Discover how to effectively stylize a cover using a baseline grid for text alignment, image placement, and object alignment. This article provides a thorough walkthrough of adjusting baseline grids, aligning text, and organizing page layouts for a professional finish.
Key Insights
- The article demonstrates how to use a baseline grid to align text and images, similar to a lined sheet of paper, ensuring consistency across multiple pages.
- By modifying the baseline grid increment and aligning the text to it, more space can be created between lines, improving readability. However, not all text may benefit from alignment to the baseline grid, and adjustments may need to be made on a case-by-case basis.
- The article also explains how to round out image corners and ensure that text and background shapes are centered on an image, thus enhancing the overall visual appeal of the page layout.
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In this video, we're going to finish up stylizing our cover. So let's begin first by discussing this text on the left-hand side.
I'll hit W, and we can have our Normal view. With this text here, what we're going to want to add is our Baseline Grid. We can access our Baseline Grid by going to our Properties Panel, and if we click outside of the text in this gray space, we can go to our Baseline Grid by selecting Baseline Grid from Rulers and Grids.
A Baseline Grid works similarly to a lined sheet of paper. We can see the blue lines here, and if we scroll down, we can see all of these lines on future pages. The Baseline Grid allows us to have lines for our pages that the text flows from.
In this sense, when we look at multiple pages together, we can see the text all flows along the same lines, so this can be helpful in organizing our pages. In this case, we want to adjust our Baseline Grid so that it's appropriate to this text. To do this, we'll go to Edit, and then we'll go all the way down to Preferences and over to Grids.
Here we can see that our Baseline Grid is available to us, and currently we have an increment set at every 12 points. Instead, let's change this from 12 to 16. We're going to hit OK.
Now we can see we have a little more space between lines, but to make this text follow these lines, we have to go to Paragraph at the bottom of our Properties Panel. Right down here, we have two icons: one showing Do Not Align to Baseline Grid and one for Aligning to the Baseline Grid. When we click Align to Baseline Grid, we'll see that all of the lines of text are aligned so they're touching the bottom of each baseline. As we move our text frame around, we'll see that this is still true.
In this case, we're going to align our text to the left-hand side of the margin here, and let's move it down just a little bit more. From here, we're going to break up this text a bit more—double-clicking and hitting CTRL + A to select all. Next, let's remove Hyphenate. Here we can see the lines that we have, and using our Selection Tool, let's remove our text frame that aligns right here.
We'll leave two baselines right below before our bottom rectangle. Additionally, we can also use this to align other objects such as our image frame on the right-hand side with our image. We're going to drag that up so it aligns to the bottom of our text here, and let's drag our image frame over a bit so it aligns right along that guide as well.
As we're working with Baseline Grids, we can align all types of text to them. However, it doesn't always work perfectly. In this case, we have "Department of Public Works Proposal, " and it's not lined up to the Baseline Grid.
If we go down to Paragraph and align it to the Baseline Grid, we'll see that if we hit W, it's far too spread out, and it's not helpful to have it aligned in this case. Therefore, it's important to determine whether the text you're working with needs to line up to the Baseline Grid or not. In this case, we'll unalign it from the Baseline Grid, and I'm going to move it down so it's lined up with "Submitted To."
If we zoom in a bit, we’ll want the top of "Submitted To" and "Department of Public Works" to line up together. We'll release right about there, and now they're lined up pretty closely. We hit W on the keyboard, we can see this, and if we zoom out, we can get a good feel for the cover.
Looking at this now, we've got this large white space, so let's spread this out a bit more. To do this, I'm going to drag this up, and I'll go up two lines with this, holding Shift. We'll go up about two lines as well with our "Department of Public Works." We'll then drag up our image here, holding Shift, and make sure that it aligns to the right-hand side of our cover page.
We'll then right-click and go to Fitting and select Fill Frame Proportionally. If we hit W on the keyboard, we can see what this looks like. I think we have nice spacing here.
As two more changes, let's add the text to the bottom right-hand side of this bar, and let's stylize our photo. We'll hit W on the keyboard, and let's add our text. We can zoom in and use our Type Tool. In this case, we're going to use one of the slogans of Parks and Dwell.
That's "Environmental Engineers | Compliance." We'll add a line right in between them. On your keyboard, this is the top line right above your ENTER key.
From here, we'll hit CTRL + A. Let's change this over to Chivo, and we'll select Chivo Bold. From here, we're going to right-align it. Next, we'll use our Selection Tool. Let's just drag it down to the bottom here, and we'll drag the bottom of our text frame.
That's right on the bottom, hugging the margin. Finally, we can change the color of this from black. To change the color of our text, we'll go to the top and select Paper. If we hit W on the keyboard, we can see what this looks like, and I like the look of this.
As our final change, let's work with our image here, and we're just going to round out the corners. To do this with our image frame selected, we're going to go to Corner. If we want to change them individually, we can uncheck "Make All Settings the Same."
In this case, I'm going to round out the bottom-left corner. We'll go to Rounded, and I'll also round out the top-right corner. I'm going to round it.
I'll also increase this a bit, and let's leave it at 0.5 inches. If we hit OK and hit W, we can see what this looks like, and let's use this style throughout our proposal. We'll hit W again, and I'm simply going to move our frame to the left. If we'd like to adjust our image at all, we can do that as well.
Finally, looking out, let's hit W on the keyboard to view our work. As one final change, let's make sure that our text and our back shapes are aligned to the center of this photo. To do this, we'll select our two shapes, holding Shift, and let's group them—right-clicking and selecting Group. Next, let's also select our text and our shape, right-click these again, and select Group.
With these all grouped together now, we can select this, and holding Shift, we'll select our background. From here, we want to make sure that "Parks and Dwell Construction" and the shape behind it are centered on this image. We'll go to our alignment options, go to Align to Key Object, and we're going to identify our key object as the image behind—so we'll click on it, see the blue line—and from here, we're going to select Align Vertical Centers. This has now moved our title into the middle of the image, and this looks good.
Let's now save our work, hitting CTRL + S on the keyboard to save. In the next video, we're going to begin working on our Page Two and Three. See you there!