- Make simple document setup changes.
With a new document open in the software of your choice locate where in the software you need to go to do the following tasks:- Change the page orientation.
- Change the page dimensions.
- Change the default measurements.
- Change display options such as graphics display and greeking.
- Create columns, add delete guidelines, set or change margines.
- Create a new default document or template.
For this new template use a different page orientation, page size, measurements, and margins than the current defaults. You don’t have to create a template that you would actually use. The point of the exercise is to make sure you know how to create a new default document or template.
- Create new character and/or paragraph sheets.
Using your software manual or help files learn how to create and edit style sheets in the page layout software you use. Open one of the documents you created for other lessons in this series. Create a couple of paragraph styles with different fonts, alignment, indents, paragraph spacing, and hyphenation than what you used in the document. Create one for use on body text and the other for use on headlines. Apply that style to select parts of your document.
This was the last lesson in our free email class on the 12 Rules of Desktop Publishing. If you read through the assignments without actually doing them, I encourage you to go back and try the exercises. Reading about how to do something is helpful but the real learning comes from actually doing what you’ve read about.
Found this page by accident? This is one of 12 lessons delivered as part of the Rules of Desktop Publishing free email class.
Quotable Design
| “Right and wrong do not exist in graphic design. There is only effective and non-effective communication.” — Peter Bilak - Illegibility |
| Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. |
| “Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better.” — John Updike |
