COMM 362, Design for Print
Instructor: Ross Collins

Exercise Number Four: Flyer
(using InDesign CS 3)

In this project you'll learn:

• How to apply gradients, color or gray scale
• How to use rules as spacing guides
• How to build complex graphics
• How to create diagonal edges
• How to create stick-up caps
• How to create leadered tabs
• How to manage glyphs.

Use the illustration at right for reference, or print a pdf.

1. Create New document, Orientation Portrait (vertical), Facing Pages off, margins 3p6 all the way around, 1 col.

2. Under Preferences, change measurement system to Picas (if not done already), and choose Typographer's Quotes. Bring in a vertical guideline to divide the page in half: you can change your rulers to put zero anywhere you want. Just drag from the crosshairs at upper left.

3. Set your type style: Choose New Paragraph Style from the Paragraph panel and set up this body text: Century Schoolbook (or Schoolbook) 12/14 Regular, align left. The rest as default.

4. Draw the two large S's in the pasteboard: to do so, make a long text frame for each, and style each Century Schoolbook, 102/Auto, Vertical Scale 60 percent (condensed). Scale is the fat T with the arrow under in the Character palette, or in the top menu bar.

Reminder on text frame sizes: if your letter seems to disappear when you scale it up, note the red plus sign in the corner. That means more type is behind the frame. Don't click on the red plus; you use that for "loading your cursor" to place the text elsewhere. Instead, drag one of the frame handles down and over to enlarge the frame and show the type.

5. Either in the pasteboard or at the top of the page, set the rest of the flag, each word forming its own frame, so that you can move them around independently. Style: Century Schoolbook, All Caps, 48/Auto, Set Width 70 percent. Note: the set width condenses the type to give it sort of a "thin, slim" look to match our theme.

Note: You could laboriously draw three text frames, type the copy, and make the style changes, one frame at at time. I find this a pain. So my shortcut is to make the changes once. Then copy the text, draw a new text frame, and paste. Then delete those letters, and type the letters you want. Voilà.

6. Drag these frames to fit flag design at top of page; refer to picture above for placement (note picture may not precisely match your version). Align to top margin.

7. Draw a rectangle, any size. You can adjust it later by pulling on the handles. Stroke: none; Fill: gradient.

To apply a gradient:

• Choose the rectangle (if not already) so that the handles appear.
• Choose Gradient Swatch tool in Tool Box. (Note: if you forget the names for these tools, you probably know by now that if you hover your cursor over them for a moment, the names magically appear.)
• Drag over box from left to right to apply gradient.
• To adjust gradient, bring up the Gradient panel. Note the the slider adjusts the color (or gray) shifts. For type of gradient, choose Linear. For Angle, choose -90 degrees (minus 90), so the dark area is at the top.

Move into place, under headline left text ("Spring"), and adjust size to fit. Copy the box, paste another one, move to right part of headline ("Shape"), adjust box to fit.

8. Paste a third gradient rectangle. Change Style from Linear to Radial. Drag to middle of headline, above "Into."

Added notes on gradients:
Some low-resolution printers won't print them well, and often photocopies either "band" them (objectionable lines), or drop the gradient if it's somewhat light. But if you plan to take your document to a printer, they'll be able to do it right.

Colored gradients

While we won't see them printed using the classroom laser printer, you can experiment with colors if you like.

• Add the colors you want for the gradient. To do that, choose from the swatch libraries. These give you a variety of options depending on needs of your publication. But most graphic artists use the Pantone system. So to add those colors to your swatches palette
  • Choose New Color from Swatches panel.
  • Choose Color Type: Spot.
  • Choose Color Mode: Pantone coated.
  • Choose color from this library. The color will appear in the Swatches panel

• Now back in your Gradient palette, click on the left color stop under the ramp.
• Go to your Swatch palette, and holding down the option key (for the Mac; Alt key on a PC), click on the color you want to choose. Note if you don't hold down the Option key, this just turns into a fill.
• Go back to Gradients, click on right color stop, go back to Swatches, click on the right color you chose.
  

Note: you can also do this from the Swatches palette. Choose New Gradient Swatch.

9. Draw racing stripe under flag. Instructions:

a. In the pasteboard, draw a rule 6 pts wide, any length. Note: if you're planning to group elements, it's easier to do it in the pasteboard, where you won't have to avoid catching other elements in your bounding box you don't want part of the group.

b. Choose Thick-Thick for stroke type. This gives you two thick-ish lines. You may have to choose a fatter rule to make this show.

c. Create a spacer rule (stroke) 3 pts wide and butt against the bottom of the line as a spacing guide. It's often easier to use a rule of a specified point size as spacer than to painstakingly measure from the rulers. Bring the spacer to touch the bottom of the double-line.

d. Now draw an 8 pt wide rule. Choose the Stroke panel. now bring up the Color palette. (If ramp does not show black and white, go back to Swatches panel and choose black.) Choose an 80 percent screen by typing it in the percent box, or by dragging the slider down to 80 percent. Your 8 pt line should turn gray--80 percent gray, to be exact. Drag this line up to touch the bottom of the spacing guide. Both fat lines should now just touch the spacing guide, top and bottom.

Note: You must have the Stroke box (and not the fill box) activated for this to work. The stroke and fill boxes are small icons at top left of Color panel. They also are accessible at the bottom of the tool box.

e. Remove the spacer rule.

f. With the arrow tool, draw a bounding box around the rules to select them, Choose Group from the Object menu. Now drag from the middle of the elements (not the handlebars at the edges) to place stripe underneath the flag. As you know from a previous exercise, grouping makes it possible to create complex graphics in the scratch board and draw them onto the page without disturbing placement.

g. Drag the grouped lines to the width of the margins, taking care to choose the center handle on box so that the width of the stripe doesn't change.

10. Now you're ready to create those racy-looking diagonal edges. To do this, you have to actually mask the ends of the stripe. We practiced masking in our last exercise, you'll recall....

a. Create a diagonal rule (stroke) of about 20 pts and about 3p long, using the line tool.

b. With stroke box (lower right in tool box or color palette) chosen, from color palette, choose white. This of course is a "reverse," making your line seem to disappear.

c. Drag reversed diagonal to cover edges of racing stripe. Adjust as necessary to neatly cover edges of stripe.

d. Copy this reversed masking line. Paste, and drag it to slant the right end of the racing stripe to match the left end.

12. Now do the same thing all over again four times to create the shorter racing stripes above each section heading. OMG, why would you want to? Part of our goal is to save as much time as we can--what graphic designer isn't under deadline pressure? Instead:

• Copy racing stripe. Paste. Drag to the page, and adjust so line is about half the length of the page (see picture).
• Copy a diagonal mask. Paste twice in pasteboard. Drag to edges of shorter racing stripe.
• The thinner rule coming from the stripe to the right is 3pt, 30 percent screen. Drag line to just touch short stripe.
• Shorten or lengthen a wee bit if necessary, to run from margin to that center guideline you drew in step one. The four shorter racing stripes should look about the same.

After drawing one of these as you want it, Group the elements (bounding box around all of them with Arrow tool, Group from Object pulldown). Then copy, and past three more times. Drag into place, and adjust as necessary. You may have to choose Arrange (Object pulldown) to bring elements up or back so that they don't block others.

13. The rule in the gutter (between columns) is 2 pt, 30 percent screen.

14. Under the flag (nameplate) and racing stripe, write the line of copy as in the sample, changing the name to your own. Highlight, choose Body Text under the Styles menu (remember, you already defined this style), and make the change. Adjust the point size afterwards: 14 pt instead of 12.

15. Copy the block below, and paste into a text frame under the line with your name(s):

You too can be a slim student instead of a bulbous Bison! Just pick the class you want. Throughout the semester our trained aerobics staff of NDSU students and faculty wnat to see you movin’ and shakin.’ All you have to do is be there in tennies and sweats. Look better. Feel better. Think better....

16. Be sure to run a spell check (Edit pulldown, and spelling). Indent the text as shown (about 25 p) using the indent first line box in the Paragraph panel. In the pasteboard make a stick-up cap, style: Century Schoolbook, 60 pt, condensed to 60 percent. Delete "Y" in copy, and drag in stick-up cap. You may need to draw a baseline guide to line up cap with text baseline.

17. Copy and paste the four blocks of text below, in four separate text frames. Style all to your standard body text, except the subheads, which should be 14 pt.

Tuesday Evening, 5:00
T-1 Beginning Stretches, IACC 116
T-2 Beginning Aerobics, Cafeteria
T-3 Tae Kwon Do, Minard 201
T-4 Kickboxing Aerobics, Minard 321

Wednesday Evening, 5:30
W-1 Beginning Aerobics, IACC 150A
W-2 Jazzercise, Spectrum Office
W-3 Intermediate Step, Minard 221

Thursday Morning, 8:00
Th-1 Low-Impact Aerobics, Minard 321
Th-2 Advanced Aerobics, IACC 116

18. Create a 6 pt "thick and thin" border (box) for coupon. It would look snazzier to create the coupon box with racing stripes and diagonal edges, but this makes this project more time-consuming than it already is. However, if you want to have a go....

19. Copy and paste introductory copy below for coupon, substituting your name as appropriate. Draw check boxes, adding space as needed to make them fit. Probably you'll need to paste copy in more than one text frame.

To register for the Ross Collins' special workout program, fill out the following information and return to Minard 321 by Oct. 15.

Yes I want to spring into shape,

and these are the classes I want to take.

20. With the Text Tool draw a text frame below this a little narrower than your box. This is where your name and address form will go.

21. Create leadered tabs for name/address box. This offers you the great opportunity to work with the Tabs dialogue box.With the cursor in the text frame you wish to tab, choose Tabs.. from the Type pulldown. You'll find the box pops up right over the frame you just drew.

Note: Yes, you can laboriously draw text frames and lines for each item in a form, but it's time-consuming and the possibility for crooked forms is high.

Leadered tabs

The tabs ruler allows you to click anywhere to set tabs, which will correspond to the area of the text frame below the dialogue box. The little arrows on upper left are, in order, left justified tab, center justified tab, right justified tab, and decimal justified tab. You also can choose tab locations by measurement, in the X box. Default tabs are set every 3 p, but when you set a new tab, all tabs to the left of it automatically clear. At the left edge of the ruler are two sort of triangles. The top one sets the first line indent; the second sets the left indent. Of course, you can also set this through the Paragraph panel.

The leader box allows you to draw lines or dots between copy, called (of course) leadered tabs. Mostly you do this when you want to create tables of contents or columns of numbers, with those dots between, but today we're going to create a line. Here's the procedure:

• Put the type tool in the text frame in which you want to set tabs.
• Bring up the tab ruler from the Type pulldown.
• Choose the left tab icon (left justified tab).
• In the leader window choose a line (Shift + hyphen.
• In the top of the leader ruler, set tabs to correspond to the form: department, city, state.
• Note that you need to set a tab at the end of the line so that the leader will reach to the end.
• Click to return to the text frame.
• Type Name. Hit the Tab key. A leadered tab should extend to the text tab stop. Type Department. Hit the tab key. Hit return. Etc.
• Screw it up? Start over by choosing Clear All from the flyout menu at right.

Creating dingbats

22. As a last gesture to this healthy program, create a dingbat (small picture). These are called glyphs in InDesign CS. To choose a glyph:

• Draw a small text frame where you want the dingbat to appear.
• Call up the glyph dialogue box from the Type pulldown, and Glyphs.
• From the type menu at bottom (or the bar at the top) find Zapf dingbats (designed by that doughty type designer Hermann Zapf of Switzerland). Or choose Wingdings, or another dingbat font.
• Double click on the heart dingbat, or another, if you want. It will appear in the text frame.
• Style as you would text, by dragging to highlight. Screen the glyph down to about 30 percent. To do this, you need to have the Fill (and not the Stroke) box activated in the Color panel.
• For stroke (around the glyph) choose zero.

23. Print proof copy. Adjust and correct as necessary. Print final copy. You have just created a document that probably two-thirds of those who say they "know desktop publishing" would not be able to do. Congratulations!