Graphic Design CoursesMany people use Indesign to create brochures and similar multiple page documents. We let you into some of the industry secrets in our Adobe Indesign courses. 
Brochures and newsletters are often created using existing templates. We also show you how to create your own templates. First create a new document, specifying number of pages, page size, margins and columns, and bleed (if commercially printing the end result).
It’s a good idea to also create a couple of layers, one for Graphics & one for Text – this will help us later when manipulating either – we would lock one against the other.
Next we set up our Master Page elements, for example, headers & footers, logos, coloured sidebars, automatic page numbering, chapter headings, in keeping with our company’s style guidelines. Lastly we would incorporate Styles into the template. The most versatile are Paragraph Styles. Character Styles are used mainly for single words or single lines. Table Styles are not bad, but many people prefer to format their tables in Word or Excel before importing into Indesign. Object Styles are handy for things like drop shadows or Text Wrap, thus keeping the appearance of graphics uniform throughout your document.
The file is then saved as a Template File (indt format). Then every month or so, you simply open your template file, and a new document opens which is based on your template. We then import images onto the Graphics layer, and either create text from scratch on the Text layer, or import from Microsoft Word and apply our Paragraph & Character styles.
In this way, our multi-page documents are kept consistent from month to month or issue to issue, in accordance with the company’s style guidelines.
More tips can be found at the Sydney Indesign User Group which meets regularly in the city, and is a free forum for designers to discuss topics and the latest Indesign features. See many examples of our own clients’ work on our Facebook page.
Other related Indesign Blog Posts:
Indesign brochures
Oct26
