14.2 Exercise 2: Fundamentals for the Layout

xtine burrough and Michael Mandiberg

  1. Open InDesign and create a new document using the following specifications shown here:Screen capture showing the InDesign® New Document dialog set with Intent: Print, Number of Pages: 2, Start Page #: 12, Facing Pages: checked, Primary Text Frame: unchecked, Page Size: Letter, Width 51p0, Height 66p0, Orientation: Portrait, Columns: 5, Gutter: 1p0, Margins: 1p6 for all sides.
    After you’ve created your document, save it as ch14-yourlastname-firstname.indd
  2. Use File > Place and place the skyline.psd image you created in the previous exercise into your InDesign® document. Using the column guides as a reference, drag the image out to span 7 columns wide (leave the first three columns on the left side of the spread empty).
    Screen capture showing a photo of a city skyline placed into a two-page spread layout in InDesign. The photo is 7 columns wide and positioned on the right side of the spread, leaving 3 columns of space on the left side of the spread.
    Scale the placed image so that it is 7 columns wide and positioned on the right side of the spread.

    Once the image is placed, adjust its frame height so that it reaches the top and bottom margins. Use the Fill Frame Proportionally button in the Control Bar to scale the image up so that it fills the frame.

    Screen capture showing the Fill Frame Proportionally button's location in the InDesign® Control Bar
    The “Fill frame proportionally” button can be used to quickly re-scale an image frame’s content to fit its frame while retaining the image’s original proportions.

    Then use the Selection Tool and the circle in the middle of the image frame to position the image within the frame so that it’s similar to the example here.

    Screen capture showing photo after scaling and position adjustment within its image frame. The image fills the frame and the tallest building in the photo is positioned at about the center of the image frame.Make sure your Layers Panel is showing (if it’s not, use Window > Layers to show it) and name the active layer image, lock it, then save your file.

    Screen capture showing the InDesign® Layers panel. The panel contains one layer named "image", which contains the placed skyline.psd image. The "image" layer is locked.

  3. Create a new layer named text and make sure it’s the active layer. Activate the Type Tool and use the Control Bar or the Character Panel to choose “Myriad Pro Regular” for your font. Now draw a text frame starting at the upper left of the column grid and dragging to the right so that it spans all 5 columns of the left page. Type “A Room with a View” (without the quotation marks) into the text frame. Select all of the text you typed and set the following type specs: Font size: 100pt, Leading (line spacing): 82pt.

    Screen capture showing a text frame containing the words "A Room with a View". All of the text is selected and the type size is set to 82 pt using the type size input in In Design's Control Bar.

    Next, put your type cursor in between the words “Room” and “with” and delete the space. Then use Shift+Enter to add a soft return to set the headline in two lines.

    Screen capture showing a text frame containing the words "A Room with a view". A soft return has been used to separate the words into two lines, "A Room" and "with a View".

    In the paragraph settings (in the Control Bar or the Paragraph Panel), set the Left Indent to 7p1 and the First Line Left Indent to -7p1 (make sure you include the minus sign there, this should set the second line so that it’s indented and the words “Room” and “with” are in vertical alignment as shown below).

    Screen capture showing the InDesign® Paragraph panel next to a text frame containing the words "A Room with a View". The Paragraph panel shows the input for Left Indent set to to 7p1 and the input for First Line Left Indent to -7p1. The words "with a View" are on a second line and indented so that the "w" in "with" is vertically aligned with the "R" in the word "Room" from the line above.

    Screen capture showing the "Fit frame to content" button in the InDesign® Control Bar
    The “Fit frame to content” button re-sizes a frame’s width and height to match the boundaries established by the content of the frame. This is a quick way of cleaning up frames that are larger than necessary after formatting text.

    Once you have the headline set, activate the Selection Tool and click the Fit frame to content button in the Control Bar. Then click a blank area on the page to make sure that the headline text frame is not selected.

  4. Now we’ll add the intro paragraph for this spread. Drag a horizontal guide from the top Ruler down to the 17p6 mark. This will give us a reference for where to place the top of the intro paragraph text frame we’re about to create.

    Screen capture showing a horizontal guide being positioned at the 17p6 vertical ruler mark of the page layout.

    Now use File > Place to bring the text file top_paragraph.txt into your document and drag out its text frame so that it spans the second and third columns of the left page and is positioned at the horizontal guide we created.

    Screen capture showing a text frame spanning two columns and containing the text from the provided top_paragraph.txt file. The top of the text frame is aligned with the horizontal guide placed at the 17p6 position.

    Then, with that new text frame selected, activate the Type tool and set the following type specs in the Control Bar and Paragraph panel:

    • Font: Myriad Pro Regular
    • Size: 20pt
    • Leading: 21pt
    • Tracking: -50
    • Use the All Caps button [TT] to set the text to all caps without retyping it
    • Align right

    Screen capture showing full results of step 4 in this exercise. The new text frame's content is right-aligned and set in all caps 20pt Myriad Pro Regular with 21pt leading and tracking set to -50. The Paragraph panel and Control Bar are both visible showing these settings in their respective inputs.IMG

  5. Pull out another horizontal guide from the top ruler, this time positioned at 37p0. Place the next paragraph of text using the bottom_paragraph.txt file. It should span 3 the first columns of the left page and have its top aligned with the new horizontal guide.

    Screen capture showing a text frame containing text from the provided bottom_paragraph.txt file. The frame's top is aligned with a horizontal guide placed at 37p0 and the frame spans the three left columns in the page spread.

    Set the type specs for this text frame as follows:

    • Font: Minion Pro Regular
    • Size: 12pt
    • Tracking: 0
    • Align left
    • Space After paragraph: 1p0

    Screen capture showing the bottom paragraph text frame after setting the type specifications given in this step.

    Now that you have all of the basics in place, make sure that you save your file!

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14.2 Exercise 2: Fundamentals for the Layout Copyright © by xtine burrough and Michael Mandiberg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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