All right, it's time to get started with our first document.
However I'd like to introduce something to you before we begin. It's this website papersizes.org.
What it does is, it lists the different paper sizes, along with the dimensions.
You'll find a wide variety of sizes here, from ISO standard sizes, to American sizes.
ISO stands for International Organization for Standards, which is a body that
determines recognized standards across many things, including paper. Whilst there are multiple paper
standards, the most common and recognizable one is the A-series, which is standard in office
environments, with A4 being the standard office document size. The advantage of the ISO system
is how it scales with each size, being either twice as big, or half the size of its adjacent paper size.
Here you'll also find other paper sizes for functional use, like postcard, posters, or
newspaper sizes etc. If you click on one of the sizes, you can even change the unit as per your
requirement, or understanding, and it will show you the calculation. While working on InDesign,
no matter what designs you indulge yourself in, good knowledge of the different paper
sizes, is always necessary. Alright, so back to InDesign. Once you double-click the InDesign icon,
this is where you'll land. This course is illustrated on Adobe InDesign 2021 version,
which is presently the latest one, so if you're using a very old version, the icons and layout
might be a little different than what you see here. These icons that you see, are the documents
I've worked on recently, hence for ease, they are populating here, so I can just double-click on any
of them to open and start working. To create a new document, click the 'create new' button,
and you'll reach here. You'll find the main screen with different sizes, along with their dimensions,
and now you have some idea about the names and dimensions already, thanks to papersizes.org.
On top, you'll find a few tabs, like saved, and print, and web, or mobile. These are nothing, but
sizes, pertaining to the segments, so when I click the print tab, and then click view all presets,
it gives me a variety of presets that are used in print media. You also get a wide variety of
templates, you can use without worrying much about designing, and this is something you'll
see if you've subscribed to the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. You might not find this option
otherwise. Similarly, clicking the web, or mobile tabs will offer presets and templates, pertaining
to the relevant sizes, so let's click the print tab, and select letter as our size. On the right,
are the settings, so by default, you'll find 'picas' is the default unit for InDesign,
so if you click it, you'll find other options, you can choose from. Let's choose 'inches.' This
tells you that the letter size is 8.5 inches wide, and 11 inches tall, if the orientation
is set to 'portrait.' Change the orientation to 'landscape,' and it just flips the sizes,
making the width 11 inches, and height 8.5 inches. In the pages option, if you know beforehand,
how many pages you want your document to have, you can mention that number here, else,
let it be 1, or let's change it to 5 for this demonstration. It can easily be changed later,
while in the document. 'Facing pages' option should be checked, if you want your document
to display the pages, much like in a book, where there are two sides facing each other.
If you want to design a poster, for example, then you ideally want to keep it unchecked. 'Start
number' is by default set to 1, assuming you are just starting to compose your book, as this option
is mostly used while you're composing a book, so what happens is, when a book is graphically
intense, and has a lot of images, it can slow down your computer, so it's always advisable
to divide the book into chapters, and for each chapter, there should be a new document made,
so in such a situation any chapter after chapter 1, wouldn't really start with page 1,
so let's say chapter 2 starts from page 15, so you'd mention 15 here. You'll get a better
idea when we learn how to create a book layout, so let's not worry too much about it yet. A 'primary
text frame' is a special kind of page frame used to control the primary text flow in a document.
You'll have a fair idea when we discuss it in one of the videos, so for now let's keep it unchecked.
Then comes the column, for now, I'd like to just have one column in my document.
I'll show you soon enough, how to change the number of columns, after our document is created.
The column gutter here is the space between the two columns. Now obviously,
whenever we design a document, be it any document, we don't start typing from the edge of the page,
because it would look too clumsy then, and that's where margins come into the picture. When you
increase the margin on one side, all the other sides get updated automatically,
as they are linked, by default, so if you wish to change the margins individually of all sides,
unlink it by clicking this icon, and you should be able to update the margins individually,
as you please. Click it again, and it's linked. 'Bleed' is ink that prints beyond the trim edge
of the page, to ensure it extends to the edge of the page, after trimming, as there is a degree
of movement when printing on any press.You should always create some bleed on all edges,
where bleed is needed. Supplying your job without bleed may result in white lines, when we trim it.
I'll demonstrate this once we are in the document, so let's set it to 0.125 inch for now,
and much like margins, this can also be set individually, using the link, or unlink button
here. When a document goes to the printing press, there are a few technical marks printed outside
the document area, and these are important for high quality printing. The 'Slug' area is just
one of these optional page marks. Essentially, the area is located outside of the normal printing
boundaries, and it contains information about the printing job, so we'll keep it '0' for now.
One last thing to talk about here is that now that we have entered our numbers,
and let's suppose this is the size and the settings we often use, so it's always better to
save this as a template, so let's rename it here as 'my template', and click this icon to save,
and it brings you to this screen, so type in your template name once again, and hit save preset. Now
next time when we'll need to create a document, using the same settings, all we need to do is,
click the saved tab, and here you'll find the template sitting comfortably, so click it,
and you'll be introduced to your document. Let me go to pages two and three, by double clicking
the pages thumbnail. You see these two pages are facing pages, the option of which we saw
earlier. Let's minimize the pages panel, as we'll discuss it in another video. Let's also close the
paragraph styles panel. We'll discuss it later. Now let's go to file, and then document setup,
here you'll find most of the options that we saw earlier, while creating this document.
We can always update the number of pages here, so from 5, let's make it 8 pages.
Also, unchecking the facing pages option will show us the pages individually, like we see on MS Word.
You can always change the page size, as well as the orientation from here. You see how by changing
the margins here reflects instantly on our document. Another excellent feature of InDesign
is that you see the units here are shown in picas, but assume I don't understand picas, but have a
fair understanding of inches, or millimeters, like anyone else has, so I want to add a margin of 0.5
inch here, so what I'm going to do is, enter 0.5, and then 'in' for inches, and InDesign will do the
calculation, and show the equivalent of 0.5 inch in pica here. The same way we can easily update
the bleed and slug from here as well, and I'm sure you know what they mean by now, so hit okay.
To adjust the columns, you need to go to layout, and then margins and columns.
You can update the margins from here as well, but we're more interested in columns,
because we've already discussed margins, so let's update the columns to 2,
and you see on the right, the gutter option can be used to reduce, or enlarge the space
between the two columns, so once you're satisfied with the space between them,
hit okay. To view the pages, you can use the mouse roller to go down, or up the pages.
You can even use the scroll bars on the right, and at the bottom, to navigate through the pages.
Another option is this hand icon, so click on it, and then using your mouse,
click and move the mouse, to move around the screen. Now let's talk about the zoom tool,
in fact, let me grab the text tool, and drag to make a text box, and let's type in something.
Now grab the zoom tool, which looks like a magnifying glass, and if I want to magnify
the text, I will take the magnifying glass there, and then click, and move the mouse to the right,
and it will magnify the part of the screen I clicked on, without releasing the mouse button,
if you move the mouse to the left, it will zoom out, so it's a nice way to move quickly to a
particular point on my page. You can even hold option on a Mac, or alt on a PC, and use the
mouse roller to zoom out, or zoom in quickly, and this is valid, irrespective of the tool selected.
You can even hold the Command key on a Mac, or Ctrl key on a PC, and use the mouse roller to
move left and right, or up and down, so this does not help in zooming in or out, but it does help in
moving up and down, or right and left. Also, this feature might not be available with every mouse.
The rulers that you see on top and left are really handy, and in some cases, necessary as well,
while designing. To show rulers, go to view, and then select show rulers option. Mine is already
showing, which is why the option says 'hide rulers' here .The shortcut to show or hide rulers
is Command R on a Mac or Ctrl R on a PC. Now let's take the cursor to the ruler on top. Click, hold,
and drag a guide to the page. InDesign's ruler guides act just like page elements,
so you can select one or more guides at a time, copy and paste them, and even position selected
guides numerically, using the control, or transform palettes. Let's drag another guide on this page
here. Now if I need another text box, like this, on the left page, aligned to this text box,
my guides here will help me achieve that, so let me take this text box to snap it to the guide
horizontally, as well as vertically. Now with the text box selected, I can hit Command C on a Mac,
or Ctrl C on a PC, to copy this text box, and then hit Command V on a Mac, or Ctrl V on a PC,
to paste it, and then drag the new text box to snap it to the guides, I created on the left page.
Without my guides, I wouldn't really be able to place them on the same line, on both the pages, so
that's how guides help placing elements on pages, and this is particularly useful, when your page
has a lot of different elements and alignments, like in case of designing a resume, or a poster.
Since the guides act much like any other page elements, an accidental move can make things
difficult, so to prevent this from happening, you have the option of locking the guides as well,
and to do that, you can go to view, and then grids and guides, and then lock guides, and the shortcut
to achieve this is Option Command and Semicolon on a Mac, or Alt Ctrl and Semicolon on a PC,
and now if you try to move the guides, they won't move a muscle. Now let me
grab the rectangular marquee tool, and make a rectangle on top left, and bottom left corners.
In fact, let's move the frame on top, to the edge of the page,
and the frame on the bottom has already been aligned to the bleed area. Now with both my
frames selected, I'm going to go to file, and then place, and locate the images from my computer,
and click on them one by one, to place them. You see, this should give you a clearer picture of why
bleed is necessary, particularly when you have images that extend to the edges of the pages.
The printer will eventually slice off the points, where the whites of the pages end, and if there is
any degree of movement, then there will be an ugly white line on both sides of the image on top, but
there is no chance of it happening with the image at the bottom, since it is extended till the bleed
zone. Hit 'W', which is the shortcut to preview the document, as it would look, once printed.
All right guys! That concludes our topic, next we're going to
learn how to set up our workspace to enhance our workflow, so see you there!