Pamphlet Project
Design in columns with a 3-fold pamphlet
    
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Set Up Your Spread |
Your pamphlet will be a two-page document designed in columns. Each
column become separate sections that will
be folded together. You will have to change some settings in Document
Setup to begin, because this publication will look nothing like your
letterhead. Type  N for
new document, then 2 for Number of Pages. Your pages must be in
horizontal format, so choose the Landscape button in Orientation. There
will be three folds in your pamphlet, so give it 3 columns. Plenty of
room will be needed for the folds, so put 3 picas (1/2 inch) for your
gutter, or space between columns. Click OK. We now have a two-page
document, but only one page is visible at a time. To bring the pages
side by side in a spread of facing pages, we must change the page
numbering so the first page is an even number. Bring up the Pages
Palette (F12),
click on its
palette menu in the upper right corner, and choose Numbering and
Section Options, click Start Page Numbering at, and enter 2 or any
other even number. Your two-page spread is now made up of facing pages.
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Design by Numbers |
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You have to know how your pamphlet will fold and unfold for your reader
before you start. Because of familiarity with books, magazines and
newspapers, readers will expect the pamphlet to open on the right.
Therefore, your opening fold must be on the right hand side of the
first page, not the left. When readers fully unfold the pamphlet, they
will be reading on the
opposite page from the opening fold. When they finish on the inside,
they will turnthe
pamphlet over and return to the first page.
The resulting order of folds as they are seen by the designer is 5-6-1
on the first page, and 2-3-4 on the second page, as
illustrated by
the diagrams to the left. The sixth and last fold is sideways because
we will design our pamphlet for mailing, and this fold will eventually
resemble a mailing envelope, complete with custom-made stamp.
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 Negative
leading |
Opening Fold |
| Your opening fold must be attractive and attention-getting. It should contain distinctive text and visual information. Because it will help us learn new InDesign functions, for this exercise we will use clip art for our illustrations. It is here that we will also be the most creative with our text, making it stand out and be quickly seen, as opposed to being read line after line for a long period | |
Get the Leading Out |
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| An important element of designing with text is line spacing. This is called leading (pronounced led-ding), and is the measurement in points from the top of one line of text to the top of the next line below. For long text such as newspaper articles leading is set to 120% of type size, and in InDesign is called Auto Leading. Adjustments to leading are made in the Character Palette to the right of the type size menu, and Auto Leading is indicated by the parentheses enclosing the number. For larger type, Auto Leading places excessive white space between lines. Lower the leading to slightly less than the point size to increase the impact of a block of large text. This is called negative leading, and can be seen in the example to the left. | |
ABC
AAA 
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On the Right Tracking |
| Controlling white space between words and letters is called tracking and also kerning. Tracking is easier to adjust and is controlled with the menu under the leading menu. Changing it from zero to a negative number pushes letters together like the example to the left. This can also increase the impact of large text. | |
Scale New Heights |
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| Under the kerning and tracking menus in the Character Palette are the horizontal and vertical scale menus. Unlike changing letter size, which affects both size and width proportionately, these allow you to increase only one dimension of your text at a time. Try increasing the size of the first letter in your title with the vertical scale as an attention-getter. Below the scale menus are baseline shift and skew. Baseline shift adjusts whether letters sit above or below those on the same line, and skew allows tilting letters in the same fashion as italics. | |
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Just My Type |
The inside of your pamphlet will contain a combination of headings, text articles and clip art. Because this is a design
exercise, we will use InDesign's placeholder feature to create text
that looks like an article rather than writing one. Click on the text
tool and draw a text blocks inside the first column of the second page
of your pamphlet. Then select the arrow tool and click on the small
square just below the lower right corner of the text block. Your mouse
will change from an arrow to a loaded pointer like this:  .
Use it to draw two more text blocks in the second and third columns.
All three blocks are now linked as one continuous element. Now go to
Type>Fill with Placeholder Text and watch as they fill with lines of
totally incomprehensible reading. |
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| Justify My Line | |
| In the Letterhead Project we learned how to use the Paragraph palette's alignment buttons to change the position of text on a line. Now we will clean up the appearance of our placeholder text. Click on the text blocks or highlight all the placeholder text and select the middle button in the alignment panel. If you hold your mouse over it, a tool tip appears which reads "Justify with last line aligned left." Watch as your text, which defaults to the first button (align left), smooths the right margin of each column until it is as straight as the left margin. All your columns of small text must be justified. | |
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Tombstoning |
| Break up your columns of text with headings, which divide your pamphlet into sections. However, you must avoid placing headings next to one another. Doing this is called tombstoning and is considered bad design. Two side-by-side can be read together, which is confusing, and also lead the eye off the page instead of keeping it there. Instead, place the headings at different levels as you move across the page, similarly to the numbers on the sample page on the left. | |
| Clip Art Class | |
| As mentioned earlier, we will use clip art to illustrate most of your pamphlet. The first fold will include one or two images that reinforce the message of your pamphlet. Obviously it helps at this point to choose a topic for your pamphlet. Once you have, add some clip art that grabs the reader's eye. Use the Place command to import it as you did with the vignette from the Letterhead project. Every clip art collection is different. To learn how to use ours, go here. | |
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Check, Please |
Before we finish the pamphlet, let's check off everything you'll need for a completed project:
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| Pushing the Envelope | |
The last step in constructing your pamphlet is to turn it into a mailer. This makes it necessary to turn the last fold into something resembling an envelope, so everything on this fold will be rotated 90 degrees. Draw a couple of horizontal text blocks into this space and type mailing addresses into them like so:
John & Jane DoeThen click on each text block with the black arrow and rotate them 90 degrees in the Transform palette. Move them into place, one mailing address and one return address. Next, click on the frame tool in the Tool Box, and draw a small rectangle, vertical in format, about the size of the picture on your ID card. Click on it with the black arrow and go to File>Place and select your vignette. When InDesign imports it, notice that the X in the frame disappears, but your vignette is not visible. You will now use the Direct Selection tool (White Arrow) to modify the contents of the frame. Click inside the frame and a brown rectangle appears. As you drag up and to the left your vignette will appear inside the frame. Resize the vignette as necessary, making sure your maintain proportion by using the shift key, and reposition until your face is clearly visible. Finally, rotate the "stamp" 90 degrees with the Counter Clockwise button in the Control Panel and select the Flip Vertical button just below it to make your face "look into" the page. |
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