COMM 313: Editorial Processes
Instructor: Ross Collins

InDesign Pagination Exercise: Travel Page (CS3 for the Macintosh)

Note: InDesign works about the same way on PCs, but you'll create your folders using standard PC techniques.

NOTE TO EDS:
You need to produce the travel section for your Sunday tabloid. You have the luxury of no advertising on page one, so you can devote the entire page to copy and pictures. Unfortunately, you can't afford color, so your photographer has given you grayscale (black-and-white) photos. Here's what you have to lay in:

• MUST BE USED: Travel story on Quebec.
• MUST BE USED: Travel story on Scotland.
• MUST BE USED: One photo to go with Scotland story. Cutline is after story; cut and paste under photo.
• May be used on page one, if layout allows: One photo to go with Quebec story. Cutline is after story; cut and paste under photo. Could be used on page two as well.
• May be used: A border or box around one of the stories, to separate and emphasize.
• May be used: Drop or stick-up caps, pull quotes using text wrap. (See beginning InDesign guide for instructions to produce all these.)

How should it look? Here's a PDF version of page one, for general reference. You can vary this basic layout.

STEPS:
1. All documents relating to an InDesign publication should be kept in a separate folder (sub-directory). Prepare your folder: make a new folder on the desktop or flash drive. Save often.

Geeky note: If you don't save your photos in the same folder as your InDesign file, and try to print or export to PDF, InDesign will return a "links broken" dialogue box. This is because InDesign places only low-resolution photos into your document, to save memory space. On printing, it automatically substitutes those low-res pictures for your saved high-res copies. Unless it can't find them, in which case, if you don't fix the links, you'll print the low-res copies.

a. In the Macintosh Finder (choose from upper left corner pull-down menu, or from the Dock at bottom), choose File and New Folder. Folder should appear on the desktop. Drag to your flash drive. (Alternatively, open flash drive, choose New Folder from the gear-like "burn" icon.)

b. Click on the name area of the folder to change it to Travel Story. Storing all stories, photos and layouts in one folder simplifies the process of turning a digital layout into a published piece, because everything stays properly linked.

c. Download these Word files: Scotland and Quebec. Open Word, paste. Save as Word files into your folder.

Note: If this doesn't work, open Scotland and Quebec in your web browser, copy and paste into Indesign.

d. Download Scotland and Quebec photos.

Note: to download on a Macintosh using a one-button mouse, simply click on the image with the Control button held down. Choose Download Image to Disk On a PC, click the right mouse button to open the dialogue box.

Travel template illustration.e. Download the Travel InDesign template (InDesign version CS) to your Documents file, or to the desktop. Should look like illustration at right.

Note: If you can't get the download to open, it's easy to set up your own template. Steps:

  1. Choose New from File pull-down menu
  2. In Document dialogue box, choose 2 pages, Facing Pages Off, Tabloid size.
  3. For margins choose 4p6 margins all around, 5 columns, 1p6 gutters between each column. Okay.
  4. If you get the New dialogue box wrong, you can make changes from the Document Setup box (File pull-down) and Margins and Columns box (Layout pull-down).
    Keep in mind the Margins and Columns changes only affect the page shown, unless you choose Master Pages. From the Pages palette, available in Window pull-down, click on A-Master. Be sure to go back to page one after making default changes to the master: they transfer to all pages.
  5. Check out the PDF sample file to see how to set up Travel section head at top of page. Use 72 pt or 84 pt for section head, 14 pt for folio (date and page number), helvetica or other sans-serif typeface.

f. Open InDesign application. Open the Travel.IDD template file. (Or just double click on the template.) Change the folio date to today's date.

Critical note: save your work often, as cluster computers can be crash-happy! Keystroke shortcut: Apple key + s.

2. Create a Style Sheet. This allows you to restyle entire stories, including typeface, point size, spacing, indents, etc., without laboriously choosing each option, or even having to remember what you chose before. Saves huge amounts of time, and time is what graphic designers ain't never got enough of. (Okay, so I know the comment above needs editing.)

a. Open the Paragraph Styles palette from the Type menu, or click on palette tab at right.

b. On the right flyout menu choose New Paragraph Style; Style Name: tabloid body; Based on: No Paragraph Style. Choose Basic Character Formats from the menu at left of dialogue box. Set the font style:

Negative leading illustration.Warning: You need to type 13 in the leading box. If you type 3, that means 10/3, which is negative leading, hence type squashed into an unreadable mess, see illustration at right.

c. Set up a second style for headlines: 24/24 ("set solid") baskerville, caslon, or another old style serif font, bf (boldface), flush (align) left. Now all you have to do is apply these styles to text you Place or compose. Drag over text to highlight, or merely click your cursor anywhere in the text block. Choose the named style from the Paragraph palette.

Yes, you can avoid the style sheet, choose Select All for each story, and make all style changes one by one. But it's a time-consumer, and if you're making up regular publications, you risk forgetting your style requirements from page to page.

3. a. In Word, open the copies of stories in your travel folder: Quebec.doc and Scotland.doc. Copy edit stories. You shouldn't find a lot to fix in these stories, but things will pop up, so read carefully.

b. In Word run a Replace (Edit pulldown) to change the quotes and apostrophes from rabbit ear (typewriter) style to typographer's (curly-cue) style. In the Replace dialogue box, just type the quote mark, in both places, and choose Replace All. Delete slugs (extra space) between each graf. Replace the double hyphens with typographer's em-dashes: the em-dash is keyboarded as Option+- [hyphen].

Note: you can also edit and check spelling in InDesign, after you've Placed the stories onto your layout. With your text cursor anywhere in the document, choose Edit, and Edit in Story Editor. If you just want to run a spell check (even for headlines), do that from the Edit pulldown as well.

5. Determine preferred size of photos in your layout; likely the vertical will be 2-col, the horizontal, 3-col.

6. It's best to scale photos to that size in Photoshop. Follow the guide to working with digital images. As we are working with a low-quality newsprint page on this publication, you can get by with a resolution of 100 ppi, or 150 ppi if you think you need to. But 200 dpi for a tabloid would be optimal.

Alternative: You can scale photos in InDesign, as noted below under Step 9. This works best if the photos are scaled to a smaller size, as a larger size reduces resolution.

7. In Photoshop, save scaled photos in proper size. What is 2-col or 3-col for this publication? You'll have to look at the template to find out.

Need to measure? You can begin your measuring scale at 0 anywhere in the publication. Drag the crosshairs from the upper-left-corner intersection of the two scales (see circles in illustration, right) to the point where you want the zero mark to start. Change from picas to inches scale, if you wish, from the Preferences dialogue box (InDesign pulldown in Macintosh), Units and Increments, and horizontal rule inches.

8. Place (File pulldown) the saved, scaled photos into your Indesign document. Move as necessary with arrow tool. Arrow tool also crops photo, using handlebars.

Image too large illustration.Scale tool illustration.9. Need to reduce the size? If you don't scale in Photoshop first, and your photo Places too large (see illustration at right), you can reduce it using the Scale tool in your toolbox. (It might be under the Shear tool; hover cursor over tools to identify, see right.)

You can enlarge about 10 percent without sacrificing much image quality. It's safer to reduce the size, although large changes here may also look unattractive. Try to avoid distorting the width/height proportions by constraining the proportions: hold down the Shift key as you drag.

10. Place first story in the InDesign template, and style to your specified body text by choosing the style you set up in the Paragraph Styles palette. As you're working, complete a copy control sheet with stories and photos you use.

11. With your cursor in the placed story, choose Select All.

Note: do not simply drag over to highlight a story. "Overset" (unplaced text) will retain default styling. Use Select All to select overset.

12. Choose the body text style you set up in the style palette. Check the menu bar at top to make sure the style you set up was applied to the chosen text.

Note: If the old Word formatting overrides your style, with text highlighted, Option+click on the style name again in the palette to clear.

Auggh! The story ran across the entire page! Remember, after placing a story:

a. Both stories need to begin on page one. Together they will be too long, with picture. Jump story(ies) to page two as necessary. (Refer to explanation in beginning guide to learn more about threaded text.) After jumping, don't forget to write a jump line at the bottom ("Scotland to page two") and a jump head on page two ("Scotland from page one"). Jump lines normally are body text, bf, and jump head, hed text, about 14 pt.

b. Leave room for cutlines under each photo. Cutlines are already written at the bottom of each story: drag to highlight, choose Cut and Paste under your photo. Cutlines usually are set slightly different from body text. For our publication, choose ital or bf.

c. Leave at least a pica or so space between hed and body text, and between cutline and text. Generally, lean toward leaving more white space, rather than less; We editors have a tendency to cramp too much in too little space.

13. Write headlines for each story, and style to your headline size, one line or two. Note 24 pt may be too small or large; change as you think necessary. Heds should be flush left, sentence style. Spell check headlines!

14. Add a second photo to page two, if you did not have room for it on page one. Assume blank space you have left on this page will be filled by another features editor.

15. Place second story, with borders (box) or a 10 percent screen, highly recommended. See Peters exercise for information on borders. Write second headline, same style. You may want to bf or ital for contrast.

Note: InDesign places elements in layers. If you draw a box, and place text, then write a headline, then try to style or edit text, you may find the box or headline frame is on top of text, so you can't click the cursor in the text. You can reach behind the layers by holding down the Apple (Command) key, and clicking.

16. If you wish to print your work for proofing: print full-sized document as "Tiles" to hand in for grading. We have to do this because our laser printers won't print tabloid-sized sheets. You can tape the tiles together. To print Tiles, choose Print, and under the options, Tiling.

12. Hand in work as PDF file attached to email document sent to me, ross.collins@ndsu.edu. (To save as PDF: File pulldown menu, Export, Adobe PDF chosen at bottom of dialogue box, rest of options as default.) Also submit copy control sheet.

Most printers work with PDF files nowadays, and not "live" InDesign files.

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