Discover how to utilize advanced techniques in Adobe InDesign to create complex layouts. This article guides you through creating text frames, adjusting column and gutter settings, adding images and overlays, and setting precise dimensions for layouts.
Key Insights
- The article discusses how to create text frames in Adobe InDesign by utilizing the type tool and filler text. The process also includes adjusting column and gutter settings to achieve a particular layout.
- Adding images and overlays to a layout are also detailed in the article. The instructions cover creating image frames, setting dimensions, and creating overlays that help describe the image behind.
- Furthermore, the article provides insights on setting precise dimensions for layouts. Techniques for controlling image heights, widths, and overlay positions are explained, allowing for a more precise and custom layout design.
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In this video we'll begin working on page 4. So let's go to pages and we'll double click page 4. For this page we're simply going to add text. So let's go to our layers panel and make sure that we're working within our text layer.
We'll then utilize our type tool and we'll simply draw a text frame across our entire margin space. And let's now fill it with placeholder text. To do this we'll right click and we'll select fill with placeholder text.
In order for us to now create columns for this text frame, let's go back to our selection tool and opening up our properties panel here, we'll see that down on the bottom right below align we have text frame options. In this case we'll want to increase to two columns. However, we'll notice that the gutter doesn't line up with the gutter on our page.
We'll simply click up until we're at 0.5 inches. Here we now have two columns within this page and for now we won't worry about our overset text. Moving on to page 5 now.
We'll shift our view over and for page 5 we're going to have a large image with an overlay on top. So let's go to our images layer and for this image let's go back to our rectangle frame tool. Clicking and holding and let's create an image now that spans the entire margin distance.
We'll release and additionally we're also going to want to create an overlay that helps describe the picture behind. So let's go to our overlays layer and we'll utilize our rectangle tool and hitting CTRL shift a will now deselect the image frame and make sure that we have a black fill and no stroke. From here we'll simply start on the right hand side and let's create an overlay that goes just beyond the center of our page.
For now we'll leave this here and in the future we'll be editing it to our size. Let's now move on to our next page. We'll go to pages and click page 6 and for page 6 we're going to create two images and two text frames.
So let's start first with our images we'll go to layers and select images and let's create our two image frames. We'll start with one on the top left hand side and release about there and let's now change the size of this using our transform options. We'll go to our width and for our width let's double click and we'll type 4.25 and hit ENTER and we'll see that our height changes as well to 5 inches.
This is because they're currently set to constrain proportions for width and height so let's unclick this and we'll double click the height and let's type 5.5 inches and hit ENTER and next let's take this image and holding ALT with our selection tool shortcut v on the keyboard we'll simply click and drag to the bottom right hand side and we'll see that these images overlap a little bit in the middle. This is okay and now let's create some text on the top and the bottom to describe each of these images. We'll go to our text layer and with our text layer we'll utilize our type tool and let's simply create some type that spans this entire distance and fill it with placeholder text.
Right clicking and selecting fill with placeholder text. From here we can copy this hitting CTRL shift a to deselect and then with our selection tool v on the keyboard we'll hold ALT and click this entire text frame into the bottom left corner and click outside and here we have two images and two pieces of text. Again we'll be customizing this in the future but we can get an idea of what our layout looks like.
Finally let's move on to our next page and for this page we're going to have another large image however it won't span the entire margins. So let's go into our images and again we'll utilize our rectangle frame tool and this time dragging from the bottom left let's come all the way up right until we're at about nine inches tall and release. Again we can change this so that we have height of nine inches and a width of 7.5 inches and our bottom right corner is going to be at ten and a half inches for y and 16.5 inches for X. From here we're going to create two different overlays.
So let's go to our overlays layer and we'll utilize our rectangle tool and hit CTRL shift a to deselect the frame and from here simply click and drag most of the way across and release and for our bottom right hand side let's create one more overlay again going most of the way across and we'll release about there. We hit w on the keyboard we can see that we'll have two overlays and a large image behind. For now let's hit CTRL S on the keyboard to save our work and in the next video we'll finish strategizing the overall layout of our newsletter.
See you there!