COMM 362: Design for Print
Instructor: Ross Collins

Exercise Five: using simple graphics in newsletters

Goals of this exercise include:

* Basing your snap placement on a custom-design grid layout.
* Importing EPS graphics.
* Manipulating EPS graphics.
* Grouping, wrapping text and graphics.
* Using in-line graphics.
* Learning more keystroke commands instead of using pull-down menus, when possible.
* Linking graphics files.
* Simple pre-flighting.

General note: Remember that EPS, a resolution-independent (vector) graphic file format, is industry standard for spot color and drawings, while TIFF, a resolution-dependent (bitmapped) format, is used for photographs (GIF or JPEG, and sometimes PNG, are used for web pages.). We'll work with photos later, but right now you'll import an EPS file for the first page of an imaginary newsletter described below.

1. Set up standard vertical page, Facing Pages off. You’ll customize the margins in the Master Page later.

Choose Preferences (Apple+k) and check:
a. Use typographer's quotes.
b. Ruler Units in picas.

In the Grids dialogue box set your rules for vertical placement of text to fall in 13 pt increments. This will create a formal modular grid based on your type and leading choices specified below. All elements your place on your pages will begin and end at one of these gridlines. To do that, under Preferences, Grids, and Document Grid, choose:

a. grid color, Peach (or whatever moves you. Light colors are best.)
b. Horizontal: grid line every 45 p.
c. Vertical: gridline every 3p3. Subdivisions: 3.
(Subdivisions places thinner lines between the thicker at 3p3, or 39 pt gridlines, giving you lines at each 13 pts.
d. Choose OK. Where’s the #@**! Grid?
e. Under View menu, choose Show Document Grid. Ta-da, O ye of little faith.
f. Also under that menu, choose Snap to Document Grid. Now elements on the page will automatically snap to the 13-pt increments you set up.

2. Save your new document to its own folder. To do this, go to the Finder, and choose New Folder from the Edit menu. Leave the folder on the hard drive for the moment. Click on the legend of the new folder, and label it "bread." Generally it's faster to work on documents from the hard drive (that's the desktop) than from a floppy or Zip disk (yours). Before leaving for the day, from the Finder click once on the folder to choose, and from the Edit menu, choose Duplicate. Drag the copy to your floppy or Zip disk to take with.

Note on folders: generally designers store related documents, fonts, pictures and other elements for a single job in a separate folder. The folder needs only to be duplicated for a printer—and everything the printer needs will be there. This is particularly important as it relates to Linked photos, as we’ll discuss below.

3. Bring up the Character and/or Paragraph Styles palette to set up our body text style (New Style, and give it a name): Garamond or Century Schoolbook regular, 10/13, Kerning Optical,1 pica indent at the beginning of each paragraph. The rest are regular, or as default.

4. Do the same for headlines: Palatino (or similar serif font) bf (bold), 36/36, Kerning Optical.

5. Go to A-Master page by double clicking on it from the Page palette. (Important: ONE click will not take you to the new page). Set margins from the pull-down menu: top 2p6, left and right 3p, bottom 5p. Columns: 3, 1 p gutter.

Now set up a 2+1 grid: Drag the crosshairs at the left upper corner of your ruler to put the 0 line at the beginning of your margins (NOT the end of the page, or trim line). Now drag in two vertical rules: a 7 p and at 24p6. Drag each column rule so that the left sides snap to the guides. This should set up one narrow (7p) column at left, and two regular columns of roughly 17p6 each at the right. Compare your work with sample.

6. From the Pages palette’s flyout menu, choose Apply Master to Pages, and choose page one. Be sure to LEAVE the Master page by double-clicking on page one.

7. Now that you've set up your parameters, you can begin placing elements on the page. Start by building the nameplate, "The Good Bread Guide at NDSU." "Good Bread" is a fat, relaxed old style roman face (hm, maybe with Egyptian characteristics), Bookman Bold. At about 72/72 ("set solid"), expanded to 130 percent.

I find the kerning (space between letters) of Good Bread to be a bit unattractively wide when set this way. Try dragging over that text, and choosing about –10 in the kerning dialogue box, that is, second box on right of Character palette. You might also want to kern between two letters; click the cursor between those two, and from the second box on the left of the Character palette, choose a number, and see what happens. Use your best judgment to decide if the distance between letters looks attractive, too narrow, or too wide. It takes experience, admittedly!

8. Set folio (with your name, not mine!) in Bookman 10/10, align right, track normal.

9. Draw box for other parts of nameplate, as wide as you think attractive. The top box is no line, 50 percent screen. Type "The" in Bookman styled as you think attractive (expanded, condensed, bold, oblique, small caps, etc.—be creative!), reverse and place in box. Copy the box, and paste under main heading. Fill box solid black, drag wider so end of top box is at the same vertical rule as beginning of bottom box, for consistency (unity). Reverse (white) "Guide at NDSU" in Bookman, place in box. Draw a 2 pt rule about four vertical snap-to guideline clicks (52 pts) under bottom box, across the page.

10. Drag over copy block below, copy (Cmd+C) and paste (Cmd+V) on the two fatter columns of the page, leaving space for the headline (you can adjust copy blocks to fit later).

Why put up with thick cardboard for breakfast? A steaming fresh cinnamon roll is as close as NDSU's Memorial Union Bakery! Or maybe a crusty, chewy roll filled with camembert cheese fills your hankering for lunch like you remember on a Paris park bench. The NDSU bakers learned their yeasty trade from some of Europe's finest bakers, and now they're coming to campus with bread and rolls baked fresh all day long. In fact, they'll be warm from the oven to your hands. Wasn't bread on campus always supposed to taste this good?

11. Style text to body text style, and change first paragraph so that all is flush left (exception to 1p first-line indent as set in your character style). Fill rest of the block with lorem ipsum text placed (Cmd+D) from the Class Folder (server) or copied from the net, and styled the same; leave room at bottom for second story.

12. Wrap text around initial drop cap letter. We've learned the simple to do a drop cap, by just choosing it from the Paragraph palette, and perhaps kerning a bit to keep the big cap from touching the letter next to it. Easy, but with this large “W,” the text really needs to draw in at an angle to avoid the unattractive white space down the letter. Try to do that with your fancy-shmancy automatic drop feature! Or try a slick workaround as described below.
a. Delete the “W” from the beginning of the text.
b. In the pasteboard, draw a small frame, and type a capital W. Style it to match the headline, and enlarge it to about 72/72. (Should it seem to disappear, merely drag the handlebars of the frame larger to bring it back.
c. Drag the frame tight to the letter.
d. With the letter chosen (arrow tool), bring up Text Wrap from the Object menu. Click on the third wrap option.
e. Now choose the letter with the Direct Selection Tool (hollow arrow; InDesign 2.0) Drag that faint standoff line to adjust the wrap at an angle just larger than the W. Now drag the cap into the text. The text should wrap the letter at an angle, a neat feature proving you know more about graphic design than the average bear cub!

13. Write headline as you wish above copy, hanging out into the 7p column on the left. Be creative, something to do with bread. Place headline about 4 clicks of the 13pt ruler below nameplate rule, and about 3 clicks between headline and story.

14. Download this EPS graphic, and drag it to your bread folder.

15. Back in InDesign now, Place (Cmd+D) the EPS graphic ("bread.eps") from your folder. Place the "loaded cursor" on the scratchboard, and click. Click on graphic using the arrow tool and, holding down the Apple/Command button, drag to enlarge or reduce (Shift + Apple constrains proportions). You actually wouldn’t want to do this very much with a bit-mapped graphic (such as a photo), as it changes resolution, and probably will end up looking ugly. Size changes to photos probably should be undertaken in Photoshop, and then Placed. However, as this is a vector-based (draw) bit of clip art, it will still look clean at any size.

Note that choosing the graphic brings up the Transform palette. You also can change size there (called scaling), twist it around (rotate) or skew (shear) the image. Experiment. Choose Undo (Apple + z, a good keystroke combination to memorize) to go back.
You can also crop, as you’ll need to do soon: choose with arrow tool (without holding down the Apple button), and drag a handle. Nothing is lost, actually; InDesign merely masks parts. To move the image around within the mask, choose it with the open arrow (direct selection tool). If you really need to chop an image, however, probably you’ll want to do it in Photoshop.

While we’re not using a border for this clip art, often photographs look better if framed in a 1 or 2 pt border. To do that, just choose with arrow tool, and select stroke from that palette.

A word on Linking: Placed files in InDesign are automatically linked to the original, both text and graphics. This helps save disk space (why copy large graphic files twice?), and allows you or others to update material from various workstations right onto the publication. (If you ever share responsibility for a major project, such as a large magazine or book, you'll know how handy this is.) To check the status of your links, open the Links dialogue box from the File menu. Note that the flyout gives you the opportunity to change link status.

The problem for our purposes is that if you get the graphic from a Server (Class Partition), and then work elsewhere, (or give the file to a printer) the high-grade copy won't be available for printing unless you choose to store a copy (embed) in your file, as well as the link. Without the link or the file, InDesign will only print out ugly pixellated copies based on your screen view. So remember to always put a copy of the original in the same folder as your design.

Along this line, too, it's always best to Place a graphic between documents instead of using the Copy/Paste option. Unless it's done from one InDesign document to another, Copy/Paste saves a low-quality pixellated screen image instead of the original file.

16. Working in the pasteboard, center the cutline text below under the bread graphic, now resized to fit partially in the narrow column, and partially in the regular column, as a wrap. The type is body text ital (italic), but were I to do it again, I’d drop a point of leading, maybe even reduce the type a point. Run a bounding box around the two, and choose Group. Wrap, drag the group into the newsletter copy, and adjust the wrap bounding box as necessary.

Will Rogers used to joke that "college-bred is a four-year loaf," but at NDSU students can eat his words with a fresh loaf every day for the next four years!

17. Place another bread loaf in the scratchboard. Reduce and crop, until it seems to fit the tiny part-images used as attention-getters for the second story blurbs.

18. Copy and paste the text below into a second story frame of the newsletter. Style to Body Text. Note that this copy runs across the page in a kind of "mixed grid" style. It may be better to box it, or at least have a rule between it and the copy above. Choose as you wish.

In Turkey bread is so sacred that, before throwing away an old piece, Turks commonly touch it to their forehead and say a prayer.

Bread has been part of human life for at least 8,000 years. Revolutions have exploded after bread shortages, taking down whole governments-all for the want of flour, water and yeast.

19. Paste the cropped art into the copy as in-line graphics. Note: sometimes you need your graphics to stay close to the text, as they may illustrate particular words or, as in our case, form stylish eye-catchers. To lock graphics to our text, First Copy (Apple + c) the cropped graphic. Then choose the Text Tool. Place your I-beam cursor where you want the graphic to appear, and choose Paste (Apple + v). The graphic is now almost like type, and can be styled that way. (You can also put the cursor in the text and Place a ready-to-go graphic.)

20. Write short headline for these sidebars in the narrow column, your choice, styled to headline style.

21. Preflight. To make sure your links and other materials are ready for the printer, do a quick Preflight of your document. Choose Preflight from the File menu. Your links will likely show as okay, but that doesn't mean they'll be okay for a service provider or printer. You need to include those linked images. And fonts you may have on your own computer may not be available to a printer, unless you include copies in your file. Try this experiment: drag the class partition server to the trash. Then run a preflight again. Any link not okay? An alarming yellow yield sign will let you know. If not, what isn't? Why? How would you fix it?

Link options:
* You can Unlink. This is okay for text and small graphics.
* You can Link. Important for larger graphics, but they must be in your folder.
* You can save the entire graphic in the publication. Okay for small files, but awkward for large ones, as it slows down your work and requires hefty memory.

22. Proofread, print out sample to check your work.

23. Refer to your text for this project’s critique. Based on several chapters we’ve covered so far, analyze this project: emphasis (chapter 2); contrast (chapter 3); balance (chapter 4); alignment (chapter 5); repetition (chapter 6). Try to say a sentence or two for each. Note that a similar exercise will be part of the midterm exam, so don't skimp on this practice try!

24. Hand in final copy; don’t forget to sign your name(s) to it!