Create a New Document
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Follow these few simple steps to creating a five page spread Indesign CS2 document. This example will be used along the way to creating and demystifying certain Indesign elements such as creating Master Pages, Automatic page numbering and much more.
But First with the basics, creating the document.
To begin, go File/New/Document.
At the New Document dialog, decide it's purpose by selecting from the available options. For the first time user, this can look dauting and overwhelming but for practice purposes focus on the elements I have encircled. (These can be altered later via 'File/Document Setup' menu command)
My settings will create a 5 page spread using a single (1) Column, at Letter size using the Portrait Orientation.
Below is a capture of the new document. Browse to the status bar location to view/switch to various pages in the document, as well as, scale in percentage. Also notice the available Master pages in that list - the default 'A- Master'.
Use the 'Ctrl + Plus'sign' to scale upward | 'Ctrl + Minus sign' to scale downward.
Hold the 'Spacebar key', then click and drag in the document view to pan in any direction.
Now turn your attention to the far right of Indesign CS2 workspace area and notice, as I have captured below (encased in red), the docked palette groups.
Click on any of the tabbed titles and that pallette becomes active and flys outward, leaving the remaining items in the group in the background.
As captured below, click the 'Pages' tab and you will see the 5 page spread as well as the default A-Master.
Click on the 'Layers' tab to make it the active palette, and notice the empty Layer 1.
Look familiar! If you are a Photoshop or Illustrator user, working with Layers in Indesign CS2 will be a familiar task. Notice the 'New Layer' and 'Delete Layer' icons located at the bottom of the Layers Palette.
Like Illustrator, it's often a good practice to create a separate layer for the textual elements and another for the graphical elements.
Explore the other docked palette groups.
In a nutshell, thats the premise of creating a new document.
To add some imaginary representation to using Indesign CS2, you create new layers (textual, graphical or interactive) using the various Toolbar, Place or Import commands onto any of the available pages.
The Master page can be used to contain recursive elements, like page numbering, a header or footer element, or even a logo.
Notables:
As captured below, for each Palette item there is a Menu icon (encircled in red below) with various other options. But for now,select the 'Palette Options' to further customize the look and feel of that active palette.
- Close down any open document.
- Go 'Document Setup'.
- Set desired items.
- Then every time you 'New/Document' those items will appear.
