Research- InDesign
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Hello blog! I have decided that for my magazine, I will be using InDesign as my editing software. A few months ago, we did some practice on the program. We learned basic elements like how to upload photos and add text boxes. I found it very helpful, but today I will be doing some more in-depth research. Last year, I became an Adobe Illustrator certified. The programs are very similar to each other, so learning how to navigate will not be too difficult.
Document Setup
I started by learning the proper dimensions and bleeds. Commonly, for magazines, they use 8.5x11 inches and a bleed, which is crucial for printing, of 0.125 inches. Margins should be set to 0.5 at the top and 0.6875 on the inside. To visually divide your layout into thirds or quarters, you need to use the Create Guides command. Adding guides like this can be useful for visualizing spacing and alignment. To create this command, you chose layout > create guides. In a dialog box that opens, change the rows to your desire. With the spread successfully set up, we can now begin to add design elements.
Typography
Adobe InDesign is a powerful tool for typography, offering precise control over text frames, font styling and layout. First, I learned how to create text inside text, which is a super cool visual! You need to select two fonts; the first font will form the enclosing text, so it will need to be heavy enough to contain body text. The second font will fill the inside. Next, you will need to create a new Swatch and Fill background with C100 M90 Y10 K67. Type your desired word and set fill to none and then set the stroke to paper and 3pt weight. Next, apply drop shadow and add a second layer, then apply outer glow to the second layer, apply basic feather, then finally add a gradient, and BAM, you're done. I LOVE this, and I definitely want to use a variation on this somewhere in my magazine, whether that's in the feature article or the table content, I am unsure.
To create the famous drop cap that most magazines have in the feature article, you need to first specify the number of drop cap lines and characters, then choose a character style. Selecting the option uses the original left side bearing of the drop-cap character rather than the larger value. It is particularly useful for fonts in sans-serif. If the drop cap characters overlap the text below, select Scale For Descenders. I also 100% plan on using this for the beginning of mt feature article. I feel like it acts as an attention grabber and breaks up dense and text-heavy layouts.
Exporting
To export your final magazine to the web, you have 4 options: XHTML, copy and paste, PDF, and XML. For the XHTML option, you can export the entire document to a basic HTML doc and link the images in a separate folder. Copy and paste is very simple; you can copy and paste to your images into InDesign directly. For the PDF, export the document and post the PDF on the web, the PDF can include interactive elements like movies and sound clips. Finally, XML is for advanced repurposing workflows; export the content into an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver.
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