Granite Bay Graphic Design Building Blocks: Page Makeup

Adobe InDesign is a graphic designer’s toolbox for creating polished, multi-page layouts. It excels at bringing together text and visuals from other Adobe programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. The designer can use InDesign to create layouts for magazines, brochures, or even business cards. They can establish grids and guides for precise placement of images and text boxes. InDesign also allows for the creation of master pages, which act as templates for consistent headers, footers, and page numbering across the entire document. This ensures a cohesive and professional final product.

Note: Some of the basic design tools shown here are now also available in most modern applications from Microsoft Word to Canva.
Above: The first page of this document. The screenshot shows some basic elements. At the top is a graphic frame. The chain icon indicates the placed image is linked and shows the high-res image. Below that intro quotation shown in the chosen font.
Below: I can quickly change the image using the Links palette and clicking the chain icon and navigating to find a different image. Here, I’ve replaced it from the main image from another document.

Above: By highlighting the text, we can change it’s size, font or color using the text palette or dropdown menus at the top of the screen. The dropdown menu (below) shows me a preview of the text in any of the available fonts. (Example shows text changing from “Swear Text” to “Hagrid Text”, the two main fonts in all of these documents. These are very basic functions available in most modern applications.
The following screen shots may be available in some other applications, but most people likely don’t use them.

Above: The effects palette gives us mant options to change the relationship between objects. Here’s a photo with a blue box in front of it with just two of the many options for both the effects type and the amount of opacity.

Most applications have some sort of settings or preferences. The Adobe applications not only allow us to make changes within a document, but to control the application itself, we can change the interface. The screenshot below shows the preferences panel options. Note the extensive list of setting options in the left column. Most of these have been customized to meet our needs.
How we work greatly influences all of the preferences we select, from the background color (Color Theme, below; I prefer the dark grey) to the default fonts, whether like hyphenation, xxx…

Palettes I use often: Column 1, top to bottom: Swatches (Colors) Palette; Table Palette; Effects Palette. Column 2: Character (Type) Palette; Paragraph Palette; Text Wrap Palette. Column 3: Layers Palette; Stroke (Line) Palette; Pathfinder Palette. Column 4: Links (Images) Palette; Hyperlinks Palette.
Note: Many of these palettes use dialog boxes to add or control the contents of the palette. For example, you can mix new colors or change existing ones in the color palette. The links palette has multiple uses: you can examine the properties of existing images or relink to new images.

Above: The tools most graphic designers use most often with a description of each below.
A Swatches: This is our color palette. We can customize the default colors for every new document and add or change as many colors we need for each assignment.
B Pages: We can create as many pages and spreads as we need and create as many “master” pages as we need allowing us to place objects and text and assign that master to any number of pages.
C Layers: These allow us to place text and objects on different layers which can be reordered, locked or turned off.
D Pathfinder: These tools allow us to modify objects. We can take two objects and combine them into a single object, subtract one object from another or divide objects a variety of ways.
E Align: This palette allows us to align any number of objects in any direction and allows us to select any number of objects and space them evenly horizontally or vertically,
F Links: This is the control center for all of the images in a document. Here we can get info on an image, see its location on or computer change an image link and see if images are not linked.
G Paragraph: This useful palette allows us to select text and indent it left or right. We used this palette to set the space between the paragraphs in this document.
H Character: Here we can select any text and set its font, font weight (regular, bold, italic, etc.), font size, leading, letter spacing, increase height or width and raise or lower characters.
I Table: This palette allows to create or modify tables, setting height, width and horizontal and vertical indents.
J Text Wrap: The Text Wrap palette allows us select objects and create “runarounds”. This forces the text to wrap, using a rectangle or circle. We can set the spacing and further refine the wrap.
K Effects: This palette allows us to select anything and apply effects, including transparency and a variety of other effects focused on lightening and darkening. Each effect can be set from 0–100%.
L Character Styles: Using the settings from the Character palette (above) we can apply the style to any text. Any changes we make to the style are then applied to all text assigned to that style.
M Paragraph Styles: Similar to the Character palette above except that these are assigned to a whole paragraph. Any changes to a style here affects all paragraphs assigned to that style.
N Stroke: Here we can apply or modify any lines (rules) in a document, assign weight (width or height), end caps, joins (corners), stroke alignment and male it solid or dotted, etc.
O Buttons and Forms: This palette allows us to add those items to almost any object on a page before saving it as an interactive PDF. Buttons can link within the document or on the web. Lots of options.
P Gradient: This palette allows us to add that effect to any object, applying two or more colors, settiing it as linear or radial and setting any number of points for color transitions.
Q Hyperlinks: This simple palette allows us to select text or any object and assign it any URL on the Internet. A green or red “light: confirms vailidity of the link which is saved to an interactive PDF.

The palettes I frequently use above only scratch the surface of the control a graphic designer has over the documents he or she manages. I do primarily print work, so the palettes and options I use may vary a lot from someone who’s building a website or creating social media graphics. Take a look above to see how many palettes are available! Just the “Interactive” menu shown has these sub-menus (each would open a new palette): Animation, Bookmarks, Buttons and Forms, EPUB Interactivity Preview, Hyperlinks, Media, Object States, Page Transitions and Timing.

I’ve been working in graphic design since the early 1980s. In the early days everything was done with type-specking being sent out to a typesetter. We had to use our intuition and reference materials to figure out font size, leading, fonts, columns—everything. Often times the fit wasn’t right and the job would go back to the typsetter or we would painstakingly cut and paste individual words or letters to get the right fit.
We would put in black squares where photos would go and use layers of acetate if we had to create a diagram. For photos, we would tape a sheet of tracing paper to the photo to show how a photo would be cropped.
We used waxers to apply wax to the back of type or images and complete page layout that way before turning our “boards” over to a printer who would assemble all the layers and eventually show us a proof of the whole job. Sometimes adjustments had to be made and the next proof would go to the client for approval.
We always went on “press checks” where press operators whould make adjustments to colors. Sometimes the changes were subtle. Other times the changes would require big shifts and we’d often come back the next day to continue.
I got my first computer, a Macintosh II in 1988. It had 40MB of internal memory and 4MB of RAM. I had to change floppy discs every time I wanted to change fonts. I mostly used it for typesetting in the early days. Eventually, when I upgraded to more powerful Macs, I began doing color separations and more.