22 Project one The fundamentals of print design

Adobe InDesign CS3/Quark XPress 8

Build better page grids

Master the grids and guides features of your layout software. Alistair Dabbs shows you how to endow your print design work with more structure, consistency – and speed

Any print project that runs across more than one page probably needs a layout grid. Offi cially, the purpose of a grid is to standardise the basic layout features from one page to the next, thereby maintaining visual consistency across the entire publication. This in turn helps readers become familiar with the design and navigate through the pages comfortably. And as any editor will tell you, if you can make readers comfortable, they will come back for more. Unoffi cially, a page grid also triggers a brilliant side effect: it lets you do more work in less time. With a grid sitting on every page, half the chore of layout is done before you even start to fl ex your design muscles. So here we’ll look at how to build effective, practical and versatile grids for a variety of multi-page print publications, such as books, leafl ets and magazines.

Alistair DabbsMulti-tasking freelancer Dabbs is a journalist, print production specialist, editorial trainer and co-author of several books including the Digital Designer’s Bible, and The Print Manager’s Handbook.www.dabbsnet.com

Skills Gain experience in Adobe InDesign CS3 or QuarkXPress 8 Become familiar with page terminology such as margins, gutters, columns, bleed, and furniture Learn to work with ruler guides 03 If you are using QuarkXPress, open the Master Guides & Grid dialogue box from the Page menu and tick the Preview

option. The top section of this window lets you set the margins and columns while previewing the result as you make adjustments. When you’re happy, click OK.

Computer Arts Projects _October 2008 www.computerarts.co.uk

02 Once the new document opens, go straight to the A-Master spread to edit the base master page. InDesign users should then open the Margins and Columns dialogue box from the Layout menu and tick the Preview option. From here you can experiment with page margins and the number of columns visually.

01 Run your page layout software (Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress) and create a new document. In the New Document window, specify a page size and tick the Facing Pages option. Now here’s the trick: don’t bother with the Margins or Columns settings. Just leave them at their defaults and click OK.

CAP115.tut_grids 22CAP115.tut_grids 22 21/8/08 18:08:5621/8/08 18:08:56

Build better page grids 23

04 Now let’s add some intermediate guides to split the main columns in two. From InDesign’s Layout menu, choose Create Guides. Tick the Preview option and set the number of columns to double those you set up in step 2, keeping the same gutter measurement. Select Fit Guides to Margins.

www.computerarts.co.uk October 2008_ Computer Arts Projects

Deep top margin The top margin of just about any page design needs to be lower down than you probably think it ought to be. A shallow top margin makes a page visually oppressive and off-putting, whereas a deep top margin makes a page appear relaxed and inviting.

06 These additional grid lines are applied in a slightly different way using QuarkXPress 8. Open the Guides palette from the Window menu, then click on the palette menu button and choose ‘Create Rows and Columns’. When you have set up your rows and columns, click OK.

05 Designers often forget this next bit: set up some horizontal guides by increasing the number of rows. Ensure you include a gutter measurement, otherwise objects laid out in one row will crash into objects in the row below. Don’t be afraid of breaking the type area into little blocks.

07 If you wish to allow pictures and page furniture to bleed off the page trim, add some bleed guides. You can do this in InDesign by opening the Document Setup dialogue box from the File menu. These appropriately coloured (red) guides ensure you are bleeding objects far enough.

08 To add bleed guides in QuarkXPress 8, click on the Guides palette menu button and choose ‘Create Bleed and Safety Guides’. Safety guides are supposed to sit just inside the page trim, but you can set their gutter to 0pt in order to insert snap-to guides around the trim itself.

CAP115.tut_grids 23CAP115.tut_grids 23 21/8/08 18:09:0221/8/08 18:09:02

24 Project one The fundamentals of print design

11 As ever, things are a bit different in QuarkXPress 8. Guides on a QuarkXPress master page are not locked by default on document pages, so you might want to lock them manually. Open the Guides palette and click the padlock column heading symbol: this will lock all the guides.

09 At the risk of overkill, it is often useful to drag guides manually from the ruler to align with furniture objects. This can help when aligning straps and folios, for example. Note that dragging a ruler guide onto the pasteboard causes the guide to stretch across the entire spread.

13 Here’s an example of a baseline grid being used for aligning objects in a layout rather than just aligning text. With the caption locked to the baseline grid, it’s extremely easy to drag the picture and the vertical rules to align with it. In InDesign, you can snap objects to the grid.

Computer Arts Projects _October 2008 www.computerarts.co.uk

10 The guides you have added to the InDesign master page will be locked in document pages by default. If you want to prevent these guides from being moved accidentally if the master page objects are overridden on a document page, select them and use the Lock Position command.

12 Baseline grids (for aligning lines of text in adjacent columns) are much under-rated as a layout design tool. Set up a document-wide baseline grid in InDesign’s Grids Preferences, entering the leading value in the Increment Every fi eld. Ensure the baseline grid matches your other guides.

More than one grid A magazine or brochure can benefi t from using several different page grids. This provides visual variety across a publication, for example switching between three-column and two-column layouts. But make sure the placement of basic page furniture, such as folios, straps and datelines, remains consistent.

CAP115.tut_grids 24CAP115.tut_grids 24 21/8/08 18:09:0621/8/08 18:09:06

14 Baseline grids work in a completely different fashion in QuarkXPress 8, and they are far too powerful to cover in this tutorial. But to confi gure the core baseline grid for the layout, re-open the Master Guides & Grids dialogue box from the Pages menu, then set the Font Size and Line Spacing.

Think horizontally People dislike reading long columns of text because it looks like too much effort. So when setting up any multi-column grid, design it with a view to splitting a story across several short columns rather than using the full height of the page.

Build better page grids 25

www.computerarts.co.uk October 2008_ Computer Arts Projects

15 Here is a book grid created using the basic techniques explained in this project. Note how we have employed a traditional book design approach, which dictates that the outer margins are double the inner margins, while the top and bottom margins are determined by a diagonal rule between page corners.

16 Putting this book grid into practice, it lends itself to straightforward text-heavy books such as novels and biographies. Note how the traditional grid works fl awlessly for simple pages like this, and particularly how the deep top and outer margins ensure the pages look inviting. An equal all-round margin would be bland.

17 These textbook pages have been laid out using exactly the same grid again. The additional column guides make it simple to accommodate pictures and captions while leaving plenty of air at the outer edge. The row guides help maintain the balance of objects sitting on facing pages.

18 This is a grid for a small leafl et, based on a single column grid split into two with additional column guides, and these have been split in half again with single vertical guides dragged on from the ruler. The additional vertical guides give you more options for aligning pictures and furniture.

CAP115.tut_grids 25CAP115.tut_grids 25 21/8/08 18:09:1021/8/08 18:09:10

26 Project one The fundamentals of print design

Computer Arts Projects _October 2008 www.computerarts.co.uk

20 The varied column guides, plus additional vertical ruler guides in the leafl et grid, support an easy variation in measure to accommodate captions next to the outer margins. Consistency between the two pages lets you run the narrower columns without worrying if they will look out of place.

Hide guides Learn the commands for showing and hiding all on-screen grids and guides until they become second nature to you. In InDesign, toggle between Preview and Normal modes at the bottom of the Tools palette (or press ‘W’). In QuarkXPress, press F7 to toggle guides and Ctrl/Cmnd+F7 to toggle baseline grids.

21 Now here’s a classic grid design for magazine work: apart from the ruler guides laid down for the strap and folio, this is essentially a seven-column grid with seven rows. The advantage of using an odd number of columns is that it provides an almost endless variety of layout possiblities.

19 In its most basic form, the leafl et grid can be used like this. Note that the left-hand page uses the full column width for the body text, while the right-hand page only stretches across three-quarters of the full measure. The row guides have been used to keep the pictures balanced.

23 Here are two ways of using the seven-column grid to lay out a two-column page. Although these pages are not too pretty side by side, they could still be part of the same feature article because of the consistent column width and starting point down the page.

22 The same grid is used on both pages but it is very clear to the reader that whatever is on the left hand page fi nishes there, because the right-hand page looks so very different. However, a certain balance is still evident across the spread, thanks to the seven-row horizontal grid.

CAP115.tut_grids 26CAP115.tut_grids 26 21/8/08 18:09:1521/8/08 18:09:15