Discover the process of creating professional proposals by learning how to design precedents and project samples. This article discusses the step-wise procedures of setting up page masters, designing titles, editing pages, and finalizing templates to create a compelling and informative proposal.
Key Insights
- The article emphasizes the importance of designing and formatting each page master appropriately, taking into consideration alignment, size, and style of the text. The creation of a new master called 'PRE' for precedent based on the 'B master' is discussed.
- Customizing titles and adding specific information about the projects such as the location are crucial to provide a comprehensive understanding of the proposal. An example of naming the title as 'Common Grounds Coffee' and adding 'Coast City' as the location is given.
- The article discusses the need for editing the pages and adding the relevant project details, such as using the Rectangle Frame tool and the Type tool. It further elaborates on the process of formatting and styling the text within the proposal.
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In this video, we're going to continue working on our proposal, and in this case, we're going to work on our Precedents. We're asked to list at least three Business References, which we've done in the last table, and we also need to add additional Precedents and project samples.
So to do this, let's scroll down. From here, we're going to set up our own page Masters for these three Precedents, as each one will be an entire spread or two pages. We'll open up Pages, and we're going to create a new Master from our B Master.
We'll right-click, select New Master, and we'll call it PRE for Precedent. We'll base it on B Master, and we'll have it be two pages, and click OK. From here, we'll hit W on the keyboard, and we're ready to begin designing.
In order to observe what we need to design, let's open up our folder, and from here, we're going to go into our Precedents folder and open up our Precedents Excel Spreadsheet. Here, we have all of the information for all three of our Precedents. Additionally, we've also added all of the images into our CC Libraries already.
So with this information right here, let's copy this, hitting CTRL + C. We'll collapse this, and now we're ready to begin. In order to design this, let's hit CTRL + SHIFT for our title, and CTRL + SHIFT for this title as well, and let's align these to the left. We'll go to our Paragraph settings within Properties and align left. For our title, we're going to design this with our first Precedent in mind so that we can replace it with the other Precedents for our other pages.
So in this case, for our title, we're going to double-click, and we'll type Common Grounds Coffee*. Next, we want to add the location below, but to do so, let's first click outside and re-add the view of our Baseline Grid. We'll then select our title, and holding ALT, let's drag it right below so that we can add our location right here.
We'll triple-click, and for the location of this facility, we'll type Coast City. Next, we want this to be a little bit smaller, because our reference will be in large letters, and the location should be not quite as identified. We'll change the size to 16 points and hit ENTER, and rather than being black, let's also change the style to Regular. Finally, we can also change the color of this and hit ENTER. We'll make it black. If we click outside, we can see what this looks like, and I think this looks pretty good.
From here, we're now ready to begin editing our two pages and determining where we want content. For this Master, feel free to add your own flares or design. You don't have to stick exactly with me on this, as I want you to express yourself in this.
So let's use our Rectangle Frame Tool, and from here, we're simply going to add a large frame. We want a big image right away. Next, let's use our Rectangle Tool, and we're going to add a callout rectangle right in the middle here, so we can express some of the details of the project. We'll reduce the stroke, and let's add a guide right down the center at 4.25 inches. Hitting V on the keyboard, we'll adjust our rectangle.
From here, we now need to add the appropriate details to Common Grounds Coffee*. So, utilizing our Type Tool, let's click inside this rectangle and hit CTRL + V to paste the information
We copied. We'll have to do a little formatting using the BACKSPACE, as this isn't exactly lined up for our InDesign file. At the bottom here, we can delete Client, Common Grounds Coffee*.
Additionally, at the top here, we're going to hit ENTER, and we'll add our title, Project Details*. Next, we just need to do some styling. We'll reduce this space and add colons. For our location, we already have that information above.
So again, we can triple-click and delete it. Next, let's hit CTRL + A to select all of our text, and we're going to unalign it from the Baseline Grid, and let's increase the font size. In this case, I like the look of 16 points; however, this third line doesn't quite fit.
However, we do have square feet in the actual description, so let's get rid of square footage in the category. From here, we have our text, and so let's utilize our Selection Tool, right-clicking, and we'll work with Text Frame Options. We'll increase the inset spacing and leave it at 0.375. We'll go to our Baseline Options and select Cap Height, since we're using Chivo, and finally, let's center our text.
From here, this rectangle is still probably a little bit big, so let's drag down, holding ALT, so it's a more appropriate size. We'll then drag it to the bottom here, leaving a little space on the bottom. We can now add even more space between our text frame and our callout rectangle. We'll leave it two full lines above and adjust our rectangle so it's exactly two baselines between. Now we can add another frame on the right-hand side and drag it all the way to the center.
In this case, we want to have a little bit of space, and let's have the same space as our baselines between the top image frame and the text. So let's create a guide. We'll add a guide; however, we don't exactly know how far 16 points for a baseline and 32 points for two baselines is. To measure this, let's stack it right on top of the other baseline, and then using the Selection Tool, we'll select our guide. At the top, we can actually add it, so we'll add 4.25 inches plus 32 points for two baselines of 16 points. We hit ENTER.
We'll see that InDesign itself does the math for us, and we now have an equal distance between the top image frame and the rectangle, and the rectangle and our right image frame, if we resize it to this guide. We're now done with our first page, so let's change our perspective to the right. For this page, we're simply going to add a large text frame and an image frame. Finally, let's add some placeholder text. Selecting here, we'll scroll to the bottom first and make sure that we have two columns. Additionally, we can increase our gutter to 0.25 inches, and let's add some lorem ipsum, or placeholder text, by right-clicking and selecting Fill with Placeholder Text.
As a final step here, we'll delete the text in front of our image frame, and we've now completed our template. Let's hit CTRL + S on the keyboard to save our work, and in the next video, we'll put this template to use. See you there.