#sixteenthpost

Today we set out to learn all about Margins Columns and Parent Pages in Adobe InDesign, these skills were then to be applied, along with all the other skills we’d accumulated so far, into a 12 Page Nursery Rhyme book feature 5 hand picked Nursery Rhymes. 

We began with Toby showing us the way that InDesign recognises pages as spreads, if we imagine one A3 page folded in half, we get 4 pages; The Front Cover, The Middle Two Pages, and the Back Page.

Because InDesign recognises pages in this layout, which is more conventional for print media, we were told that most things that we do in InDesign should always be in multiples of four. This makes it easier to print.

Toby began showing us about what Parent Pages are. They are in some ways similar to Paragraph and Character Styles but are also quite different. Parent Pages are like an existing layout that all pages underneath that parent will look like in structure. So if we add a border to a parent page, all consequent pages will have that border.

The first thing that we did in our document after making 8 Pages, was create a text box on the first page.

A Unique shortcut that Toby then showed us, was that we could copy and paste that same text box onto another page, in the exact same position, using [SHIFT] + ⌘ + [OPTION] + V On Mac, and [SHIFT] + [CTRL] + [ALT] + V On Windows.

As you can see below, I edited the parent pages to have a small outlined box at the bottom center of the page.

Here you can see the edits made in the Parent Pages being included in the rest of the document.

Toby then showed us that if we want to remove the Parent Page, we can use the [None] Page. However instead of applying that like a Paragraph Style, we can simply drag and drop the parent page onto the desired page.

After that, we learnt how to create page numbers. Toby explained to us how it is simply annoying to go through every page and edit individual text boxes to represent the associated page numbers. Instead we can use a Special Character.

Inside a text box on the Parent Page, we can go to;

Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number

This will insert the character A inside the text box, which is a bit confusing, but is just placeholder text for the Page Number.

Here you can see the Page Numbers applied to each of the pages.

Next we learnt about Margins and Columns and how they apply to pages. I originally thought that it would be hard to use these, because if we had different elements on the page that need different margins/columns, it would be difficult. However that is not the case, if we have a page with 3 Columns, we can have elements that span any amount of those columns. 

Knowing that elements can span more than just one column meant that it would be ideal to have a reasonably large amount of columns on our document. Going to Layout > Margins and Columns, allowed us to open the Margins and Columns editor.

Toby first got us to click the small chain link button inside the Margins box, so that the Top and Bottom Margins will not be the same, and we can edit them individually.

He then got us to mess about with them to our liking, I chose the format as below.

Then he showed us how to edit those columns, and how they affect the elements we put in them. Below you can see the page with 12 Columns in it. This gives a large variety of spacing for all the page Elements.

Overall I found this lesson quite simple, but the contents inside would prove rather helpful before starting the Book Project.

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Current Software Skill Rating :

Windows : 10

MacOS : 9

Photoshop : 9

Illustrator : 9

InDesign : 6

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Keyboard Shortcuts Learnt :

[SHIFT] + [CTRL] + [ALT] + V : Paste In Place ( Windows )