Introduction To Indesign: Workbook

Introduction to
InDesign
Workbook
Edition 1
January 2009
Document Number: 3648-2009
Introduction
to InDesign
Course Notes
Presenters:
Nick Stroud
Matt Beilby
Introduction to InDesign
InDesign enables you to put just about anything down on paper, exactly where you
wantit. Its main capability is in the very precise control of text. The program provides
rudimentary graphical elements; more sophisticated illustrations need to be prepared in
a separate program such as Photoshop. This basic introduction will focus on InDesign's
text and layout features, with a brief look at adding graphics, and finish up with a
summary of how to prepare your publication for printing or the Web. A series of exercises
will introduce some basic concepts, and these can then be put together to achieve some
practical documents.
Getting started with InDesign
The best way to start any new publication is not by opening up a desktop publishing
program, but by thinking exactly what you want the end result to look like. What sort of
document/publication is it to be? Will it be one side of A4 or A5, or A0? Double-sided?
Multiple pages? Portrait or landscape (upright or sideways)? Although you can change
the document's specifications after you have created it in InDesign, the easiest way is
to know exactly what you are trying to implement with the program before you begin.
Always try and start a project with a clear idea of the finished result you're aiming for!
Course outline
Morning
Introduction to InDesign; overview of exercises
Exercise 1: the InDesign workplace
Exercise 2: text formatting
Exercise 3: exploring the Control Palette, undo, and frames
Exercise 4: simple graphics
Exercise 5: a tourist leaflet for Edinburgh
Exercise 6: tabulating things
Exercise 7: Master Pages
Exercise 8: adding interactive elements
Exercise 9: producing PDFs, or packaging for a printer
12:30 1:30 lunchtime
Afternoon
Practice and Projects
4:30+ finish
Exercise 1: the InDesign workplace

Run the program:
On a Mac: click once on the pink butterfly icon sixth from the left in the Dock.
On Windows: choose Start>All Programs>Graphics>Adobe InDesign CS2
In either case, InDesign starts by offering you various options; choose Close for now.
InDesigns basic appearance consists of a piece of paper on a working area known as
the paste board, surrounded by a set of tools to perform a whole host of functions. This
virtual piece of paper is your leaflet or poster, or the current page of a longer document
such as a newsletter or booklet:
The InDesign Window
InDesigns tools: Toolbox, Menus and Palettes

You will need to use a wide variety of InDesigns commands and functions to lay out your
pages, so it is important to find out where they are and how they can be organised.
Spend some time exploring the InDesign workplace:
The Toolbox
This is a collection of tools that can be used to achieve various effects in
InDesign.
Find out what each one does, by hovering your cursor over each one
and waiting for a tool tip to pop up.
Notice that several of the items in the toolbox have a small black triangle
in the bottom right-hand corner. Hold down the mouse button on one of
these and you will see extra tools come into view. For example, click (and
hold down) your mouse on the Rectangle tool, then drag to the Ellipse tool
and release the mouse. You have now replaced the Rectangle tool in your
toolbox with the Ellipse tool. If you want to get the Rectangle tool back, you
have to click and drag to it from the Ellipse tool.
In this course we will mostly be using the Selection Tool (first in the toolbox)
and Type Tool (second on the second row).
(You will notice that the name of each tool given in the tool tips is followed
by a single letter in brackets. These are short-cuts: when you arent actually
typing in text, you can type these characters to select the corresponding
tool. This is not a priority for beginners!)
InDesigns Preferences are accessed from the InDesign menu (Mac) or Edit menu
(Windows). Most of the default settings are fine. You should almost always use
Typographers Quotes ( rather than ' ' " ") so you could check that this is set in
the Type section. You may prefer to choose your units for measurements in the Units
& Increments section (points, picas, millimetres, centimetres, inches and more are
available).
The Menus
Have a look at each of the menus, to get a sense of the sorts of topic that are in
eachone.
You can get at all the programs features through the menus, but InDesign makes them
a bit more accessible through a system of Palettes, some of which you can see as tabs
down the right-hand side of your screen. These and the toolbox are the main ways you
will control InDesign, so its worth getting to know them:
Palettes
The complete set of palettes is listed in InDesigns Window menu. Those that are
currently visible have a little tick beside them. Note that several items on the Window
menu are followed by a right-pointing black triangle. This indicates that several palettes
have been grouped together to save space on the menu. In particular, there are several
important palettes behind the Type & Tables entry in the Window menu.
You can reveal any palette by selecting it from the Window menu, and you can hide any
open palette by selecting its name from the Window menu.
You can also open any palette which has a tab on the right-hand side of your screen, by
clicking on the tab. You can make selections in the palette, then close it by clicking again
on its tab. And you can decide which tabs to have on your screen simply by putting
themthere.
Explore InDesigns palettes!
Open each palette in turn from the Window menu and see if you can work out what
aspect of page layout it controls (some functions are pretty obscure!). If a palette
opens in the middle of your screen, you can close it by clicking on its close button or
selecting it again from the Window menu. If a palette you choose from the Window
menu flies out from the right-hand side of your screen, you can click on its tab to
close it again.
Try dragging a tab from the right-hand side of your screen out into the middle.
Whathappens?
Try opening a palette from the Window menu that isnt already a tab on the right-hand
side of your screen, then drag its tab over to join the others. What happens?
Open a busy palette such as the
Characterpalette:

What do the two circled sets of arrows do?

(Click on them to find out!)
You can move the palettes around as much as you

like, then get them all put back in their initial places
by choosing Workspace > [Default] from the
Window menu.
Jumping around, zooming in and out

Well use a real document to illustrate some more features of InDesign:
Open the document news.indd from the InDesign folder in the Documents folder on
your computer. This is a simple newsletter containing four pages.
Moving around in a long document

Move around the pages using the following methods:

The page selector at the bottom-left of your InDesign window:
(click on the first two and last two arrows: where do you go?
Try overtyping the number here 2 with another, and press [Return].
Whats in the drop-down menu?)
[Shift] [PageUp] and [Shift] [PageDown]
Try repeating the previous key-strokes while holding down the

[Command](Mac) or [Control] (Windows) keys.
Double-click on page icons in the Pages palette.
You may notice the existence of Master Pages in the drop-down menu.
These are for setting up elements that are to appear on several pages in a
document such as headers, footers and page numbers. We will return to these.
Zooming in and out

Zoom in and out of the document; you would do this, for example, if wanting to make
very fine adjustments to an object on your page (zooming in), or looking at overall
page layout (zooming out), using the following methods:
The magnification selector alongside the page selector at the bottom-left

of your InDesign window:
(you can choose a magnification from the drop-down menu, or overtype

the number with a different number.)
Hold down the [Command] (Mac) or [Control] (Windows) key, then type
each of these numbers in turn: 0 1 2 4 5.
Hold down the [Command] (Mac) or [Control] (Windows) key, then type
the plus and minus keys repeatedly. (What are the magnification limits?)
Select the magnifying glass icon from the toolbox and click a few times with it
in the document, then hold down the [alt] key and click a few more times.
Still with the magnifying glass icon selected, drag out a small square in the
middle of a page.
Get back to a magnification where you can comfortably read the text.
When you open a book or multi-page newsletter, you see two pages side-by-side an
even-numbered page on the left and an odd-numbered page on the right. InDesign
emulates this real-world appearance with what it calls Spreads. You can switch this
appearance on or off by ticking or unticking Facing Pages when you create a new
document, or subsequently, in Document Setup from the File menu.
Pages and Spreads
This is what the Pages palette looks like for the news.indd document:
The upper section lists the Master pages which have been created for this document.
These contain elements such as page numbers that are to be applied uniformly to a
sequence of pages, and we will meet them later in the course.
The lower section represents the actual pages in the document. Each page contains the
letter which represents the Master page which has been applied to it, and has its page
number immediately below it. When the newsletter is closed you see page 1 on its own,
as represented here; when its opened, you see two pages side by side in a spread, as
here for pages 2 & 3. You can scroll down this section to see further spreads and pages.
You can jump to any page by double-clicking on its icon in this palette, or to any spread
by double-clicking on the page numbers below it.
Measuring things
InDesign has many tools to help you lay things out with great precision. For example
it can display rulers in your chosen units of measurement, across the top of your
workspace and down the side. These should appear by default; you can switch them on
and off in the View menu.
When you create a new document you can specify the margins it is to have; these appear
on the documents page(s) as pale pink/purple lines which are simply there as guides for
your layout they do not appear on print-outs. As a further assistance to precise layout
you can set horizontal or vertical guides wherever you like on your document, to help
line things up. To create a guide:
Move your mouse over one of the rulers (horizontal or vertical), click and drag out on
to your document.
You should find that a fine line is pulled out from the ruler and remains where you let go
of the mouse button.
You can set up more of these guides semi-automatically where you want multiple
columns on a page, using Margins and Columns in the Layout menu.
Exercise 2: handling text

Its time to get to grips with InDesigns text-formatting tools!
Close the news.indd file dont bother saving it.
Create a new InDesign document by choosing New > Document from the File menu.
You are presented with a dialogue box that lets you set up various aspects of your
new document:
At this point we are only going to be experimenting with text formatting, so this default
one-page offering is fine: click on OK, or press [Return].
Choose the Type tool from the toolbox, and drag out a rectangle to fill most of your
new document page (that is, drag the cursor from near the top left-hand corner of the
page to somewhere close to the bottom right-hand corner). This is a text frame, ready
to have text typed, pasted or placed into it.
Type the word EDINBURGH, press the [Return] key, then type

One of the worlds great capital cities!
(again followed by [Return] ).
Choose Place from the File menu. This opens a dialogue box from which you can
select an existing text file such as a Word document to insert into your InDesign
document. Choose the file Edinburgh.doc from the folder InDesign in the folder
Documents on your computer. A large block of text is imported into your document.
You can now experiment with the character-formatting options.
As with other programs, you apply character formatting by first selecting some text and
then applying formatting to it. You can select text in various ways, using the mouse:
double-click to select a word.
treble-click to select a line of text.
click four times to select a paragraph.
drag over any range of text, from a single character up to any number of
paragraphs.
Select the following line and make it into a reasonably prominent sub-heading,
choosing an italic font that you like the look of.
Select Show Hidden Characters from the Type menu; this lets you see the invisible
characters in a document like spaces, paragraphs and tabs. You will notice that
there are blank lines empty paragraphs between the paragraphs of text in the
Word document you imported. These need to be deleted (you can do this all at
once in the Story Editor, introduced later): it is much better to use Space After in a
Paragraph Style (see below) to get gaps between paragraphs.
Select the word EDINBURGH, and use the Character palette (in the Type and Tables
section of the Window menu) to make it look like a major headline.
You could select each paragraph of running text in turn, and choose a font, spacing and
other attributes for it then repeat that for the next paragraph, and the next
Styles were invented to save you repetitive work of this kind.
Styles can save time when you apply and revise text formatting, and they give your
documents a consistent look. When you change the specification in a style, all text to
which that style has been applied will be updated immediately.
A character style is a collection of character formatting attributes that can be applied
to selected text even to a single word or character. A paragraph style includes both
character and paragraph formatting, and affects the entire paragraph(s).
Select New Character Style from the Character Styles palette, and create a new
character style with the following settings:

General: Style Name: keyword

Basic Character Formats: Font Family: Times

Font Style: Bold

Character Colour: Green
Select New Paragraph Style from the Paragraph Styles palette, and give it the
following attributes:

General: Style Name: main

Basic Character Formats: Font Family: Times

Font Style: Regular

Size: 12 pt

Leading: 24 pt (leading is the spacing between lines)

Indents and Spacing: Left Indent: 5mm

Space After: 3mm
Select a few paragraphs of the running text (for example by dragging the cursor
through them), then select main from the Paragraph Styles palette. (Does this make
a difference?)
Select any occurrences of the word Edinburgh in the running text (for example by
double-clicking on it), then select keyword from the Character Styles palette. (Does
this make a difference?)
The line spacing in the paragraphs governed by the Leading value is a bit much.
Double-click on the word main in the Paragraph Styles palette to reopen its
specification, and set the Leading in the Basic Character Formats section to Auto.
(Isthat better?)
Double-click on the word keyword in the Character Styles palette to reopen its
specification, and set the Character Colour to be Red. (Have they all changed?)
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Styles can save a lot of time in getting your documents up to a certain standard,
especially where a series of documents is involved for example in a monthly
newsletter or a set of training manuals. Styles can be imported into new documents
and immediately give them the look-and-feel of their predecessors in the series. Styles
can also be invaluable for example when creating Tables of Contents, or when exporting
documents to other formats.
The Story Editor

The Story Editor is like a simple text editor inside InDesign. It allows you to see the raw
text of your document, without the distractions of formatting or layout. This can be the
best way to work on lengthy text when you are doing basic editing.
Click the text tool anywhere in your documents text, and select Edit in Story Editor
from the Edit menu or hold down the [Command] (Mac) or [Control] (Windows) key
and type Y.
The Story Editor often comes up in an uncomfortably narrow window; you can
broaden this by dragging its bottom right-hand corner. Note that each paragraphs
style is indicated in the left-hand column, and styles can be applied to text in the
Story Editor even though their effect does not show up.
The Story Editor is a convenient place to check spelling and make global changes (such
as changing every occurrence of the word Edinburgh to Glasgow!). Both can be done
in the main document layout, but it can be less distracting to use the Story Editor.
Check the spelling in your document by clicking the text pointer near the top of the
page, entering the Story Editor, and choosing Spelling>Check Spelling from the
Editmenu.
Change every occurrence of Edinburgh to Inverness by choosing Find/Change from
the Edit menu, typing Edinburgh in the Find what box, Inverness in the Changeto
box, then clicking on the Change All. Repeat this the other way round if you want to
change it back!
The Find/Change facility is very powerful: as well as changing one word to another, it can
find and optionally replace invisible characters such as tabs and line breaks, or replace
formatting according to fonts, character styles etc (in which case you can leave the find
and change boxes empty). Click on the More Options button to see all the possibilities:
Click on here to specify
invisible characters to
be found.
Use this drop-down
menu to set the scope
of the search.
Click here to specify
formatting you would
like to find.
Click here to specify
new formatting you
want to apply.
Click here to clear any
formatting you have
specified for search or
replace.
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The Control Palette

The Control palette is particularly useful, and youll probably want to keep this one open
all the time. It gives ready access to all the functions youre likely to need for whatever
item such as text or a graphic thats currently selected in your document.
Exercise 3: exploring control, frames, undo
Reopen the old newsletter (news.indd) if it isnt open already, or select it from the
Window menu.
If it isnt showing already, open the Control palette so it is sitting across the top of the
InDesign window.
Choose the Text tool from the toolbox and drag it across a bit of text in the newsletter.
The Control palette should then look something like this:
This is giving direct access to all the attributes one might want to apply to text at the
character level, such as Font, Size, Sub/Superscript etc etc.
The same palette gives access to all the attributes you might want to apply at the
paragraph level:
Click on the Paragraph symbol at the left-hand end of the palette (under the A).
The Control palette should change to look something like this:
Here you can set justification (left, right, centred and variations), space before and after,
left and right margins and many other things you would want to do to paragraphs.
Now choose the Selection tool from the toolbox, and click on the graphic at the
bottom left-hand corner of page 1. The Control palette should now look like this:
Now the options are all to do with changing graphical items.

You can access practically everything you need from the Control palette: items that dont
fit on it are available via the circled right-pointing arrow at the right-hand end of the
palette.
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A quick look at Frames

Every piece of text or graphic in an InDesign document has to be held in a Frame. We
created a Text Frame in the Exercise2 by dragging out a rectangular shape with the
TextTool. There are also special Frame Tools in the Toolbox for making rectangular,
ellipsoidal or polygonal frames.
Left and right
margins are
measured from
the edge of the
frame, not of
the paper.
This is the
inputport to
this frame.
This is the
centrepoint
of the frame,
by which it
can be moved
around.
These are the frames
handles, which allow it
to be re-sized.
This is the outputport from

this frame, to connect it
to another one. The cross
indicates a text overflow..
Try changing the size and shape of your text frame by dragging its handles. Notice
that you can drag it right off the page!
Select the Pointer tool from the Toolbox, click on the cross in the output port, and
notice that the pointer is now loaded with text. Click and drag out a square on the
Pasteboard, to make a temporary home for some more of the text.
The joy of Z
Many modern computer programs let you UNDO your last instruction.
InDesign has an excellent undo facility which lets you undo your last many actions, and
this allows you to experiment freely with any of its tools and facilities. If you want to see
how some modification will work out try it and see! If it doesnt work, you can rewind
your document to the state it was in before you began your experiment.
To undo your last action, choose Undo from the top of the Edit menu, or hold down
the [Command] (Mac) or [Control] (Windows) key and type Z.
Repeat this as often as you like to go on rewinding back your document.
If you change your mind and want to reinstate your undone changes, choose Redo
from the top of the Edit menu, or hold down the [Command] (Mac) or [Control]
(Windows) key and the [Shift] key, and type Z.
You can save a document and still undo changes you made before you saved it, but once
you close it, all changes are saved into the document and cannot later be undone.
13
InDesign includes tools to create several simple types of graphical item with which
to spice up a document, including lines, circles, squares, polygons and colours. Play
around with these to find out what you can do.
Open a new one-page InDesign document, or add a page to an existing document
(Pages palette).
Exercise 4: simple graphics
Choose the Line Tool from the Toolbox (third one down on the right-hand side), and
drag out a line across your page.
Use the Stroke palette to set your lines thickness to 60pt, then experiment with the
options for the lines Type, the effect to apply to its Start and End, the Gap Colour,
and from the Swatches palette, the colour of the line itself.
Next choose the Rectangle Tool from the Toolbox (immediately below the Line Tool;
note that you will have to drag to it if the Ellipse or Polygon Tools are showing in the
Toolbox).
Drag out two rectangles, one while holding down the [Shift] key, the other not.
Was there a difference? Select either of the rectangles and explore the effect on
it of all the options in the Stroke palette. Try out Corner Effects from the Object
menu. Explore the Swatches palette as well. With a graphic object selected, the
two overlapping icons in the top left-hand corner of the Swatches palette
indicate stroke (the line around the edge of the object) and fill (the contents of the
object). Click on either of these icons to select it, choose a colour, and see the effect
on your rectangle. Try None for stroke and fill also.
Repeat this process (with and without the [Shift] key) using the Ellipse Tool.
Try the same thing with the Polygon Tool but this time you need to say what sort of
polygon you want before you draw it. Select the Polygon Tool from the Toolbox, then
double-click on it, to get access to the polygon settings. Try starting off with 20
sides and an inset of 36%, then drag out a shape with and without the [Shift] key.
Experiment with this as much as you like.
As well as brightening up your documents, you may want to use these graphical elements
to construct simple block diagrams in which case it would help if you can draw out the
diagram and then lock it all together so you can move it around as a single unit. Trythis:
Use the Line, Rectangle and Ellipse Tools to draw a simple block diagram just a few
squares and circles joined with straight lines.
Choose the Selection Tool from the Toolbox (the solid black arrow in the top left), and
click on any one of the items you have just drawn.
Hold down the [Shift] key, then click on all the other items.
Choose Group from the Object menu, and all the individual items you have drawn are
combined into a single unit which you can drag around, or cut and paste.
If you want to separate this new object into its original parts, choose Ungroup from the
Object menu.
There is an easier way to select several objects at once: just drag the mouse so that it
touches all of them. The danger of this is that you can also pick up other objects such as
an underlying text frame so its useful to do this sort of work on the Paste Board!
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Exercise 5: a simple tourist leaflet

This will be a single side of A4 extolling the virtues of Edinburgh, and your task is to make
it as attractive as possible.
To get started:
Select New > Document from the File menu.
Choose the number of Columns to be 2 , the Gutter to be 10mm , and the Margins to
be 15mm .
Click on the More Options button in the New Document dialogue box.
Set a Top Bleed of 3mm, and click on the link icon at the right-hand end of the
bleed row to set the other entries to the same value.
Click OK to create your new document.
Make sure that the Rulers are showing across the top and down the left-hand side of
your document window; if they are not, select Show Rulers from the View menu.
Click in the top ruler and drag the cursor down to set a new horizontal guide at 50mm.
Choose the Rectangle Tool from the Toolbox, and drag out a rectangle starting from
the top left-hand corner of your documents bleed area down and across to the point
where your new guide intersects with the bleed area on the right-hand side.
Open the Swatches palette and select Yellow for the stroke and fill of your new
rectangle.
Select the Type Tool from the Toolbox and drag out a text frame that fills most of your
yellow box. Type the word EDINBURGH, select this, and set it to be 72pt Helvetica
Bold and red or whatever else you prefer. You might like to stretch it horizontally
and/or vertically to fit the space better. Note that you can choose different colours for
the text and for its outline.
Choose the Selection Tool from the Toolbox, then choose Place from the File menu.
This opens a dialogue box to let you select a file to import. Choose Edinburgh.jpg
from the InDesign folder in the Documents folder on your computer. The cursor
changes to show that it is now carrying a graphical item. Click where the bottom of
your yellow box crosses the left-hand side of your page.
The picture is too big. Click on the centre handle at the top, and drag it down to
hide most of the sky, then drag the picture back up to meet your yellow box. Hold
down the [Shift] and the [Command] (Mac) or [Control] (Windows) keys, then drag the
bottom right-hand handle of the graphic left and up until the picture just fits on to the
page. Drag the bottom centre handle up to hide some of the foreground and leave at
least half of your page clear for text.
(The Place command is the best way to import objects into InDesign, since it provides
the highest level of support for graphic resolution, file formats, colour etc. When these
aspects are not critical, you can use copy and paste to import text and graphics.)
Click anywhere on the pasteboard to make sure that the picture is no longer selected
(otherwise in the next step you might paste the text over the top of it).
Select the Type Tool from the Toolbox, then choose Place from the File menu. This
time choose Edinburgh.doc from the InDesign folder in the Documents folder on
15
Choose the Selection tool from the Toolbox, then click on the cross in the output port
of the first column to pick up the overflowing text. Click somewhere in the right-hand
column just below the picture, to fill that column with text.
Now use the Control and Swatches palettes to make the text as attractive as you can
(it would probably help to break up the text with some small headings).
your computer. The cursor changes to show that it is now carrying some text. Click
somewhere in the left-hand column just below the picture, to fill that column with text.
As with any computer program, you should save your work regularly as you go along.
InDesign is, however, very tolerant of lapses in this regard. It keeps a backup copy of
your work as youre going along, and if the program or the computer crashes, when
the program is restarted it automatically finds any documents that were open when it
crashed, complete with most if not all of your work. This may not recover all your work,
but its a lot better than losing everything.
Nevertheless, Save regularly!
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Exercise 6: tabulating things

InDesign offers two ways for laying out data in columns: tabs and tables.
Open a new one-page InDesign document, draw out a text frame on it, and type in the
following (or any similar list that appeals to you with at least one column containing
prices) where [Tab] means press the [Tab] key:

1 [Tab] Brussels sprouts [Tab] 16kg [Tab] 13.99

2 [Tab] Cauliflower [Tab] 6.6kg [Tab] 2.86
3 [Tab] Parsnips [Tab] 172kg [Tab] 48.25
4 [Tab] Leeks [Tab] 45kg [Tab] 179.50
5 [Tab] Tatties [Tab] 16,384kg [Tab] 1,017.72
Open the Tabs palette from the Type & Tables section of the Window menu; if
necessary drag its bottom right-hand corner to the right to make it at least as wide as
your page:
Select the list you just typed, by dragging from anywhere in the first line to anywhere
in the last, then click in the white space immediately above the ruler in the tab palette
at about 4mm, 40mm and 55mm.
By default these are all left-justified tabs, but centre-justified, right-justified and decimalaligned are also available.
Click on the tab at 40mm, then click on the right-justified icon
at the left-hand end of the tab palette.
Click on the tab at 55mm, then click on the decimal-aligned icon
at the left-hand end of the tab palette.
Have all the columns lined up sensibly? You can make adjustments by dragging the tab
marks to and fro along the tab palettes ruler. You can also set them exactly where you
want them by typing a measurement into the box labelled x in the tab palette. (This is
common throughout InDesign: you can often type a value into a box, as well as adjusting
sliders or arrows to change its setting.) If youd like to have a character filling the gap
where the tabs are, select a tab in the tab palette, type the character into the Leader box
and press [Return].
17
Select the Type Tool and click on the line below the list you have just been working on.
Choose Insert Table from the Table menu. A dialogue box opens, offering its default
table of 4 rows and 4 columns. Increase the number of rows to 5. A new, empty table
is created in your document.
Click in the first cell of the table (the first column of the first row) and type in the list
from the previous page. This time when you press [Tab] you should see the cursor
move into the next cell of the table.
To handle more complex data, use a table.
When the table is full, make each of its columns a more sensible width by moving the
cursor over the line between columns until it becomes a double-headed arrow, and
dragging.
Select the first column of the table by moving the cursor to the top of the column and
adjusting its position gently up and down until it turns into a down-pointing arrow,
then click. Choose Align Center from the Control palette to centre the numbers in
their column.
Select the third column of the table in similar fashion, and choose Align Right from
the Control palette. Drag in the right-margin indicator in the Tab palette so that the
numbers are better arranged in the column.
Select the fourth column in similar fashion, and use the Tab palette to place a
decimal-aligned tab in the column. Adjust its position so that the numbers line up
sensibly.
Select the first row of the table by moving the cursor to the left-hand end of the row
and adjusting its position gently to and fro until it turns into a right-pointing arrow,
then click. Choose Insert>Row from the Table menu, and in the dialogue box which
opens, specify one row above.
Select the new row at the top of the table, and choose Merge Cells from the Table
menu to create a single cell the width of the table. Click once in this cell and type in a
heading for the table.
Explore all the possibilities for sprucing up your table in Table Options and
CellOptions in the Table menu, such as coloured strokes and fills, and different fonts
and vertical alignments for the text. Try inserting an extra row and/or column of data,
and/or deleting one.
If you want to centre your table on the page, you can select it rather as you would select
a paragraph, by clicking just to the left or right of it. You can then choose Align center
from the paragraph section of the Control palette (effectively treating the whole table as
though it were a character in a paragraph).
(It is very easy to convert plain text into a table, or indeed to convert the contents of a
table into plain text. For the former, type the text and put a [Tab] character between each
cell, and a [Return] at the end of each row, then select all the text that is to go into the
table and choose Convert Text to Table from the Table menu. To extract the text from
a table, drag the mouse from the top left-hand cell to the bottom right-hand one so the
whole table is selected, then choose Convert Table to Text from the Table menu.)
18
Exercise 7: Master Pages

A master page holds common elements that you would like to apply to several pages
in your document such as page numbers, headers, footers, logo etc. You can have
as many master pages as you like in InDesign, applying each one to a page or range of
pages in your document as you wish. If you subsequently change a master page, the
change is immediately and automatically reflected in the page(s) in your document which
use that master page.
Open a new document in InDesign, and select A-Master from the drop-down pageselector at the bottom left of the InDesign window. You are now looking at the
documents blank, default master page.
Put a page number on the master page by using the Type Tool to draw a small text box
in the bottom centre of the page. Within that, (optionally) type Page, then from the
Type menu, select Insert Special Character > Auto Page Number. The letter A will
appear in the text box indicating that this is a page number on Master page A.
To add a header, draw a text box across the top of the page and type in it:
Edinburgh: Scotlands finest city
Return to page one of your document using the page-selector at the bottom left of the
InDesign window. Have your new elements appeared on the page?
You can choose whether or not to include these master elements on any particular
page by choosing Show Master items or Hide Master items from the Pages palette.
Click here in the Pages

palette to find the commands
to make a NewMaster and
to ApplyMastertoPages.
Notice that if you set up a document to have facing pages, InDesign treats left (even)
and right (odd) pages separately. It handles pairs of pages together as spreads, as
shown for example in the above screenshot. When you set up new master pages, you
have to set them up separately for left and right pages; if you put a header and a footer
on a left-hand master page, for example, they will not show up on odd pages.
Use the Pages palette to add three new pages to your document.
Use the Pages palette to create a new Master.
Make a coloured box containing the page number and put this anywhere you like on
the Master pages.
Use the Text and Rotate tools and the Control and Swatch palettes to put the word
DRAFT in large, pale grey letters diagonally across the left- and right-hand Master
pages.
Use the Pages palette to apply your new Master to your documents pages 2 to 4.
19
InDesign doesnt just produce documents on paper, but can generate online documents
as well. One of the tools it provides for online documents is hyperlinking, through which
as on the Web you can click on a link and be taken straight to some other page, in the
same document, in another document, or on the Web.
To add a hyperlink from your InDesign document to a website:
Exercise 8: Hyperlinks
Select a word or phrase in your document by dragging over it.

Open the Hyperlinks palette, and select New Hyperlink. This opens a dialogue box in
which you can set all the details, as follows:
Type a descriptive name for the link in the Name box.
Choose URL from the Type drop-down menu.
Type a Web address in the URL box; for example, http://www.ed.ac.uk/
Click on OK. Well see the effect when we look at PDFs next.
20
Exercise 9: Print, make PDF, send to printer

The whole point of InDesign is to create a publication, on paper or on the Web.
To print your document:

InDesign likes to control the print process itself, so it tries to bypass your computers
regular print process.
Choose Print from the File menu, to open the Print dialogue box:
Here you can choose the printer you want to print on, the number of copies to print, the
pages you want (all, or a single page or range of pages), and by clicking on Setup
the size of paper to use. The one other option you may often want but which you cannot
set here is double-sided printing. For this you must click on the Printer button, ignore
InDesigns warning, and choose double-sided printing from the Printers regular dialogue
box. Be aware, though, that anything you set here can override what youve already set
in InDesigns own Print dialogue!
To make a PDF file from your document:

Adobes Portable Document Format converts documents into a form which will look
almost exactly like your original even when the people looking at it do not have the same
fonts you used to create it. This is a very reliable way to exchange formatted documents,
and is the recommended standard for document exchange in the University. To create a
PDF from your document:
Choose Export from the File menu, to open the Export dialogue box:
21
Here you just need to make sure youve got Adobe PDF from the Format drop-down
menu, and have specified a filename and a place to keep it. You select exactly what PDF
file you want after you click on Save to open the ExportPDF dialogue box:
The key things to choose here are the pages you want to export, and the quality of the
PDF file you need. Choose from the Preset drop-down menu according to what you are
going to do with your document:
choose Screen for a relatively small, low resolution file which is ideal for viewing
on the Web or sending by email; the main problem with this will be the low quality
of graphics.
choose Print for a larger, reasonable-quality file intended for routine local
printing by yourself or a colleague.
choose Press if you are sending your document to a commercial printer and need
the best possible quality.
22
If you are sending your document to a commercial printer, it will help a lot if you add the
standard printers marks that are used to help quality control in the printing industry.
You can do this very easily with InDesign:
Choose Export from the File menu, choose a filename and destination from the Print
dialogue box, and select Press from the Preset drop-down menu in the Export PDF
dialogue box.
Now choose Marks and Bleeds from the left-hand pane in the Export PDF dialogue
box, to open a new dialogue box:
Click in All Printers Marks and if youve used bleeds in your document, set these
too (3mm is fairly standard).
Click on Export. You may see some warning messages next accept those! then the
PDF file is generated. When its ready, open it in Acrobat Reader and look for those
printers marks.
To send your document as an InDesign package to the University Printers:

The Universitys Printing Service can accept InDesign files which they will prepare for
printing but you have to be sure to send them every component of your document.
InDesign makes this easy, using its Package facility.
Choose Preflight from the File menu; this makes sure that everything is ready for
printing. If this process produces any warnings, try and fix them for example by
finding missing files, or converting RGB graphics (for screen viewing) to CMYK
format (for printing) in another package such as Photoshop.
When the document passes the preflight test, choose Package from the File menu
or from the Preflight dialogue box. You are then asked to fill in an instructions form
for the printers, and to specify a folder into which to put your document and all its
components.
When you have done all this, and the document is saved, hunt out the folder and see
what InDesign has put in it.
23
Use all the InDesign features youve been trying out, to create a four-page newsletter.
Open a new, four-page InDesign document.
Use Master Pages to make the front page unique and the other three pages
consistent.
Project: make a newsletter
Include a Table of Contents on the front page. To do this you will need to set up
some headings in your newsletter and create a heading style for them, then choose
TableofContents from the Layout menu.
You can use the Edinburgh.doc Word file for the text of your newsletter. It doesnt
have to make sense youre just experimenting with placing text and graphics!
Indeed, InDesign can provide some nonsense text for you, for exactly this purpose:
draw out a text frame, then choose Fill with Placeholder Text from the Type menu.
Use the Edinburgh, lion, div (Divinity) and dog (Greyfriars Bobby) images however
you like, using these simple InDesign techniques for handling images:
import an image by choosing the Selection Tool from the Toolbox and using the
Place command from the File menu.

Crop the image (that is, get rid of unwanted bits of it) by dragging in any of its
handles.
Resize the image by holding down the [Command] (Mac) or [Control] (Windows)
keys, then dragging any of the handles. Hold down the [Shift] key at the same
time to keep the proportions right.
Use the Text Wrap palette to get text to flow around a graphic item. (Experiment
with the four different methods of doing this, and with the four offsets which let
you increase or decrease the gap between the graphic and the text.)
Use the Rotate Tool from the Toolbox to rotate a graphic item. (Use the Selection
Tool to select the graphic, then select the Rotate Tool and drag it around the
graphic; hold down the [Shift] key to constrain it to 45 rotations; click inside the
graphic before rotating to choose the centre about which the graphic is rotated.)
Try placing a graphic into an irregular frame: select the Polygon Frame Tool
fromthe Toolbox (it is just to the left of the rectangle/ellipse/polygon tool),
double-click on it to set up a starry shape, then drag out a polygon frame.
With this still selected, use Place from the File menu to import a graphic item
(e.g. Edinburgh.jpg), and play with the result for example using the Direct
Selection Tool to move the image around in the frame, and the Selection Tool to
move the frameitself.
24
Alternative project: make a folded leaflet

Use all the InDesign features youve been trying out, to create a double-sided leaflet
which can be folded twice into the classic tourist handout form.
Open a new, two-page InDesign document in horizontal (landscape) mode, with
three columns on each side, gutter 5mm, top, bottom, inside and outside margins all
2.5mm, bleed 3mm and facing pages unchecked.
Drag out vertical guides to 99mm and 198mm on each of the two pages, or on the
master page.
Decide how the leaflet will be folded, and therefore which of the columns on which
page will be at the front; for example:
first page:
2 6 1
second page:
3 4 5
Use the Edinburgh text and graphics to make a front panel with impact, in the area
labelled 1 above.
Put some bold and striking statement on the area labelled 2 such as undisputed
capital of the civilised world, or host of the 2012 pogo-wrestling world cup.
Experiment with a background rectangle filled with a multicoloured gradient.
Use frames linked across the remaining panels, graphical elements and pictures with
wrap-around to make an interesting leaflet. (There is a collection of miscellaneous
photos of Edinburgh with the other course documents in the InDesign folder.)
25
26
Introduction to graphic design

Graphic design is the process and art of combining text and graphics to communicate an
effective message in the design of logos, graphics, brochures, newsletters, posters, signs,
and any other type of visual communication. Designers achieve their goals using the
elements and principles of graphic design.
Design elements such as colour, form, shape, and space are the simplest components of
the design process. These will be combined according to principles which might include
symmetry, scale, unity, focus, etc..
Where should I begin?

Good graphic design projects are the ones that most effectively achieve their purpose,
not necessarily the ones that are the most aesthetically pleasing. What your project
looks like should be a secondary concern; when you are at the start of a design project,
your first question should be How should this work? It is very easy to get drawn in to the
way something looks, whilst neglecting a projects original function.
Further considerations
These Three Whats of project design make good initial considerations:
What is the purpose and goal of the design?
What kind of document are you creating?
What is the budget? (Time and money!)
You may have to balance your needs against your resources, and might be able to reject
impractical project directions at this point: for example, although a large, colourful
document would probably be eye-catching, it could easily run over budget and would be
impractical if you had very little money available.
When you have made some initial decisions based on practicalities, you can concern
yourself more properly with the intended audience for your project:
Who will see your project?
Why will they look at it?
Where will they see it?
For how long, or when, will they see it?
If your audience is in the position of having to read your document, then it is probably
more important that information is presented clearly than that your document be eyecatching. If your document is likely to be on a billboard at the side of the road, then it
must be very clear and to the point, because your audience will not have long to read it,
and may be reading it from far away. Anything which will be competing for the attention
of an audience will need to be as eye-catching as possible.
27
Too Many Fonts

Tone down the type. Layout and graphics packages often include hundreds of new
fonts, and it is easy to go overboard when experimenting with them. However, in most
documents, two or three typefaces will be entirely sufficient.
Common Errors of Design
Tip: Use fewer fonts and try not to be too showy with your selections.
Typing in ALL CAPS

Online TYPING IN ALL CAPS is considered shouting and is frowned on in most cases.
Inaddition, if you use decorative or script typefaces then typing in capitals will make your
text much harder to read.
Tip: If you absolutely need to use ALL CAPS, make sure to do it with plain, easy-to-read
fonts.
Overuse of Frames and Boxes

A frame loses its ability to emphasize blocks of text if every other block on the page is
boxed. Whilst framing text can provide an excellent opportunity to break up a page or
draw the eye to some other section, using this technique too much will simply confuse
the eye.
Tip: Use Frames, Boxes, and Borders with a purpose, since overuse will dull their impact.
Amateurish Punctuation
Learn how to create proper typographical punctuation (with curly quotes, apostrophes,
em-dashes, etc.) and hanging punctuation (to align text, not punctuation, to the
margin). Some programs (including InDesign) can do this automatically, but a
thorough understanding of punctuation is the only way to ensure professional quality
documentation.
Tip: Use proper typographical punctuation.
Excessive Use of Clip Art

Clip art is wonderful, abundant, and fun to use. It can spice up fliers, newsletters and
posters. Yet too many pictures on a page make it hard for the reader to concentrate on
what the document says. Use clip art with moderation and with purpose. Use clip art
that supports your text or illustrates a point.
Tip: Use clip art where it can emphasise your content, but dont litter the page with
unnecessary graphics.
Remember that sometimes nothing makes a document stand out more than white space.
28
Preparing Images for use in InDesign

Eventually, you will almost certainly want to use images within your InDesign document.
There are a few special considerations to note when using images in InDesign, or indeed
any graphic design package.
Size of Image
It is important to try and create an image as near to the final output size as possible.
If your image is too large then, although you can scale it down in InDesign, it will
still retain the byte size (size on disk) of the original file. This will mean that your
document takes up more space on the disk than it should. The problem will continue
to add up, if you use more and more oversized images.
If your image is too small then you will have to scale it up in InDesign, which can
lead to poor quality or pixelated graphics. A pixelated image is one in which you can
clearly see the individual squares of colour which make up an image normally the
squares are so small you cant see them and they blend together.
Remember: Higher image quality and larger sized pictures take up more space on disk.
But you cant create better quality pictures from worse quality pictures, so finding the
right balance to begin with is important.
Nowadays we have the luxury of downloading to CD, or USB Pen Drives, and broadband
internet connections are commonplace we are no longer limited to just what we can
fit on a floppy disk. Nevertheless, it is still important to apply best practice and to try
and get into the habit of creating images to fit in the available space. Without proper
attention, you will eventually find yourself in a position where the byte size of your
document has become inconvenient.
Resolution
Resolution is the way in which the quality of an image is measured. Dots per Inch or DPI
simply means how many dots of colour (or pixels) are in an inch. The more dots the
finer the quality. Generally, for print 300dpi is an acceptable resolution whereas 72dpi
(lower resolution) is standard for screen images.
Remember: the higher the resolution the higher the byte size.
Colour
You have to think about how your document will eventually be produced when planning
what colour mode to save your image.
If the document will be going to a printing press then a coloured image will need to be
saved in a CMYK (also known as four colour or full colour) mode.
If the document is going to be printed from a desktop printer then RGB is the
preferred option.
Or you can use a greyscale image, if you plan to add colour yourself in InDesign.
Pantone is the definitive worldwide reference for selecting, specifying, matching and
controlling ink colours.
29
Generally, saving your images as TIFF files is the best option for print. TIFFs retain high
quality but tend to be larger in byte size. Alternatively you may get away with using a
JPEG but the quality tends to be lower and you may have to print out the image first at
the size it will appear in your document just to test the quality and decide whether it will
be suitable or not.
Formats
Graphics Packages
Photoshop is a very powerful and commonly used piece of image editing software.
Photoshop is an industry standard and is ideal for detailed manipulation of images.
There are several cheaper alternatives available e.g. Paint Shop Pro, Coral Draw, or GIMP.
If you have access to a scanner you may find that it comes with software which will
enable you to perform some of the basic tasks we have just covered.
Examples
On the following pages you can see a couple of example documents which have been
created entirely using the techniques described in this course.
30
EDINBURGH
A History
Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland and county town of Midlothian, is situated 2 miles S of the Firth of
Forth. Its Observatory on the Calton Hill stands in lat. 55 57 23 N, and long. 3o 10 30 W. It is SSW of
Aberdeen, S by W of Dundee, S by E of Perth, E by N of Glasgow, NE of Ayr, and N by E of Dumfries. Its
distance in straight line, as the crow ies, is 186 miles from John o Groats House, and 337 from London.
Its distance, by road, is 35 miles from Stirling, 42

from Dundee, 42 from Glasgow, 44 from Perth, 49
from Hawick, 57 from Berwick-upon-Tweed, 71 from
Dumfries, 92 from Carlisle, 108 from Aberdeen,
156 from Inverness, and 392 from London; while,
by railway, the distance is 36 miles from Stirling, 45
from Perth, 47 from Glasgow, 49 from Dundee,
53 from Hawick, 57 from Berwick-upon-Tweed,
88 from Ayr, 90 from Dumfries, 98 from Carlisle,
112 from Aberdeen, 163 from Stranraer, 189
from Inverness, and 398 from London by way of
the Trent Valley or Midland Railway, 402 by way
of Carlisle and Birmingham or London and NorthWestern, 407 of Berwick and York, Great Northern
and East Coast.
Site.The city is built on ridges of east-andwestward extension of varying height, and on the
valleys between or the slopes beyond. The hills are
partly overlapped by, and partly extend beyond, the
city; they occupy an area within a circuit of about 6
miles; and, at their northern margin, about 2 miles
from the Firth, are bounded by a slightly inclined
plain, which extends from them to the shore. These
Page 1
hills consist mainly of erupted rocks, thrown up

from what was once a at surface by a series of
upheavals, and afterwards much modied by
denudation and other causes; and, in their natural
state, before they were taken possession of by man,
must have formed a singularly striking and imposing
group. Arthurs Seat,
to the SE of these,
rises 822 feet above
sea-level, sloping or
rolling to the E over a
base of nearly a mile,
and presenting to the
W a bold, precipitous,
diversied-face
of
rugged rock, with an
outline, as seen at
short distances a little to the S of W, resembling
that of a lion couchant. A sloping valley lies along
the W base of this hill, known as the Hunters Bog,
which, though not long ago as solitary as any
remote Highland glen, is now used almost daily
by the Edinburgh garrison and local volunteers as
a range for rie practice. Westward of this valley
Edinburgh - A History
31
Edinburgh
Picture Perfect
A belt of low ground,

variously at, sloping,
and undulating, lies
round the skirts of these
two hills, the whole
attached to the royal
grounds of Holyrood, and
included in what is now
called the Queens Park.
Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland and county town

of Midlothian, is situated 2 miles S of the Firth of Forth. Its
Observatory on the Calton Hill stands in lat. 55 57 23 N, and
long. 3o 10 30 W. It is SSW of Aberdeen, S by W of Dundee, S by
E of Perth, E by N of Glasgow, NE of Ayr, and N by E of Dumfries.
Its distance in straight line, as the crow ies, is 186 miles from John o Groats
House, and 337 from London. Its distance, by road, is 3512 miles from Stirling,
42 from Dundee, 4234 from Glasgow, 44 from Perth, 49 from Hawick, 57
from Berwick-upon-Tweed, 71 from Dumfries, 9212 from Carlisle, 108 from
Aberdeen, 15612 from Inverness, and 392 from London; while, by railway, the
distance is 36 miles from Stirling, 45 from Perth, 4712 from Glasgow, 4912
from Dundee, 53 from Hawick, 5734 from Berwick-upon-Tweed, 88 from
Ayr, 90 from Dumfries, 98 14 from Carlisle, 11234 from Aberdeen, 163 from
Stranraer, 189 from Inverness, and 39812 from London by way of the Trent
Valley or Midland Railway, 402 by way of Carlisle and Birmingham or London
and North-Western, 40712 of Berwick and York, Great Northern and East
Coast. 4912 from Dundee, 53 from Hawick, 5734 from Berwick-upon-Tweed,
88 from Ayr, 90 from Dumfries, 98 14 from Carlisle, 11234 from Aberdeen,
163 from Stranraer, 189 from Inverness, and 39812 from London by way of
the Trent Valley or Midland Railway, 402 by way of Carlisle and Birmingham or
London and North-Western, 40712 of Berwick and York, Great Northern and
East Coast.
Section 1
32
Help!
Like most modern software packages, InDesign has comprehensive built-in help, backed
up by extensive trouble-shooting information on the Adobe website. To access the
builtin help choose InDesign Help from the Help menu, and use the Contents, Index and
Search features to find what youre looking for. To go to the online help, choose Online
Support from the Help menu.
InDesign is available to try out in the Learning and Resource Centre on the second floor
of the Main Library, with friendly help available if you have questions.
If you are a member of the University, you could try one of the eLearning courses for
InDesign. For more information, contact IS.skills@ed.ac.uk.
If you are a member of the University (staff or student), you can ask your Support Team
for help with any computing problem. The contact details for all the teams are provided
at http://www.is.ed.ac.uk/itus/
The files for the course are available online if you would like to use them for your own
further experiments with InDesign, at
http://www.ucs.ed.ac.uk/usd/cts/courses/workfile/1264.InDesign/
Document files are downloaded when you click on their link; to get an image file, rightclick (Windows) or [Control]-click (Mac) on the link and choose a local filename for the
saved file.
Information Services only has this one, introductory, course on InDesign. If you want a
more advanced course you could try the commercial courses run locally by TidalFire; see
http://www.tidalfire.com/
In previous InDesign courses people have asked where one can find photos and other
graphical images for use in documents. If interested, you could try:
http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/tutorial/imagesearching/
http://www.morguefile.com/
http://askbobrankin.com/free_clip_art.html
http://yotophoto.com/
http://www.everystockphoto.com/
http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2007/100-legal-sources-for-free-stock-images

Introduction To Indesign: Workbook

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Introduction to

Getting started with InDesign

Exercise 1: the InDesign workplace

The InDesign Window

InDesigns tools: Toolbox, Menus and Palettes

What do the two circled sets of arrows do?

You can move the palettes around as much as you

Jumping around, zooming in and out

Moving around in a long document

The page selector at the bottom-left of your InDesign window:

[Shift] [PageUp] and [Shift] [PageDown]

Try repeating the previous key-strokes while holding down the

Double-click on page icons in the Pages palette.

Zooming in and out

The magnification selector alongside the page selector at the bottom-left

(you can choose a magnification from the drop-down menu, or overtype

Pages and Spreads

Exercise 2: handling text

One of the worlds great capital cities!

(again followed by [Return] ).

double-click to select a word.

treble-click to select a line of text.

click four times to select a paragraph.

The Story Editor

The Control Palette

Exercise 3: exploring control, frames, undo

Now the options are all to do with changing graphical items.

A quick look at Frames

This is the outputport from

Exercise 4: simple graphics

Exercise 5: a simple tourist leaflet

Exercise 6: tabulating things

1 [Tab] Brussels sprouts [Tab] 16kg [Tab] 13.99

To handle more complex data, use a table.

Exercise 7: Master Pages

Click here in the Pages

Select a word or phrase in your document by dragging over it.

Exercise 9: Print, make PDF, send to printer

To print your document:

To make a PDF file from your document:

To send your document as an InDesign package to the University Printers:

Project: make a newsletter

Alternative project: make a folded leaflet

Introduction to graphic design

Where should I begin?

Too Many Fonts

Common Errors of Design

Typing in ALL CAPS

Overuse of Frames and Boxes

Excessive Use of Clip Art

Preparing Images for use in InDesign

Its distance, by road, is 35 miles from Stirling, 42

hills consist mainly of erupted rocks, thrown up

A belt of low ground,

Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland and county town

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