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1 Flight, Naperville Central High School, Naperville, Ill. No hard hat needed in the InDesign work area Once you learn the concepts of good page design, and you learn how to use InDesign, you are limited only by your imagination. The days of cutting and pasting text, images and artwork to layouts are long gone. Page creation is done on computer desktops with software that has inherent abilities to create great effects. But like hammering a nail, you need to know how the tool the hammer works to properly drive in the nail. In this case, the tool is InDesign. When opening InDesign for the first time, you will see a lot of buttons, some menu items, a floating toolbar and some boxes on the right side that appear to be slightly hidden. If you have installed the Walsworth Enhancements CD, you will also see the Enhancements Control Center floating on the desktop. To better understand the InDesign features, let s take a closer look at the work area. InDesign main menu Like most software applications, InDesign has a main menu at the top of the workspace. If you click on File, you see the Open, Close, Save and Exit menus. If you click on Edit, you see the Cut, Copy and Paste menus. To access the InDesign palettes, click the Window menu. Add special effects, such as shadows and feathers, under the Object menu. Use the keyboard shortcut command under each menu as you gain more experience. 20 S E T 8 Technology

2 Main Menu Control palette Rulers Toolbox Palettes Control Center Selection tools Selection (V) Direct Selection (A) Positions (Shift+A) Drawing and Type tools Pen (P) Add Anchor Point Delete Anchor Point Convert Anchor Point Type Type On a Path (Shift+T) Pencil (N) Smooth Erase Line (\) Rectangle Frame (F) Ellipse Frame Polygon Frame Rectangle (M) Ellipse (L) Polygon Button (B) Scissors (C) Transform tools Rotate (R) Scale (S) Shear (O) Free Transform (E) Gradient (G) Gradient Feather (Shift+G) Modification and Navigation tools Note Eyedropper (I) Measure (K) Hand (H) Zoom (Z) S E T 8 Technology 21

3 Toolbox The Toolbox, also called Tools, contains all items you need for drawing, text and object creation and the manipulation tools you will use to create your yearbook spreads. To open the Toolbox, go to Window > Tools. Many of the tools in the toolbox have hidden tools nested underneath. For example, the Rectangle tool has a small arrow at the lower right corner of its icon. Click and hold the Rectangle tool button and you will be able to access the Ellipse and Polygon tools. Palettes Palettes are floating windows that allow various tasks to be performed easily. There are a number of palettes in InDesign to help you monitor and modify your work. You can access palettes under the Window menu. Palette tabs The palette tab is located at the top or side of the palette and looks similar to a folder tab. By selecting the tab, you can pull a palette to the front, drag the palette to the outside of the group palette or create a new palette. Control palette The Control palette (below) will allow you to make precise manipulations to objects and type. It is visible under the main menu at the top of the program. If it is not visible, the Control palette can be found under Window > Control. This is different from the Control Center, which is a Walsworth Enhancement. Typically you will use the Control palette in relationship to objects by adjusting their location on the page spread, as well as specific object width and height. Docking a palette You can organize your workspace by docking palettes into groups or vertically to the right side of the workspace. To dock a palette, drag the tab of one palette to the lower edge of another palette. When the bottom of the other palette highlights, release the mouse button and the two palettes will connect. To separate docked palettes, drag the tab of the docked palette away from the group of palettes. The action of unlocking a palette or toolbar is called to float. You can reset all palette locations by choosing Window > Workspace > Default. Show and Hide palettes To open or close a palette, click on the Window menu and choose the palette. To show or hide all open palettes at one time, make sure you do not have a text-insertion point in text or in a text palette box, and then press the Tab key. To close a palette, click the Close button in the upper left or right corner of the palette, depending on your operating system. Rulers When you open a new or existing document, located just above and to the left are ruler markers in picas. You can change these units of measurement to other types by selecting Edit > Preferences > Units & Increments (Windows) or InDesign > Preferences > Units & Increments (Mac). The default is in picas. Or, you can change it on the fly by rightclicking (Windows) or Control-clicking (Mac) on the ruler itself and changing the type there. To activate ruler guides, click and drag on the top or left ruler and place the guide on the page. Remember to use the black arrow (Selection tool), to place the ruler guide on your page. 22 S E T 8 Technology

4 Grids Depending on how you are creating your layout, using only the ruler guides to align objects, frames, and text may not be enough. For precise layout work, you may want to use baseline or document grids. A baseline grid is particularly helpful when spacing text on your layout. The document grid looks like graph paper and is useful for placing objects and text in precise locations. To access these tools, select View > Grids and Guides. To change the size of the grid squares select Edit > Preferences > Grids (Windows) or InDesign > Preferences > Grids (Mac). Guides As their name implies, guides help with the placement of graphics and text on your page. There are three types of guides horizontal, vertical and column. All three are useful for providing a visual reference when creating a modular design in your layout. Guides can be set to fit the entire page, or just within the margins. You will learn more about guides and rulers in Lesson 3. About the InDesign Toolbox Selection tool The Selection tool is used to move or resize objects. If you select a photo with the Selection tool and press the Delete key, you will delete the frame and the photo. To switch to the Selection tool, either click it in the Toolbox or be sure you do not have a text cursor inside a text block, then press V on the keyboard. Direct Selection tool The Direct Selection tool is used to select objects found inside groups or frames. If you select a photo with the Direct Selection tool and press the Delete key, you will delete the photo but not the frame. To switch to the Direct Selection tool, be sure you do not have a text cursor inside a text block, and then press A on the keyboard. Bounding boxes A bounding box is a rectangle that represents an object s horizontal and vertical dimensions. The bounding box makes it easy to work with an entire object. Selection handles When an object is selected, the points displayed around the bounding box are selection handles. Using the Selection or Direct Selection tool, you can click and drag these handles to resize or reshape the object. Paths and lines A path is an object you draw that you can use as a line, a frame for text or graphics, or a filled graphic. A path is made up of one or more straight or curved segments. Height and Width Every object is measured with a Height and a Width (H and W). Most of the time you will use the Selection or Direct Selection tool to modify the object size, but occasionally the Control palette s Height and Width fields will help you get the exact measurement you need. When you must maintain the proportion of the object while changing the value of the height or the width, press on the chain link icon in the Control palette to link the Height and Width together. This does not apply to selecting frame handles with the Select or Direct Select tools. S E T 8 Technology 23

5 X, Y coordinates Every object exists on a location on or outside the page. The software, using a coordinate system similar to an X, Y coordinate grid in algebra, measures these locations. X is the horizontal line measurement, and Y is the vertical measurement. Objects will always have a location on both axes. InDesign also measures object size in picas, inches, points and millimeters. Objects left of the gutter are measured in negative numbers on the X-axis (e.g., -14p). Objects on the right of this area are positive numbers (e.g., 40p1). On the Y-axis, the zero-point for Y is at the top edge of the page. However, the Y-axis is flipped from the commonly used Cartesian grid. Anything below the top of the page, which includes the entire page, is a positive number. Anything above the top edge of the page spread is a negative number. Frame/bounding box No matter the shape or size of an object, or whether text is fully visible in a frame, each object is contained within a frame or bounding box. When you highlight an object, the frame becomes visible along with its eight handles. Points Points are the smallest whole units of measurement in publishing. There are 72 points in an inch, and 12 points to a pica. InDesign will also compute the value of points as integers. For example, you could enter the value 13p This means the value is 13picas points. Using shape tools or frame tools It is preferable to use the shape tools to draw page elements on your yearbook spreads. Drawing lines The Line tool can be used in two ways. First, with just the Line tool, you can draw a line in any direction and at any angle on the page. To constrain a line to 45 angles, or to constrain the width and height of a path or frame to the same proportions, hold down the Shift key as you click and drag. Drawing a perfect circle, square or polygon Hold down the Shift key while you draw the shape. Even after a shape is created, you can always keep a shape proportional by holding down the Shift key while you adjust the size. Drawing a star Double-click on the Polygon tool in the Toolbox. Change the value of the Star Inset to something other than zero (e.g., 50 percent) and the next polygon you draw will have a star shape. Using the tools Shapes Drawing rectangles, ellipses and polygons Click on the Rectangle tool, not the Rectangle Frame tool, and you can draw a rectangle box. Click and hold down the Rectangle tool and then click on the Ellipse tool. Now you can draw an ellipse. Repeat the process for creating a polygon shape. Deleting a shape Using the Selection tool, click on the shape you want to delete. Then click the Delete key or Backspace key on your keyboard. Using the Selection tool, you can go to Edit > Select All and then click the Delete key and delete everything on your page at one time. 24 S E T 8 Technology

6 Aligning shapes There are two ways to align objects on the page. You can drag guides out of the rulers that appear above and to the left of the page and use those to line up your elements. Or you can select multiple objects and align them in various ways using the Align palette. Text and Frames Creating text in InDesign Use the T or Type tool to add text to a page. Type can be added by creating a new text frame, or by clicking with the Type tool inside an existing shape, which changes the properties of that shape into a text frame. Text frames Text frames refer to an area that contains text or copy in a document. The boundary or scope of the text box is defined by a bounding box with text frame handles and in and out ports for linking or threading text boxes. Using the Control palette with type The Control palette has two modes when using it with type. If you are using the Type tool to create or select text, the character mode will appear in the Control palette. This gives you tools to modify font, size, line spacing, kerning, tracking and much more. The Control palette also has paragraph mode, which allows you to adjust entire paragraphs or stories at once. This includes options for alignment, margins, styles and columns. Placeholder text Placeholder text is used to design a page until you have the actual text to work with. To fill a text frame with placeholder text, click in a text frame so you have a blinking cursor, then go to Type > Fill with Placeholder Text. Overset text When working within a text frame, you may see a red plus sign in the bottom right of the frame. This indicates that there is hidden or overset text within that frame. To reveal this text, you need to stretch the text frames to increase the width or height, or by flowing the overset text into another text frame. Fill and Stroke A stroke A stroke is a line that surrounds an object, also known as the border. Text characters and the outside of text frames can also have a stroke just like shapes and paths. Stroke palette The Stroke palette is used to select the width and style of the stroke or border of the shape or path. Stroke weight The stroke weight is the thickness of the line created by the Stroke palette. In the Stroke palette, you can view additional options by selecting the palette menu and choosing Show Options. Fill Fill refers to the color or mix of colors applied to the inside of an object. Fills can also be paper, none or a gradient of any color. A fill can be applied to an object by selecting the object and clicking a color in the Swatches palette. A gradient fill can be applied by selecting the Gradient tool, then click, hold and drag across a selected object. Swatches palette The Swatches palette is used to control the color used in a document. When the stroke or fill of a selected object or text contains a color or even a tint of a color, the applied swatch is highlighted in the Swatches palette. S E T 8 Technology 25

7 Controlling the stroke and fill You can switch the color that has been assigned to the fill with the color that has been assigned to the stroke using the Toolbox. The bottom portion of the Toolbox contains a Swap Fill and Stroke double arrow. When this arrow is clicked, the color assigned to the fill will be changed or swapped with the color assigned to the stroke. The keyboard shortcut is Shift + X. Swatches Swatches are predetermined colors loaded as a library in InDesign. The Swatches palette contains these swatches. When you select colors from the Color Information dialog, these Formula or Spot Colors will appear in the Swatches palette. The Swatches palette also makes it easy to apply colors to objects or text in your publication. Using color on pages Process color Process colors are created by mixing percentages of the four colors used in printing Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and black also known as CMYK. Always be careful when mixing your own colors because what you see on your computer monitor does not necessarily reflect the color that will be printed in your book. Formula Colors A Formula Color refers to specific blends of CMYK created by Walsworth that can be used on any four-color page in your book. There are 261 specially blended Walsworth Formula Colors. Spot Colors A Spot Color is a pre-mixed ink used to add a single color (non-black) usually to a black and white page. Walsworth gives you a selection of 42 Spot Colors that can be used on your pages. Please talk to your Walsworth yearbook representative concerning cost before using Spot Color in your book. Color catalog When you specify Formula Colors or Spot Colors on your pages, always choose the colors you want from Walsworth s Color Catalog in The Process Kit. These printed versions of the colors will match more closely what will actually be printed on your yearbook pages. Rulers and Guides Rulers These measuring tools help you align items on a page. On the Walsworth template, both the vertical and horizontal rulers are preset to picas. Click in the white space on either side of 0 and drag a ruler guide down one side of the page. While holding down the Ctrl key (Windows) or Command key (Mac) and clicking with the mouse, you will bring the ruler guide down across both pages of the spread. Guides Guides are nonprinting elements that help you position objects on a page. InDesign has both page guides and spread guides. Snap to guides This option causes objects to pull toward the nearest guide when they are created, moved or sized. 26 S E T 8 Technology

8 Snap to Zone To change the range in which an object will snap to a guide, use Snap to Zone. To change the Snap to Zone, select Edit > Preferences > Guides (Windows) or InDesign > Preferences > Guides (Mac). Removing guides Ruler guides are selectable items that can be moved or deleted. You can remove a guide by pressing the Delete button, or by dragging it back into the ruler and off the page. S E T 8 Technology 27