InDesign Magazines in Style · 4 Harvard College Digital Art Club | ♦hcs.harvard.edu/~digiart Introduction to InDesign In my four-page project, I have a starter page (cover), one

InDesign Magazines in Style

November 5th, 2012

Learn your way around the industry-standard layout software. Create brochures, magazines, and flyers to advertise your next event!

Table of Contents InDesign .................................................................................................................................................................................... 1

Document Setup ................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Bleed ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 2

WORKING WITH IMAGES ........................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Text ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Title Text ............................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Body Text .............................................................................................................................................................................. 7

Adding images to text ......................................................................................................................................................... 10

Using Paragraph and Character Styles ............................................................................................................................... 11

Master pages .......................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Adding Page Numbers ........................................................................................................................................................ 14

Applying Different Master Pages ........................................................................................................................................ 14

Exporting and Saving .............................................................................................................................................................. 15

INDESIGN Making a magazine, booklet, custom pamphlet? InDesign is the tool for you. Not only does it help you with guiding tools, but also has tools for making a large publication in a team.

2 | Harvard College Digital Art Club ♦ hcs.harvard.edu/~digiart ♦ Introduction to InDesign

Document Setup Start with a new Document. For now, avoid Book and Library – these options are for larger publications. A toolbox should appear that has a lot of default options for your publication. The number of pages should be in multiples of the number of faces per page in your publication, usually in multiples of 4. Large signatures are multiples of 16. Choose the number of Columns if your magazine will have multiple columns of text. Gutter is the spacing between the columns. Margins are the distance away from the side of a page – to have different margins on different directions of the page, click the un-link button.

Bleed Bleed is crucial for publications going into print, particularly if it will have large full-spread photos or solid background colors that extend across the page. A digression into the printing process: publications are printed on a larger sheet of paper than the original document size. The extension of the paper from the original size is called the bleed. After printing, the paper is cut into uniform edges at the document size line. So consider a full-page photograph – if you size it only to the document size, then when the paper


is trimmed, machines will not necessarily cut exactly at the edges of the document, leaving the original paper color showing at the edge of the page. This is why you size images to the bleed line, past the document. Press more options to reveal bleed.

Most printers ask for 1/8 bleed. Type in 0.125in into any of the bleed boxes. Click outside the box, and all values should update in picas.

Click Ok to view your document.


In my four-page project, I have a starter page (cover), one inside spread, and one back page. The document is outlined in black, the red line is the bleed.

WORKING WITH IMAGES Find an image online to be the cover of your magazine. I am using Helen Yung amazing whale image. Copy and paste it

into your document. My image is a little big for the entire document, so I want to resize it to fill up the whole page.

When working with images, there are two key states. Note that once pasted in, the image is bordered by a blue box. Drag

the blue box to fit the edges of the bleed.

But wait, what happened? It resized the box, but did not resize the image! This is because InDesign gives two boundary

boxes for the image. The first in blue is a virtual cropping box; the second is the actual image box. To access the image

box, double click on the image, and a brown box will appear.

Dragging this brown box will resize the image. To retain image proportions, press Shift when resizing.


Switching between the two frames are kind of annoying, so InDesign helps with a few functions. Let’s say we want the

image to fill the entire size of our crop box, which I have made the size of the page + bleed.

Right click, go to Fitting. Chose Fit Content to Frame.


Now the image fills up the entire boundary box! However, this option likely stretched your image to fit the box. To avoid

this, choose “Fit Content Proportionally” and manually resize the image as needed.

TEXT

Title Text

Let’s add a title to the cover. Choose T from the tool menu on the left and make a textbox. Start typing a title.

Text options are found on the top toolbar, allowing you to change fonts, font size, etc. You can do fun things like

automatically making everything into all caps , increasing the kerning in words , decreasing line height and

more.


To change the color of the text, open Window -> Color -> Color.

To move the text, select the black arrow in the toolbox and drag.

Body Text For my body text, I’ll be using the text of Moby Dick available online. Make a text box stretching along the entire column,

and paste your text in.


If your article wasn’t long enough, the whole thing won’t fit in that tiny text box. InDesign allows you to flow the text

using the red handler on the bottom right.

Click on that little red box with a plus sign in it.

Your mouse arrow will be some text following along it. Click in the top left corner of your next column, and the entire

column will be automatically filled with the rest of the text!


Of course, if there is still text hidden by the text boxes, the little red box will appear again. You can use it to fill columns

until the text is all flowed in.


Adding images to text I pasted another image into the text, but it sits on top of the text.

You can change this by setting wordwrap around the images. Click on the wordwrap icon on the top toolbar.

Your text now flows around the image.


Using Paragraph and Character Styles If you’re working in a team, you need a way to standardize fonts and font styles for specific portions of your publications.

You can do that with paragraph and character styles.

Open the window by going to Window->Styles->Paragraph Styles. The Paragraph Styles window opens.

Let’s change the heading text to a different style. I applied a different font, in small-caps, and a bigger font size.

Keeping the text highlighted, click the new button in the paragraph styles window. A new style will appear in the box.

Rename to something recognizable it by double-clicking the text.


To apply the style, highlight a portion of a paragraph and click on the style in the Paragraph Style box. The entire

paragraph will automatically change to that style.

If you noticed, by highlighting only a portion of the paragraph, the entire paragraph changed styles. To apply a specific

style to one word or one character, use Character Styles. For example, drop text for a first letter in a paragraph can be

done this way.


MASTER PAGES Having consistent character and paragraph styles is not enough; you may want similar templates through your pages. For

example, page numbers, headers, and footers need to stay consistent throughout the publication.

Find your Pages panel on the right.

Note that the top section has something that says A-Master. The bottom pages, showing thumbnails of your actual pages,

have a small letter A to its corner.

Double-click the A-master left page to edit it. Type in a header at the top. Now if you flip to the left page of a spread with

the A in the corner, the header will appear!


Adding Page Numbers Let’s add a page number in front of that title. While in the text box, go to Type -> Insert Special Character -> Markers ->

Current Page Number.

An A appears if on the A master page. Going to page 2 shows 2!

To have the same header appear on the right side of a spread, copy and paste the text box over. Change the format to

right aligned, and switch over the page number position.

Applying Different Master Pages Unfortunately, the header and page number also appears on the back.

To get rid of this on the back page, we can apply a different master template. Currently, page 4 has an A in the top left

corner, indicating that it is using the A template. To apply a blank template, we can use the blank template provided

above the A template.


Drag and drop the icon next to “None” on top of the page 4 icon. Page 4 icon should be blank, and the page will no longer

contain the header.

You can make more master pages using the new button in the Pages toolbox. To apply it, drag and drop onto a page

icon.

EXPORTING AND SAVING Most printers now take PDFs. To save, go to File->Adobe PDF Presets -> High quality print.

The export window will appear. Check Spreads if you wish the pdf file to show pages in a spread layout; otherwise the pdf

will contain single pages.


Go to Marks and Bleeds, then check Use Document Bleeds Settings. Click Export and your pdf file will be created!

Documents

InDesign Magazines in Style · 4 Harvard College Digital Art Club | ♦hcs.harvard.edu/~digiart Introduction to InDesign In my four-page project, I have a starter page (cover), one