2.4 Create Master Pages

Okay, so we have our blank document here and now we're gonna set up some defaults that we're gonna use throughout our entire magazine production through the use of master pages. Master pages are fantastic for saving you a lot of time and energy in having to repeat a lot of the same information if you want it to appear on several pages. So before we do that, let's go to our layer over here. Now, as a designer you can use the layers functions in design, it helps keep your items, such as text photos and objects separate. So I'm going to show you how to set this up. This is completely optional, I for one don't use layers a lot. I find that I can get along just fine without them. But I'm going to show you how to do this, because if you are into organization this will help you a lot. So we already have our first layer here and it's blue, so lets go ahead and call that our photos layer, and all of these defaults are fine. Then I'm going to go and create another layer, this is going to be our text layer and then one more layer and this is going to be our objects layer, and I'm going to order it like this. So we have our text on top, objects underneath it, and photos underneath that. Now what's important about layers is in fact how you order this. You want all of your text to appear on the very top. This way when you place a text layer it's on top of any of your images and any of your objects, such as rectangles or circles or any graphic element that you place. And you want that to appear on top of everything. So, if this layer was at the bottom, then all of these would appear on top of your text. So by default, you want your text layer to be at the top, and then you want your object layers to be underneath your text. Because more than likely you're gonna use those as again, rectangles or circles that you put color blocks under your text, so that will happen by default now. But, you also want those color blocks to be above your photos, because you may be placing a photo and then a color block and then text on top of that. So, this is why it is layered as such. And then, if you need to get technical, you can override that, but by default. You want this to be like so. Okay, so let's go ahead and go to our pages now. By default we have no master page, and then we have an a master page, and then we don't have anything on those yet. And we have our first page which is the cover of our magazine. And it has the a master automatically applied. Okay, so master pages are great at laying down footer content for example. All that information you want to appear on the bottom of every single page of your magazine. So let's go ahead and start with our a master. Now our a master is only going to have the footer text. So we double-click that, and all of the sudden, we have our blank master pages appear here. So you can go ahead and start styling this the way you want to. So let's go ahead and drag a rectangle out here. We're just going to add a graphic element, and make sure that it's on the objects layer, which it is. And then I'm going to go ahead and create a new color swatch here. Let's go ahead and just make it a gray color for now. I want to make sure that it's filled to that. Okay, and we're just gonna drag it out a little ways, just like that, and then I'm going to go ahead and drag a text box out and we're going to call our magazine Urban Magazine and then I'm gonna tab over and then you might have a website here. And then you're definitely going to have a page number but for here, we're gonna make this slightly larger at 14 and then we are going to use a sans serif font here. Drag all the way to the top. And I'm going to use Futura here. Okay. And then we're gonna click and drag this down here and I'm actually going to center it with our rectangle. All right. So that is basically what we have for just some simple photo text. And you may have more information in here or you may not it is entirely up to the content. So I’m going to go ahead and copy this and past it so we have the same font and we're gonna use this box for a page number. So you can right click in your text box and your going to insert a special character, marker, current page number. You should get an A here cause your not actually on a page. So then we're going to take this down and click this in our grey box. And I'm also going to make that white for a nice contrast. Hit W to preview what that looks like, and if you're satisfied with that you have one side. Now, you have the other page that you need to work with too. So the nice thing is that now that we have this, we can just go ahead and copy it, alt+shift, drag this over to our secondary page. The only difference is that you need to reverse this. So, we're gonna push this over to the other side and bring this out, and then you need to mirror this. And then we're going to right align that. And push that over. Okay, that way it's a mirror image of what we have on the left hand side. Okay, so that's just gonna be a basic way to style some footer text, and we want that to appear on our A Master. So that's just going to be simple footer text and we have that already applied to our first page here. Now for a cover page though, we're not going to want that on there, but I'll show you how to remove that in upcoming lessons. So we're gonna continue building new master pages here. So we're gonna create a B master and we're gonna call our B master 3 columns, now when I work with magazines, I work with many different columns in my stile, so it's very handy to add this to your master column. Everything else will be the same. We're going to hit okay and what we want this to do is actually duplicate the photo, so we still want this to have. The footer from the A master. So what you can do is you can double click that and click Based on Master, and we want it to be based on the A master. That way when I hit okay, the footer information comes through, I don't have to copy that. But anything else that I add to the B Master now will change just for the B Master. So I wanna go ahead and add a template for three columns, and to do that you just go to layer, margins and columns, and we're gonna add three columns to this. This is a layout that's very standard for magazines for long articles if you wanna have three columns of text. So I'm gonna use this as a visual guide, really. And you can see here on our first master, the columns don't appear, but they do appear on this master page. And we're gonna create one more set of master pages, and this is gonna be the c, and this is gonna be a two column format. Same thing this time, we're gonna base it on our a masters well. Hit OK. Again go to layout margins and columns, this one is just going to have two columns. However. And now you have one, two. Another common format for a magazine. So now we have some basic master pages set up that's going to make our magazine production a lot easier. We now have two different layout options as well as one that doesn't have any columns, but it just has footer information. And then we have none, meaning we don't have anything. If we want to have a blank template for a page, and that actually is what we're going to apply to our very first page. We're going to say none. This is our cover page. We don't want any footer text. We don't need any columns on our home page. So, from here we're just going to continue with our overall magazine design.