Create a postcard
Use basic tools and techniques in Adobe InDesign to create a professional-looking postcard you can email, print, and share online.
Published
1 Set up your document
Get to know the InDesign workspace and set parameters for your new project.
Hello and welcome to InDesign CC 2018.
I'll be showing you how to create this two-sided postcard step-by-step, while introducing you to various tools and features.
Before we get started on our project, I'd like to give you a quick tour around the InDesign CC interface.
There are four major areas to focus our attention on.
The first and most important area is our document, which occupies the majority of the screen.
To the left we find the toolbar, which allows us to choose from a great variety of tools for adding and manipulating content within our document.
Many tools are hidden, and can be accessed by clicking and holding on another tool.
Next at the top of the screen, we have our control bar, where we get loads of options for changing the attributes of a selected object.
Also note that the options on the control bar change automatically for you depending on what type of object or tool you've selected.
For example, you get text options when the Text Tool is selected, and graphic options when the Rectangle Tool is selected.
Lastly, we have our panels on the right-hand side to monitor and modify our work.
If your interface looks different, that's because it's completely customizable.
Everything can be dragged and dropped to rearrange, and even turned on and off from the Window menu at the top of the screen.
A quick way to get back to the default interface as it appears on my screen is to click this button on the toolbar to choose from a list of preset workspaces.
I'm using Essentials.
And if you are too, you can reset everything back to normal here.
Reset workspace to Essentials
Now we're ready to begin our project together.
I'll close my document here real quick.
And now we can create a new blank document together.
Create a new document
In this dialogue box we're gonna make some choices to set ourselves up for success.
Since the intent of our document is print, let's start by heading over to the Print tab.
Then, let's switch our units to inches,
Set ruler units to inches
and set the size of our document to 6 by 4 inches.
We'll enter 2 for the number of pages, so that we'll have both a front and a back, then turn off Facing Pages since this isn't a book.
We'll leave our margins at the default half inch all around.
But let's click to expand the Bleed and Slug options, and set our bleeds to 0.125 inches, which is an eighth of an inch.
This will give us a margin to allow our artwork to print up to and beyond the edge of the printed page, and avoid having white space around the edges.
You'll notice when I type a value into one of these four boxes, the others update to match.
That's because of this link icon here, which can be clicked to unlink if you'd like to enter separate values for each different side.
We'll keep it linked and even all around.
It looks like we're all set, so, let's click Create and have a look.
Looks like we're ready to get started with our design.
Let's save our document by choosing File, Save, and assigning it a name and location.
I'll call mine Postcard, and put it on the desktop for now.
Now we're ready to move on to the next video and start designing.
Learn how to reset to the Essentials workspace, create a new document, and set ruler units to inches.
2 Add images and text
Now comes the fun part — filling your blank page with images and text. Check out Adobe Stock for royalty-free images and illustrations. And use guides to precisely position elements on your page.
Our document's now ready for us to add some content.
Let's select our Rectangle Frame Tool and drag an image frame all the way across our bleed margins for our background image.
Now, let's place an image in that frame by choosing File,
Place image
Place..., and then finding and selecting the image included with these sample files.
Now, let's fix the fitting of this image by right-clicking.
Choose Fitting and set the fitting to Fill Frame Proportionally.
That's better.
Keep in mind that by default images are displayed at a lower resolution for better performance, but can display images of full resolution by going to View, Display Performance, and choosing High Quality Display.
Now, let's place a few guides to help us position the other graphic elements on the page.
Objects will snap to these guides, and even snap to one another using smart guides, making aligning things a breeze.
First, make sure the rulers are visible.
If they're not, turn them on by choosing View, Show Rulers.
To be sure the guides are visible, head down to Grids & Guides, and choose Show Guides.
Mine happen to already be turned on.
You can also turn the guides on and off with the keyboard shortcut Command semicolon, but let's make sure those stay turned on.
Now, we can create our vertical guide by clicking and dragging from the ruler on the left hand side to the center of the page.
When you're dead center, it'll snap in place.
Let's do the same for the ruler at the top to create a horizontal guide through the center.
Perfect.
Now, we've got to do this again for page two.
That looks good.
So we'll scroll back up to page one to keep working on the front.
Now, we're ready to place the logo on the page.
To do this, we'll choose File, Place, and find the logo included with the sample files.
Click Open, then click on the design canvas to place the image.
Let's position it over our guide to center align it with the page.
Since logos are often re-used design elements, we may want to save it to a Creative Cloud library.
Using CC Libraries, we can save, organize, re-use and share design assets.
The best part is that you can access your CC Libraries in your other Creative Cloud applications, like Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC.
If you don't see your CC Library panel on the right hand side, you can head up to Window on the menu bar,
Open CC Libraries panel
then click CC Libraries to open the panel.
Let's create a new library for our postcard assets by clicking the drop down menu at the top of the panel, then clicking Create New Library.
Type Postcard for your library name, and click Create.
Now, all we have to do is drag the logo from our document straight into the panel.
That easy.
And now, we can re-use it all over the place.
We can also import more images into our CC Libraries directly from the massive selection on Adobe Stock CC.
Just type something into the search bar to get instant results.
From here you can add previews or even fully licensed high-res images directly to your CC Libraries, which again means they'll show up in all of your Creative Cloud apps.
Now we can add a nice big text frame and enter the event name: Design Talks.
Don't worry too much about getting the size and the position completely perfect.
It's not too late to fix it.
Format text
Now, let's format the text by getting it highlighted, and making some changes on the control bar at the top of the screen.
Let's start with font.
On the drop down menu we see all of our system fonts along with any Typekit fonts we've added.
Typekit is a vast library of additional fonts that are included with your Creative Cloud membership.
You can access the library of Typekit fonts here at the top of the font menu.
For our font we'll use Impact Regular, at a size of 36 points, and All Caps.
Let's also adjust the space between a couple of individual characters.
This is called kerning.
We can do this by clicking to place our cursor between two characters, and using these buttons on the control bar at the top of the screen.
Or by using the keyboard shortcut Alt or Option along with the arrow keys.
That looks better.
Alternatively, we can adjust the spacing between all of the characters, which is called tracking.
Let's highlight the entire heading, and play with the tracking on the control bar.
For this particular heading I'm gonna set it back to zero.
Let's now center a line or text within the frame using this button on the toolbar.
And then we can add an underline.
To add a custom underline, make sure the text is selected, head over to the right hand side of the control bar, and click here for more options.
Then choose Underline Options.
Turn on the underline with a weight of four points, and an offset of nine points to increase the distance between the underline and the text.
Now we can click OK, and press the Escape key to exit the textbox, and get a look.
Oh, it's pretty good.
If you'd like to make changes to the size or position of your text box, now would be a good time since we have draggable selection handles around the box.
Let's save our document and move forward.
Learn how to place an image, open the CC Libraries panel, and format text.
3 Fine-tune your design
Easily control the format of your text and specify color. Keep assets handy for other projects by adding images, logos, type styles, and colors to your Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries.
We're still missing some text on the front here.
Let's create another text frame and enter the time of the event.
Every Tuesday.
Then hit Return. 6 to 8 PM.
We'll style it by using the font PT Serif Bold Italic at a size of 10 points with the leading set to 13 points.
Leading is the vertical space between lines of text.
Lastly, we've got to center this text using the Paragraph Alignment buttons here.
Let's hit Escape on the keyboard to exit the text box, so that we can quickly size and position the box properly.
Let's drag one of the selection handles to add a little extra width, and line up the top and right edges with our guides.
We're also gonna need a second identical box on the right.
So hold the Alt or Option key and drag the box to the right.
That gives us a copy, and also allows us to use smart guides to align the second box with the first.
In addition to the smart guides you can also hold the Shift key to constrain the movement to a perfectly straight line.
Now, let's click again in our box to go inside, and change the text to the destination of the event.
This is gonna say Art Cafe.
Then press Return.
And San Francisco.
Perfect.
Now let's hit Escape, then click away on a blank part of our canvas to be sure that we have nothing selected, so we can create a new color swatch without accidentally changing something on the page.
Create a CMYK color
We'll double-click on the foreground swatch on the toolbar and create an orange using the values 0 for cyan, 50 for magenta, 100 for yellow, and 0 for black.
Click OK and head over to your CC Libraries to add the swatch here by clicking the plus button on the bottom of the panel, then checking just the box for the Fill Color, and clicking Add.
Now that it's saved here, you can easily access this color while working on this and other projects even using other Creative Cloud applications.
Now, let's apply it to our headline: Design Talks.
We can simply click into the box, highlight the text,
Apply text color
and click on our new swatch.
Let's also go back, and set our subtext color to white.
This white text is actually a character style we plan on re-using.
So with it highlighted, now's our chance to quickly save the style to our CC Libraries, so that we can re-use it on the back of the postcard.
Save a Character style
I'll add it as a character style rather than a paragraph style, so that it can later be applied to only a selected portion of a paragraph.
Now, let's head to the toolbar, and grab the Rectangle Tool, and draw a small square.
To draw a perfect square, hold the Shift key as you drag.
If it appears with an unwanted border around it, called a stroke, we can remove it here on the control bar.
If it's not already orange, fill it with the orange swatch saved to your CC Libraries.
Let's switch to the Selection Tool at the top of the toolbar, so we can play with our new shape.
With the square selected, let's rotate at 45 degrees by moving our cursor just outside one of the selection handles, and dragging when you see the rotate cursor appear.
Hold Shift to snap it to 45 degree increments.
Now, place it between your two text boxes.
Great.
We're ready to move on to the back side.
Learn how to create a CMYK color, apply a text color, and save a character style.
4 Position elements in the layout
Smart Guides offer “hints” to help you align the elements of your design as you draw and move around the page.
Now that we have the front of our postcard completed let's move on to the back.
On our second page select the Line Tool on the toolbar, and make sure the thickness is set to 1 point in the control bar at the top of the screen.
Then hold Shift and drag a straight horizontal line.
Now, let's be sure to switch back to the Selection Tool.
Since this is a tool we switch back to quite frequently, it's definitely worth noting that the keyboard shortcut is simply to tap the letter V on the keyboard.
That's V as in Victor.
Now, we can duplicate the line a few times
Create evenly spaced lines
by holding Alt or Option and dragging.
Let's also hold Shift to drag perfectly straight down.
Let's do that a few more times, and use the smart guides to get four evenly spaced lines.
Note the small double-headed arrows that show us when we've achieved even spacing.
It's also not too late to easily increase or decrease the spacing of this group of lines.
Click and drag around the lines to select them.
Then grab the bottom selection handle and drag up or down.
Now, we'll make one extra line copy, and rotate at 90 degrees, and move it to the center of the page.
Let's also stretch the height of it from the top margin all the way down to the bottom margin.
We have some text to add to the side, so we need to create a new text frame and drop in some body copy.
Go to File, Place, and select the text document provided.
Now, let's select all the text and style it.
We'll use PT Sans Bold for our font, add a size of 10 points.
For leading, 15 points.
And for the spacing between all characters, called tracking, we'll choose 5 points.
Now, hit Escape to exit the text box, and click our orange swatch from earlier to fill the box.
Now, we need to adjust the spacing between our text and the edge of the box.
Right-click or secondary click on the text box,
Adjust spacing in a text frame
and choose Text Frame Options.
In this panel we want our inset spacing to be different on the top than it is from the sides.
Since we're entering different values in these boxes, we've got to unlink the boxes by clicking here.
Now we can type 0.625 for the top and 0.25 for the rest.
Then click OK.
Let's also drag the top of the box all the way up to our bleed margin.
We've got more text formatting to do, so head back inside the box by clicking twice, and highlight the name of the lecture: "Finding Creativity in an Urban Space."
With this text highlighted, click our text style from earlier on the CC Libraries panel.
We have just a couple more graphics to place, so we'll go back to File, Place,
Place multiple graphics at once
and select both the Icons file and Stamp file by holding the Command key on a Mac, or Control on a PC.
Click Open, and your cursor will be loaded up with both images.
Click once to place the first image, and again to place the second.
Let's center align the social media icons with the text box against the bottom margin, and put the stamp in the top right corner, snap to our margins.
Lastly, we'll create a triangle using the Polygon Tool in the toolbar.
Click on the page, and choose 3 for the number of sides.
Then we'll fix the style, like we did with our square, setting the fill to orange, and removing the stroke.
Now press V on the keyboard to switch back to our Selection Tool, and we can size and position our triangle.
That looks good.
Learn how to create evenly spaced lines, adjust spacing in a text frame, and place multiple graphics at once.
5 Share your postcard with the world
Save a PDF that you can email or upload to your print service provider. With the Publish Online feature, you can quickly create a link to your postcard that you can share online in a blog or website or on social media.
Now that our design work is done, let's export a PDF for printing.
Choose File, Export,
Export to PDF
and be sure the format is set to Adobe PDF (Print).
Give it a name, and then hit Save.
Here we'll choose [High Quality Print].
Now let's head over to Marks and Bleeds on the left hand side, and turn on All Printer's Marks.
Hit Export.
And you're done.
Go take a look at your exported PDF, and make sure everything looks good.
Looks great.
And it's ready to send off to the printer.
Now, let's head back to InDesign CC to use a feature that allows us to share our documents on the web using our Creative Cloud membership.
With your document open, just click Publish Online,
Share with Publish Online
give your document a name, and choose Publish.
Now you can view your document online, and share a link with anyone in the world.
Just like that.
I think our postcard is back from the printers.
Let's take a look.
It looks beautiful, and came together very quickly, thanks to Adobe InDesign CC.
Great work.
And we'll see you next time.
Learn how to export to PDF and share with Publish Online.
