:

An autumnal tart

A portrait of a woman

A rustic pot of honey

Figs and a slab of cheese

Purple figs on a metal platter

Once you’ve sourced your images, return to InDesign and go to Window > Mini Bridge (from CS6 onwards) to open Mini Bridge. From here, you can navigate to your folder of images and drop them in to your layout with ease.

Step 2

We’ll also need to select a couple of typefaces to use in our layout. In most magazines you will notice that a standardised ‘brand’ font will be used uniformly throughout the publication. This will be applied to body text, page numbers, running headers and some titles. In this tutorial we will use ITC Century Std, which we’ve already used for the page numbers on our Master pages.

It’s also a great idea to pick out a font which has a more decorative style, which you can use for the feature title and quotations. In this tutorial I’ve used the free font Leckerli One, which has a cheerful retro aesthetic.

2. Create a High-Impact Text Effect for the Opening Page

Step 1

Remaining on Page 4 of your InDesign document, select the Type Tool (T) and drag to create a large text frame that extends across most of the page.

Type Y into the frame and set the Font to Leckerli One, Size 650 pt. With the text frame selected, go to Type > Create Outlines to convert the letter into a shape.

From the control panel running along the top of the screen, adjust the Fill Colour of the letter to [None].

Step 2

Either drag and drop an image from Mini Bridge onto the shape, or, with the shape selected, go to File > Place and select an image. Your chosen image will fill the letter. Select Fill Frame Proportionally from the top control panel to arrange the image in the shape.

Ta-dah! A super easy but really effective technique for bringing high-impact to your magazine feature.

3. Build up the Layout of your Opening Spread

Step 1

Navigate to the bottom right corner of Page 4. Select the Type Tool (T) and drag to create a new text frame about 38 mm in Height and 103 mm in Width. Type ‘yum’ into the frame and set the Font to ITC Century Std Book, Size 150 pt, and Font Colour to a new CMYK Swatch, C=0 M=10 Y=11 K=34, a sandy beige colour.

Open the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches) and adjust the Tint percentage to 35%. Position the text frame as shown.

With the text frame selected, go to Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste. Repeat two more times and adjust the text content of each frame to read ‘u (space x 2) m’, ‘scrum!’ and ‘scrum’.

You can rotate one of the text frames by Right-Clicking (Windows) or Ctrl-Clicking (Mac OS) > Transform > Rotate 90 degrees Clockwise.

Introduce a couple of new colours via the Swatches panel, changing the Font Colour of some characters to [Paper] and others to a reddy-brown swatch, C=28 M=100 Y=97 K=34.

Manoeuvre the frames into the positions indicated below.

Step 2

Navigate to Page 5 of the spread and hit W on the keyboard to switch the Screen Mode to Normal, if not in that mode already. You can now see the guides marking out the columns on the page.

Select the Type Tool (T) and drag to create a small text frame 84 mm in Width and 80 mm in Height. Position this in the bottom right corner of the page, fitting the text frame snugly across the two far right columns.

Place your type cursor into the frame and set the Font to ITC Century Std Book, Size 11 pt. You can Edit > Paste in your chosen text for the feature or File > Place a Word document into the frame. If you’re just creating a design sample, you can go to Type > Fill with Placeholder Text to insert temporary text.

Highlight the first letter of the first paragraph, or simply place your cursor into the first paragraph of text. In the Character Formatting Controls panel running along the top of the screen, locate the Drop Cap Number of Lines icon and set the value to 4. The first letter will be pulled out in an elegant drop cap.

Highlight the first two words of the text, and set the Font Weight to Bold, All Caps, and the Font Colour to [Paper]. You can also highlight the whole first paragraph and make it slightly bigger, 13 pt, to give it more prominence on the page.

Highlight the second paragraph and set the Font Colour to [Paper] for added contrast to the text.

Step 3

Select the Rectangle Frame Tool (F) from the Tools panel and drag to create a small frame 26 mm in Width and 30 mm in Height. Drop the image of the author from Mini Bridge or go to File > Place > Open. In this example, I converted the image to black and white using a Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer in Photoshop, to give it a more professional look. This is also a great way of making all author photographs appear uniform throughout the magazine.

Place the image frame to the top right corner of the text frame you created in Step 2, above. Go to Window > Text Wrap to open the Text Wrap panel. Select the Wrap Around Bounding Box icon and set the Left Offset value to 4 mm.

With the image frame still selected, go to Object > Corner Options and set the Size to 3 mm and Shape to Bevel on all sides, to create a framed appearance.

As a final touch on the spread, select the Rectangle Frame Tool (F), as before, and drag to create a frame that fits, as with the text frame, across the two far right columns. Extend the height of the frame down until it sits just above the ‘scrum’ text frame. Drop in an image from Mini Bridge or File > Place a chosen image to give more context and colour to the spread.

Great work! The opening spread of your feature is complete, and it looks super professional…

4. Design a Professional-Standard Second Spread

Step 1

Return to the Pages panel (Window > Pages). Double-click the page icon for Page 6 to bring up the pages 6-7 spread on screen.

Back in Part One of this tutorial we applied the B-Master to these two pages, so we can see page numbers running along the bottom of each page. If the B-Master isn’t already applied to pages 6 and 7, drag the page icon next to the B-Master name at the top of the Pages panel and drop onto the relevant page icons below it.

For the final two pages of our four-page feature, you’ll create a stylish page with two columns of text and a quote bubble, plus a colourful image grid on the facing page.

Step 2

Remain on Page 6 of the document and select the Type Tool (T) from the Tools panel. Drag to create a frame that stretches across the two far-left columns on the page, and reaches from the top margin to the bottom margin. Select the text frame with the Selection Tool (V, Escape) and Edit > Copy, and Edit > Paste. Position the second text frame across the two far-right columns on the page, and adjust the Height so it finishes about halfway down the page.

Navigate up to the previous spread, pages 4 and 5, and click in the lower right corner of the article text frame on Page 5, where you can see a small red + symbol, that indicates text is overflowing the frame. Return to Page 6 and click once into the left-hand column, allowing the text to flow into it. Repeat the process, connecting the left-hand column with the right-hand column. Go to View > Extras > Show Text Threads to ensure you have connected the frames in the order as shown below.

Now you can apply some formatting to the text. In the example here, I started a new paragraph on Page 6 of the article, and setting the Font Colour of the remaining text in the article to [Black]. I then set the Drop Cap Number of Lines to 3 by putting my cursor in the first paragraph, and pulled out the Drop Cap in a reddish-brown swatch, C=28 M=100 Y=97 K=34. Quotes are pulled out in LeckerliOne Regular, Size 15 pt and Font Color C=28 M=100 Y=97 K=34.

Step 3

To recreate the quote bubble effect here, select the Ellipse Tool (L) and, holding Shift, drag to create a perfect circle. Set the Fill Colour to C=28 M=100 Y=97 K=34.

Select the Type Tool (T) and click once in the circle to transform it into a text frame. Type or paste in a quote, before setting the Font to ITC Century Std, Book Italic, Size 19 pt and Align Center, from the Character Formatting Controls panel running along the top of the screen. Open the Text Wrap panel (Window > Text Wrap) and set the Offset value to 7 mm, before positioning the circle to the bottom right of the page, as shown.

With the circle selected go to Object > Text Frame Options and set the Inset Spacing to 10 mm to give the text frame a margin.

Step 4

You can add more interest and detail to your layout by adding simple shapes and lines to the design.

Select the Ellipse Tool (L) again and, holding Shift, drag to create a perfect circle about 260 mm in Diameter. Set the Fill Colour to [None] and Stroke Colour to C=0 M=10 Y=11 K=34. Open the Stroke panel (Window > Stroke) and set the Weight to 1 mm and Type to Dotted.

You can select this shape and Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste a couple of times. Resize the circles while holding Shift to make two smaller shapes and position them in the rough positions as shown below. Make sure you select all the shapes and Ctrl-Click (Mac OS) or Right-Click (Windows) > Arrange > Send to Back. This will ensure that the decorative circles don’t obscure any of the article’s text.

Step 5

With your Page 6 layout complete, scroll over to the right-hand page of the spread, Page 7.

Select the Rectangle Frame Tool (F) from the Tools panel and drag to create an image frame 119 mm in Height. Position this frame at the top left corner of the page, stretching it across to the middle of the page (InDesign will flash up a temporary guide when you reach the center point).

Select the frame and Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste three times, positioning each frame in a corner of the page, as shown.

Either File > Place > Open individual images or drop in images from Mini Bridge, as we did earlier in the tutorial. Select Fill Frame Proportionally from the top control panel to arrange the image best in the frame.

Step 6

As a final pro touch, we can disguise the centre point where the image frames meet and add extra charm to the design with a retro-style shape.

Select the Polygon Tool from the Tools panel (find it in the drop-down menu next to the Rectangle Tool) and, holding Shift, drag to create a small polygon about 65 mm in Diameter. Set the Fill Colour to [Paper] and the Stroke Colour to C=28 M=100 Y=97 K=34. From the Stroke panel, set the Weight to 2 mm and Type to Thick-Thin.

Position the shape centrally on the page, where the four image frames meet.

Select the Type Tool (T) and drag to create a small text frame that fits snugly within the border. This is a great place to pull out a special quote, or invite the reader to do something extra, like find out more about the article online. Pull out the header text in LeckerliOne Regular, Size 32 pt, and set the remaining text in ITC Century Std.

Congratulations! You’ve designed two full spreads for a magazine feature and it’s looking awesome, and really professional.

You can take away some really useful skills from this exercise. You’ve learnt how to use a grid layout to structure your layout designs, apply typography professionally and create interest and detail with shapes and images.

The post Create a Magazine: Part 2 of 2 appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Become familiar with the Text Wrap Panel

• Apply different types of Text Wrap to a shape or frame

Step 1: Create a Frame or Shape and run Text behind them

The easiest way to set up your document for text-wrapping is to position your text frame(s) behind the image frame or shape you want to apply the text wrap effect to. This means you can easily select your frame/shape.

In this example, I have created two columns of text using the Type Tool (T), threading the text between them by clicking once on the bottom right corner of the left-hand column, then once again in the right-hand column.

Then I selected the Rectangle Frame Tool (F) and dragged to create an image frame, before going to File > Place > Open to place an image in the frame. I selected the Ellipse Frame Tool and, holding down Shift, dragged to create a perfect circular frame before placing a second image in this new frame.

Step 2: Open the Text Wrap Panel

Select the image frame or shape and go to Window > Text Wrap to open the Text Wrap Panel.

Across the top of the panel there are five icons, each of which indicate a different way of applying the text wrap. The icon to the far left, selected by default, has No Text Wrap applied to your frame/shape. Click on the second icon along from the left to apply a wrap around the Bounding Box of the frame/shape.

You can adjust the Offset values to increase or decrease the distance between the text and the edge of your frame/shape.

You can also adjust the direction of the wrap from the Wrap Options drop-down menu.

Experiment with different ways of applying a wrap using the icons in the Text Wrap Panel. You can wrap text around an Object’s Shape to give a more closely fitted appearance to the wrap. This can work particularly well with outlined text (Type > Create Outlines), which gives a dramatic typographic effect.

Read for more, check out our whole range of quick InDesign tutorials for beginners.

The post InDesign Basics: Wrap Text around Shapes and Images appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• How to set suitable Page Sizes and Margins for Paperback and Hardback books
• How to create simple Master Pages for maintaining consistency throughout your book
• How to define Page Numbering Sections
• This tutorial covers how to create the inside pages of a book. Check back soon for a Book Cover Template tutorial.

Step 1: Creating a Book File

First things first – how does InDesign help you to create a book? Before you go to create a New Document in InDesign, you should know that InDesign offers you a really useful feature for creating long book documents – these are called Book Files.

A Book File is a collection of documents grouped together to form a whole book. You can share Styles across the documents within the Book and the Numbering Sequence will continue from one document to the next. You can also make edits to your book more quickly and easily when you work from a Book File. Instead of opening a single large file with a high number of pages, you can simply bring up the section or chapter you would like to edit.

Note: In this tutorial we are creating a book for print. For producing digital and eBooks, check back soon for more tutorials.

Let’s start by creating our own Book File. Open InDesign. From the Welcome Window, select Book from the Create New list. You can also go to File > New > Book. You’ll be prompted to give the Book a Name and to Save it. Find a suitable name and location, then click OK.

A small window will appear, which is currently empty. You’ll notice when you click the + icon that InDesign wants you to add an existing InDesign document to the Book.

The next step is to create your first Chapter or Section, which we’ll then add to the Book File…

Step 2: Creating your first Document

First, decide how your book will be divided up. If it’s a long book, you may have split the text into Chapters. If it’s very long, you may have Sections, with Chapters sitting within them.

Your first task is to create a document which will feature the formatting Styles you will be using across the whole book. A good place to start is with the first chapter of your book. Save your introductory pages to do afterwards, as they will have some unique formatting atypical to the chapters in the book.

For a Standard Paperback:

(United States ‘B’ Format – 130mm x 198mm [5.12″ x 7.8″]).

Go to File > New Document to open the New Document Window.  Ensure the Intent is set to Print. Set the No. of Pages to 10 (you may know the number of pages your text will probably fill, but you can easily add or delete extra pages as you go) and keep Facing Pages checked.

Next up, set the Print Size by selecting Custom… from the drop-down menu. In the Custom Page Size window type a Name for your custom page size, such as B – Paperback. Set the Width to 130 mm and the Height to 198 mm, click Add to save it to the custom list (this means you can reuse this Size template for future documents by simply selecting it from the Custom menu), and then OK.

Back in the New Document window, we can set the Margins and the Bleed (to find out more about the basics of creating New Documents, click here).

If you look at an example of a Paperback book, you’ll notice that the Inside Margin (i.e. the margin which sits against the bind of the book) will be a little more generous than the Outside Margin. This is to allow for a few millimeters of the page to be sucked into the binding and the fold created by the binding. For a glue-bound (otherwise know as ‘perfect bound’) Paperback, whatever the page size, allow an extra 3 mm on the Inside Margin.

Set the Margins to: Top 15 mm, Bottom 20 mm, Inside 18 mm, Outside 15 mm.

Include a Bleed if you will have any pages in the book with content that will cross the edge of the page (e.g. colored pages, or images that extend across the edge of the page). If you’re producing a standard typeset paperback on white paper, you might not need one.

Set the Bleed to: Top 5 mm, Bottom 5 mm, Inside 0 mm, Outside 5 mm. You won’t need a Bleed on the Inside edge. And click OK.

For a Standard Hardback:

Hardcover sizes vary widely, the dimensions stated here are common for printing hardcover novels.

Go to File > New Document to open the New Document Window.  Ensure the Intent is set to Print. Set the No. of Pages to 10 and keep Facing Pages checked.

Next up, set the Print Size by selecting Custom… from the drop-down menu. In the Custom Page Size window type a Name for your custom page size, such as Hardback Novel. Set the Width to 151 mm and the Height to 233 mm, click Add to save it to the custom list, and then OK.

In the New Document window, let’s set the Margins and the Bleed.

If you look at an example of a Hardback book, you’ll notice that the Inside Margin will be more generous than the Outside Margin, even more so than a Paperback if the hardback has Stitch Binding. For a glue-bound (perfect bound) Hardback, whatever the page size, allow an extra 5 mm on the Inside Margin. For a stitch-bound hardback, you may need a little extra added to the Inside Margin; check with your printer before you set up your document.

Set the Margins to: Top 23 mm, Bottom 25 mm, Inside 25 mm, Outside 20 mm.

Include a Bleed if you will have any pages in the book with content that will cross the edge of the page (e.g. colored pages, or images that extend across the edge of the page). If you’re producing a standard typeset hardback on white paper, you might not need one.

Set the Bleed to: Top 5 mm, Bottom 5 mm, Inside 0 mm, Outside 5 mm. You won’t need a Bleed on the Inside edge. Click OK.

Step 3: Creating a simple set of Master Pages for your book

Now you have set up the first document for your book, you should create a set of Master Pages to carry common features (such as page numbers and page headers) across all the pages. Here we’ll be working using the Paperback document we set up earlier, in Step 2, but you can follow the same steps for a Hardback as well.

Open the Pages Panel by going to Window > Pages in the top menu bar. You’ll notice at the top of the Pages Panel there is a marked-off section, with a default Master spread, A-Master. Double-click on the double-page icon on the right-hand side of the Panel to bring up the A-Master on screen.

Now click in the top-right corner of the Pages Panel, to bring up a drop-down menu. Select Master Options for A-Master… to open an options window for the Master. Rename the Master as Start of Chapter – Master and click OK.

This will be the Master spread applied to all pages which begin a chapter, i.e. the text will start halfway down the page and there will be a prominent chapter title.

We will also need to create a second Master spread, for applying to all pages in the body of chapters, i.e. simple text-filled pages with page numbers and a running header at the top of each page. To do this, click once again in the top-right of the Pages Panel to open the drop-down menu. Select New Master…

In the New Master window that appears, set the Prefix to B and name the Master Body – Master. Click OK.

Now you can edit the Masters and then apply them to the relevant pages.

On the Start of Chapter – Master you can insert page numbers at the bottom of each page. Create a text frame using the Type Tool (T) and stretch it centrally across the margins of the left-hand page. Set your desired Font (here I’ve used Fournier Std), Size and a Centered Orientation (using the options available to you in the Character Formatting Panel). Then go to Type > Insert Special Characters > Markers > Current Page Number to drop in a flexible page number glyph. This will appear as A on the Master but will adapt to the given page number on the pages themselves.

TIP: You can also flank the page number with decorative glyphs (Window > Type & Tables > Glyphs to view the full selection available to you in your chosen font) to add an extra flourish.

With your page number text frame selected, go to Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste to create a second page number frame. Manouver this into a mirrored position on the right-hand page.

You may also want to mark out where you would like the Chapter Titles to sit on the page. You can pull down Guides from the top Ruler (View > Show Rulers) onto the Master to mark where a text frame should sit. This makes it extra easy to ensure you’re always placing chapter titles in the same place each time:

To apply the Start of Chapter – Master to the first page in your document, simply click and drag the right-hand page of the Master icon in the Pages Panel, dropping it on top of the Page 1 icon in the section of the panel below.

Once you’ve done that, return to the Start of Chapter – Master and select both the page number text frames at the bottom of the page. Edit > Copy and double-click the Body – Master in the Pages Panel to bring up your second Master, then simply Edit > Paste in Place to drop the page number frames onto the Master.

You may want to insert Running Headers along the top of your pages too. To do this, remain on the Start of Chapter – Master and introduce two new text frames using the Type Tool (T). Place these, with matching formatting to your page numbers, at the top of the left and right pages of the Master, as shown below. You can type the name of the book in the left frame, and the chapter number in the right frame.

To apply this Master to the remaining 9 pages in your document, you can either manually drag and drop the Master icon onto pages in the Pages Panel, or click in the top-right of the panel to open the drop-down menu, select Apply Master to Pages… and type in the page range you would like the Master to be applied to.

Step 4: A Brief Note on Numbering and Sections

You may want a very simple numbering arrangement for your book – the first page of the book will be Page 1 and so on. But you may want to have Sections, each with their own numbering system. A common example of this is a book with the introductory pages listed in Roman Numerals, with Page 1 only beginning from the first page of the first chapter.

We’ll set up an example here with our paperback document. Say we wanted to start a new section on Page 5 of the document, and number the first four pages in Roman Numerals…

In the Pages Panel, click the Page 1 icon to select it, then click on the right-hand corner of the panel to bring up the drop-down menu. Select Numbering & Section Options… to open a new window. Check the Start Page Numbering at: box, keeping the value as 1. Next to Style, pick i, ii, iii, iv… from the drop-down menu. Then click OK. The whole document has been renumbered in Roman Numerals.

Now click on the Page 5 icon in the Pages Panel. Again, bring up the Numbering & Section Options… window, and again check the Start Page Numbering at: box, keeping the value, as before, as 1. This time, for Style, select the 1, 2, 3, 4… option and click OK.

And there you have it! An easy way of creating new sections. Simply repeat the process above to create more new sections throughout your book.

Step 5: Adding Documents to your Book File

Now you’ve created your first Chapter in your book, you can add this to your Book File (see Step 1).

If the Book File isn’t already open, go to File > Open and navigate to the folder where it is saved. Open as you would a normal document file. Click the + icon in the window that appears; you will be prompted to navigate to an InDesign document. First, ensure you have saved your document with a suitable name, such as Chapter One. Then navigate to the document as prompted and click Open.

You’ve created a simple book template in hardly any time at all! Well done!

Now you can add more documents to your Book File (you don’t need to complete each document before you add it, just set it to the same size and Copy and Paste the Masters across to each new document).

The post InDesign Basics: Creating a Book appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn how to set up a New Document for print

• Create a simple grid for your two-spread magazine feature

• Create Master spreads for the layouts in your magazine

What you’ll create:

In this two-part tutorial we’ll be creating two complete spreads. Sign up to our mailing list to be alerted when the full Magazine course becomes available.

1. Create a New Document in InDesign

Step 1

Let’s get started. Open InDesign. From the Welcome Window, select Document from the Create New list.

In the New Document window, set the Intent to Print from the drop-down menu. (To familiarise yourself with the New Document Window refer to this Bitesize Skill)

We’ll set up the whole magazine, although in this two-part tutorial we’ll be working on just one spread. Set the Page No. to 16 and keep Facing Pages checked.

From the Page Size drop-down menu select Custom… In the Custom Page Size window type a Name for your custom page size. As we’ll be using a standard size in this tutorial, which is used by a number of commercial publishers, including Condé Nast, a suitable name might be Magazine Conde Nast. Set the Width to 203.2 mm and the Height to 276.22 mm. Click Add, then OK.

Step 2

Back in the New Document window, keep the Orientation as the default selection, Portrait. Moving down to the Columns section, set the Number of columns to 4. This will create a basic grid framework for arranging text columns.

Set the Margins to: Top 17 mm, Bottom 20 mm, Inside 17 mm, Outside 14 mm.

Set the Bleed to: Top 3 mm, Bottom 3 mm, Inside 0 mm, Outside 3 mm. You won’t need a Bleed on the Inside edge. Click OK.

2. Set up Master Pages

Step 1

In the Pages Panel (go to Window > Pages to open) you’ll see that at the top of the panel InDesign has already created a default A-Master for you. This consists of a two-page facing spread. Any content you place on this Master spread will appear on all pages with the A-Master applied to them. By default, InDesign has applied the Master already to all pages in your document. You can see this due to the appearance of a small A icon at the top corner of each page in the Pages Panel.

Double-click the A-Master icon (the image of the two facing pages at the top of the Pages Panel) to bring it up on screen. Now we can begin adding features to the Master like Page Numbers and any other decorative background content we’d like to appear consistently across a number of pages.

The Columns and Margins (highlighted in purple and pink) mark out where our columns of text will go. Let’s drag some Guides from the Rulers (View > Show Rulers) to mark out where the Page Numbers should sit on the page.

From the Top Ruler, click and drag a Guide downwards towards the bottom of the left-hand page. At the top-left of the screen you’ll notice an X or Y counter appears as you drag the guide. This indicates the position of the guide on the page. You can manually enter a position in the text box here to create a precisely placed guide. Drag the first guide to Y position 267 mm on the left-hand page of the spread. Repeat for the right-hand page.

Drag a second guide from the top ruler to Y position 9 mm on the left-hand page. Repeat for the right-hand page.

Drag another guide, this time from the left-hand ruler, to X position 9 mm. Drag a second to X-position 397.4 mm, so it sits on the far-side of the right-hand page.

Step 2

Let’s add some Page Numbers to our Master, to keep the reader orientated in your magazine.

Select the Type Tool (T) from the Tools Panel (Window > Tools, if not already visible), and drag to create a small text frame. Position this in the bottom left corner of the left-hand page and type page (space). Go to Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number. InDesign will drop in a page number marker, which is marked out as an A on your A-Master.

Highlight the text and set the Font to ITC Century Std, Light, Size 9 pt.

Open the Swatches Panel (Window > Color > Swatches) and create a New Color Swatch from the drop-down menu. Set it to CMYK, C=0, M=10, Y=11, K=34, click Add and OK. Set the Font Color to this new Swatch.

From the Tools Panel, select the Line Tool () and, holding Shift, drag horizontally to create a line that extends from the left of the page number to the edge of the second column. With the line selected, open the Stroke Panel (Window > Stroke), set the Weight to 0.25 mm, Type to Thin – Thin, Start to Circle, and End to Simple Wide (or flip the latter two settings depending on how you created the line). Set the Stroke Color to C=0, M=10, Y=11, K=34, as before.

Select the text frame containing the page number and Edit > Copy, and Edit > Paste. Move the frame into a mirrored position on the right-hand page, switching the Orientation to Align Right (in the top panel, Character Formatting Controls). Return to the left page and select and Edit > Copy the arrowed line. Edit > Paste, and Right-Click (PC) or Ctrl-Click (Mac OS) > Transform > Flip Horizontal. Manoeuvre into position onto the right-hand page to mirror the left.

Select both the text frame and line on the right-hand page and Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste. Position at the top left corner of the page, resting the text frame within the guides you created earlier. Edit the text to read FOODIE NEWS, adjusting the length of the line a little if you need to. Copy the Line, Paste and Right-Click (PC) or Ctrl-Click (Mac OS) > Transform > Flip Horizontal again, and extend it along the top left of the right-hand page.

Let’s also Paste another line, and Right-Click (PC) or Ctrl-Click (Mac OS) > Transform > Rotate 90 degrees CCW, positioning this shape below the text frame at the top left corner of the page.

Step 3

This Master will be the template for the opening page of a feature in our magazine. Let’s give it a name so we know what it is.

Go to the Pages Panel and click to select the A-Master page icon. Click the three bars at the top-right of the panel to open a drop-down menu. Select Master Options for “A-Master”… and rename the Master Master – Feature First Spread. Click OK.

Step 4

Return to your newly-renamed Master on screen. For this feature, we will need a decorative background – a wood panel image to give the article an earthy, autumnal feel.

Select the Rectangle Frame Tool (F) from the Tools Panel and drag to create a frame that extends across the whole of the right-hand page of the Master, right up to the Bleed. Go to File > Place and select an appropriate image (here I’ve used this wooden background from Ingimage), and click OK.

Select Fill Frame Proportionally from the top control panel to arrange the image nicely in the frame.

From the Tools Panel, select the Rectangle Tool (M) and drag to create a rectangle the same width and height as the frame you’ve just created. Position it over the top and set the Stroke to [None] and Fill to a new swatch (Window > Color > Swatches > New Color Swatch), CMYK, C=28, M=100, Y=97, K=34.

With the rectangle selected, go to Object > Effects > Transparency and set the Mode to Normal and adjust the Opacity to 70%. Click OK.

With the shape still selected, adjust the Tint of the swatch to 30% from the Swatches Panel or top control panel, as shown.

Select both the image-filled frame and the rectangle shape by dragging your mouse, and Right-Click (PC) or Ctrl-Click (Mac OS) > Arrange > Send to Back. Your page numbers and lines are not easily seen. Change the Font Color of the text and the Stroke Color of the lines to [Paper] to make them pop a little more. That’s your first Master done!

Step 5

Let’s create a second Master that’s more pared back and simple, which would suit the inside pages of a feature or article.

In the Pages Panel, open the drop-down menu from the top-right corner. Select New Master… and maintain the default B prefix. Rename the Master Master – Feature Spread and click OK.

Return for a moment to the A-Master on screen, and drag your mouse across to select all the text frames and lines on the page (you can hold down Shift and deselect the rectangle shape and the image frame), and go to Edit > Copy.

Return to your new B-Master on screen by double-clicking the page icon in the Pages Panel and go to Edit > Paste in Place. Adjust the Font Color of the text and the Stroke Color of the lines to C=0, M=10, Y=11, K=34.

Delete a couple of the lines, as shown, to give this Master a much more simple, minimal look.

Step 6

You’ll notice that InDesign has automatically applied the A-Master to all pages in your document. For now though, we just want it applied to a single spread.

Click on the [None] Master icon at the very top of the Pages Panel. Go to the drop-down menu in the panel and select Apply Master to Pages… In the window, type 1-3, 6-17 to apply the [None] Master to all pages in your document except a single spread, pages 4-5.

Click and drag the B-Master icon’s left page down and drop onto the Page 6 icon. Drag and drop the B-Master icon’s right page onto Page 7. File > Save As your InDesign document as Foodie Magazine Inside Pages.

Great work! You’ve set up the Master pages for your magazine layout, which will provide the perfect foundation for your editorial content.

Go to Part Two of this two-part tutorial to find out how to give your magazine layouts a professional, gorgeous finish!

The post Create a Magazine: Part One of Two appeared first on InDesignSkills.

• Learn how to create a New Document in InDesign

• Become familiar with the New Document Window

• Set Margins and Columns

• Understand Bleed and Slug

• Create Custom Page Sizes

Step 1: Overview of the New Document Window

Let’s get started. Open InDesign. From the Welcome Window, select Document from the Create New list.

The New Document Window opens on screen. This image shows everything you need to address before clicking that OK button…

There’s quite a lot going on here, but it’s really important that you set all your values correctly before creating your Document. It will be much more fiddly to make changes afterwards.

Let’s break it down bit by bit…

Step 2: Set the Intent of your Document

The first thing to tell InDesign is what your final document is intended for, i.e. is it for Print (e.g. a magazine, book, brochure, poster etc), Web (e.g. a website banner) or for Digital Publishing (e.g. a digital eBook designed for tablets or smart devices)? InDesign will be prompted to bring up recommended Page Sizes depending on your choice, and also set the Units and Increments of your document (e.g. Millimeters for Print, or Pixels for Web/Digital).

Click once on the default ‘Print’ value next to Intent to bring up a drop-down menu. Click on the three different Intent options and see how the rest of the New Document Window adapts accordingly. If you keep ‘Print’ as your Intent, you are offered a number of pre-loaded, standard Page Sizes in the drop-down Page Size Menu, and all Units will be in Millimeters.

You can see that InDesign has some preloaded Page Sizes ready to use, such as US Business Card, Letter, as well as European A5, A4, A3 etc. You can choose a preloaded size or create a Custom Page Size. Let’s keep the Intent as Print, and create a Custom Size for a paperback Book as an example…

Step 3: Set the Page Size of your Document

From the Page Size drop-down menu select Custom… (the last option) to open the Custom Page Size window.

You can set the Width and Height of each Page in your document and give the Custom Size a Name by typing in the bar at the top of the window. For example, for a standard European Paperback Book, you would set the values to Width, 132 mm and Height, 197 mm. Name your Custom Size, ‘Paperback Book’ and Click OK.

You may find back in the New Document window that InDesign has switched the Orientation of your document from Portrait to Landscape. Ensure the correct Orientation is selected by clicking the left-hand Portrait icon.

Next, you want to make sure the Facing Pages check-box is selected. If you’re creating a book, magazine or booklet, you will want to be able to view spreads (of two facing pages) while you design. When you check Facing Pages, your Document will always start on a Right-Hand single page.

If you’re creating a single-page document (e.g. a Letter or Resume), or a document which will be printed on one single ream of paper stock (e.g. a Business Card, a Folding Brochure [with no spine, unlike a Booklet], or a Book Cover), you should uncheck the Facing Pages box.

For this Book example, keep Facing Pages checked.

Step 4: Define Margins for your Document

Setting accurate Margins is a very important task before creating your Document. Adequate Margins will give your final document a professional look, and also, in the case of books in particular, ensure that text or images don’t disappear into the binding at the spine. These are recommended Margin measurements for a Paperback Book.

NOTICE that the Inside Value (i.e. the edge of the Page that sits against the spine of the Book) is Wider than the Outside Value. This allows extra white space where the page will be sucked into the binding or the folds of the book. If you’re producing a Booklet (which also has a spine, but may be bound using a Lay-Flat binding technique) you should do the same, but the Inside Margin doesn’t need to be as wide, just add 2-3 extra millimeters.

Set the Margin values to:

Top: 22.3 mm

Bottom: 22.3 mm

Inside: 19.05 mm (As this is a Book, add on an extra 5-6 mm to your Outside Margin)

Outside: 12.7 mm

Step 5: Define Columns for your Document

To help develop a uniform Grid throughout your Document, you should set the Number of Columns and the Gutter value (the space between Columns). Setting Columns does not restrict where you can place text or images, but simply provides visual guidelines.

Columns are the backbone of a number of print documents, the most obvious being a Newspaper format. Keep in mind that for some documents, such as newspapers, newsletters or magazines, you will need to set 2-3 columns in the New Document Window. This will then be applied uniformly across all the Pages and Masters in your document.

For a paperback Book, you may not want to introduce Columns as the area for text is already restricted. So, for now, leave the default Column value at 1.

Step 6: Set the Bleed for your Document

So, first a common and really important question – WHAT IS A BLEED??

A Bleed is an essential setting for Print documents (you don’t need to set one for Web or Digital Publishing).

A Bleed is a small amount of space extending beyond the very edge of the Document. When a Document is printed, it is then Trimmed, or cut along the edge of the Document. There may be a small error in the accuracy of the Trim (printers are human too, after all!). If you have not set a Bleed area, and you have created, for example, a document with color that extends to the edges of the Trim, you may see an unwanted white edge along the perimeter of the card.

You can use the Bleed to extend this color across the Trim, so when it’s cut, whatever the margin of error, you will have a seamless all-color edge.

If you are producing a document which will have elements (text, images or color) that extend up to the edges of the document, at any point in the document, you should include a Bleed.

For a Book, you can set a 3 mm Bleed (or ask your Printer for their recommended Bleed Width), on the Top, Bottom and Outside edges. As the Inside Trim edge will not normally be visible, due to being sucked into the binding of the book, you can set the Inside value at 0 mm. This also prevents a Bleed appearing in the final PDF on the Inside edge, which could overlap with the page on an opposite spread, creating an ugly look, and a very confused (and angry) Printer!

Click the Chain icon to the right of the Bleed options to allow you to set different Bleed values.

In your document this is how it will look:

For now, remain in the New Document Window. We’re going to take a look at that other confusing term, the Slug…

Step 7: Set the Slug for your Document

A second very common question – WHAT IS THE SLUG??

While a Bleed is ESSENTIAL for a print document, a Slug is not. But it can be useful.

A Slug, like a Bleed, does not appear on your final printed Document. It is simply a useful area to place information which might be required by an Editor, or a Printer. This might be the date of when the draft InDesign file was created, or the name of the creator etc.

I often find it easiest to place a single Slug area below the Bottom of the Document. So, for now, ‘break’ the chain icon to the right of the Slug values and set the Bottom value to 10 mm.

Step 8: Set the Number of Pages in your Document

Now, all you need to do is decide how many Pages your document will have. You may have a firm idea of this before you even start inserting text and images. But you may have no idea! That’s absolutely fine, you can easily add new Pages to your Document as you work on it. So for now, type in an estimate of the number and leave it at that.

Click OK.

And ta-dah! Your Document is ready for working on.

Explore further how to create a Book here…

The post InDesign Basics: Creating your First Document appeared first on InDesignSkills.