All About Creating a New InDesign CS5 Document

Category: InDesign Tutorials 496 0

The creating a new document window in InDesign CS5 is something that you will be seeing a great deal, especially if you are following my InDesign tutorials. Every time you need to start a new InDesign project you will end up using the New Document dialog box, and for that reason you need to know how to use it. This InDesign tutorial will take you through all the most important aspects of the New Document window and show you all you need to know about creating a new document.

The Page Settings

In this InDesign tutorial I’m dividing up the areas of the New Document window into two sections: the page setting and the content settings. The page settings determine how your actual document page looks and how many pages there will be. The content settings allow you to add columns, margins, and all the other things that form the actual content of the page.

1 - All About Creating a New InDesign CS5 Document1. The first option in the page settings area is the document preset. This will allow you to access a preset you or InDesign has already formed. Using this can save you time having to change all the rest of the settings in the window. You might want to consider creating presets for all the document layouts that you use most often.

2 - All About Creating a New InDesign CS5 Document2. The number of pages option is pretty obvious, allowing you to add multiple pages to your document. If you forget to add extra pages in this stage, however, you can always add more later from the Pages palette.

3 - All About Creating a New InDesign CS5 Document3. The page size drop down box will let you use a preset page size like Letter or A4, and includes many options both American and European. This is an easy option, but you can also choose to modify your page size, orientation, and binding by changing the options below.

4 - All About Creating a New InDesign CS5 DocumentThe Content Settings

4. And now we come to the content settings. Once the page is set in the above area, you can start to change the way the content will be laid out on the page. The first of these settings is the column area. Here you can add columns to your document page(s) and change the gutter space between them.

5 - All About Creating a New InDesign CS5 Document5. The margins settings allow you to set the margins on your documents. Not all layout projects need margin, but many of them do. You can choose to set the margins equally if you have the 4 boxes linked, or else you can change them separately by unlinking them.

6 - All About Creating a New InDesign CS5 Document6. The last area is for setting the bleed and slug of your document. These are two things that most people don’t know much about. The bleed refers to the amount of area you want to be outside of your document. If you have an image or object that is too big, the bleed will allow it to be placed outside. The slug is an area allotted for information about the document. Neither of these two items will appear in the printed document, and they are only for the design process.

7 - All About Creating a New InDesign CS5 DocumentWith that information, you should be able to understand a bit more about the process of creating a new document in InDesign CS5.

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