Guides in InDesign CC make creating pages easier, faster, and more accurate.
In this tutorial, we'll learn about margins and column guides.
With InDesign CC open, open this practice file from the downloadable practice files for this tutorial to follow along.
If your Pages panel isn't visible on the screen, choose Window, Pages...
In the Pages panel, you can see that this is a three-page file.
To turn to Page 2 and display it in the Document window, double click on the Page 2 thumbnail.
When you create a new document, you have the opportunity to specify any margin and column guides that you want.
And then these guides appear on all the pages of the document.
This page has 0.5-inch margins as indicated by these magenta lines.
But the text frames are just sitting in the middle of the page without any relationship to the margin guides.
Whoever created this document just specified one column with 0.5-inch margins which for this design isn't useful.
Double click the Page 3 thumbnail, and you'll see that the Page 3 layout is similar.
But again, no guides are in place to help position the text frames.
If you were going to create more pages with additional content, you'd likely want the frames on those pages to be arranged similar to these.
But that would be tedious without some guides to help.
Let's fix this.
First, I want to select Pages 2 and 3 of this document.
To do this, double click on the Page 2 thumbnail to display Page 2 in the Document window.
Then hold down the Shift key and click on Page 3.
The thumbnails for Pages 2 and 3 will both turn blue to indicate that they're selected.
Now to change the margins and column guides on these pages, choose Layout, Margins and Columns...
We don't want InDesign CC to move our text and images as we change the margins and columns.
So, deselect the Adjust Layout option if it's selected.
We want to be able to enter separate values for the top, bottom, left, and right margins.
So, if your Chain link icon doesn't look like this, click on it to break the chain.
Then enter 1.25 in for the Top margin, 1.75 in for the Bottom margin, and 1.5 in for the Left and Right margins.
Enter 2 for the number of Columns.
And 0.5 in for the Gutter: the space between columns.
Then click OK.
Now double click on the page thumbnail for Page 2 and then Page 3 to display each page in the Document window.
You should see that Pages 2 and 3 both have identical margins and column guides.
And these guides are in locations that are useful for the unique layout of these pages.
The guides will help us precisely position the text and image frames on each page.
Go to View, Grids & Guides.
And note that there is a checkmark next to Snap to Guides.
As long as this option is checked, any page item that is within 4 pixels of a guide will be magnetically snapped to the guide.
This way you don't have to be so ultra-precise when positioning items.
To display Page 2 in the Document window, double click on the Page 2 thumbnail in the Pages panel.
On this page, we want to drag the edges of each of the text frames to the nearest guide.
To do this, click on the Selection tool - the black arrow.
Click on one of the frames, and then drag a side handle to the nearest guide.
The Snap to Guides feature makes it easy to be accurate.
Repeat this for each of the text frames and the image frame on this page.
Turn to Page 3 by double clicking on the Page 3 thumbnail on the Pages panel.
Resize the elements on this page to also snap to the guides.
But on this page, I want the two columns of text to be different widths.
That's OK.
Margins and column guides in InDesign CC are merely suggestions.
You can override them anytime you wish.
So, let's arrange these items like so.
There you go.
Now all the items on Pages 2 and 3 have a unified consistent look as you turn from page to page.
Get in the habit of using margins and column guides, and you'll be able to design and layout your pages quickly, consistently, and accurately every time.
