InDesign Basics Blog | Visionary Labs |

Here are some InDesign tips and tricks

basic workspace

To get started go to window/workspace at the top and choose essentials. This resets your windows and tools and cleans up the workspace to get things organized. Your basic drawing and text tools are on the left. The advance tools are in panels on the right. If there in panel you need that is not on the right. Go back to window at the top and select the panel you need.

pages

The page icon on the right opens the pages pallet. You can hit the New Page icon at the bottom to make new blank pages. You can drag a page from your list into the trash to delete it, or onto the new page icon to copy it. You can drag pages in the list to change the order. At the top in the master pages. These are templates for the document. You can double click on the master page icon to edit the master. You can drag the master onto any page in the document to assign that template to that page. See in the screen shot above the small A on the top of the page thumbnail shows that it is using the master page A. The small down arrow at the top right of the pages panel opens up options including an option to add new master pages.

Layers

The Layers pallet lets you group design elements into layers. You can see in the screen shot above that the logo is on it's own layer color-coded in red. When the logo is selected you see the red dot next to that layer to show the selection. You can drag that red dot to move the selected content to a different layer. You can toggle layer visibility by clicking the eye icon next to a layer. You can lock layers by clicking in the second blank box next to the layer. You can add and remove layers the same as you do with pages using the new and trash icons at the bottom of the pallet.

margins / columns

You can set margins and columns for the whole page under Layout/Margins and Columns... This brings up the margins and columns dialogue. Make sure you have Preview selected on the right to see your changes in real-time. Bumping up the columns to 2 ads the purple column guide down the center. I selected my main text and moved it into the first column snapping the edges to the purple guides.

The second column on the screen shot above is a single text block with it's own column set inside it. To add columns into a text block instead just a guide on the page. Select the text box you want to work with. Go to Object/Text Frame Options... You will get a similar dialogue box to set the columns and margins specific to this text block.

wrapping text

InDesign has nice build in text-wrapping tools to have text flow around design elements in your document. Open Window/Text Wrap to see the text wrap pallet. Here I've drawn a circle shape over my text, with the circle selected I hit the "wrap around object" wrap option at the top of the Text Wrap pallet. Then I bumped up the spacing to .1875. This shows the light blue line around my shape that is actually pushing the text away. You can grab and edit that line with the Direct Selection Tool (A) (the white arrow) If you have some text that you do NOT want to wrap then select the text box and choose Object/Text Frame Options... and at the bottom select Ignore Text Wrap.

character / paragraph styles

page numbering

In the master page, create a text box where you want the page number to be. Choose Type/Insert Special Characters/Markers/Current Page Number. The text box should now show an A (or the appropriote letter for the master page you are on). Drag teh master page over each page in your document to apply the page number sytle. You should see the number change with each page. You can go to Layout/Numbering & Section Options for more page number options.