Adobe InDesign is a fantastic way to create books and booklets. This desktop publishing software can also be used to create not only books and booklets but posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, and eBooks as well.
PLANNING THE LAYOUT
Say for example you have a product booklet to design. The cover design is just important as the design of the layout. You will need to figure out how to arrange the products, the product descriptions, footers etc. will be placed. You can also design your text, setting various weights for headings, or paragraph styles.
COLLECTING THE ASSETS
In order to expedite things, you should collect the assets you need to produce your product booklet. Assets like the company logo, the product images, lifestyle shots, unformatted text in the form of a copy deck.
ORGANIZATION IS KEY
It is always best to keep everything organised. I usually organise my content for my InDesign projects in folders entitled:
01 Reference – Any reference images or pdf booklets for inspiration
02 Assets --> usually broken down into:
· Images
· Logo
· Copy Deck
03 Working – This holds my working .indd file
04 Package_PDFs --> usually broken down into:
· Package Folder
· Print Version.pdf
Folder Structure Sample
Once all of the assets have been collected and have been properly organised it is time to begin. You will find that gathering the assets if they are not given to you may actually take more time than the actual project. If it is a small project of a couple of pages.
QUICK STEPS
Set up your file in InDesign, for a square product booklet, you can go with 7 x 7 inches, a bleed of 0.125 and ensure that facing pages are checked off to create a nice spread.
Sample File Creation in InDesign
Open up your pages and use your none page for the cover and back page. You can also use the none page if you are planning on making a center page spread.
Before using none pages After using none pages
You can now design the layout of the A Master. To create a bit more variety in your book, you can go to the menu bar in the pages tab and select add a new Master.
How to add a B Master
A B master can be created here, and you can get creative and create another page layout. Make sure and double click on the A or B master before making edits to ensure you are indeed working on a master page.
B Master Successfully Created Using Different Masters in your pages
Now that all that is done, simply copy and paste the information from your copy deck and "command D" to place the images in the spots you already allocated for it.
Adding Your Content
THE BOTTOM LINE ABOUT MASTER PAGES
As you can see master pages can make your workflow in InDesign extremely easy. It is just a matter of learning to use master pages properly. The examples provided can help you to create beautiful layouts for your next project.
COMPLETED PROJECT
I used the technique of creating masters to create this sample product booklet for the Ohuhu brand. Using master pages, have made my workflow easier, and has allowed for ensured consistency amongst like pages as well as consistency throughout the entire product booklet. Please enjoy the images below on the completed mini project and hopefully I have encouraged you to include the use of master pages in your InDesign workflow.
To see my other projects, be sure to visit: https://www.brandilemessy.com