Getting Started With PageMaker - Design Principles, Preparation, Text Handling

Design Principles

As such it's clear that simple legibility and clarity are essential, but they aren't enough to grab the reader's interest in the first place. This interest is attracted by variety, but it can also be lost by it. A pull-out quote, for example, can draw the eye to an article, but equally it can distract and disrupt the reading flow and so potentially lose readers. Good design accommodates this apparent paradox by playing off one element against another: consistency against contrast, boldness against understatement, symmetry against asymmetry, unity against division. you get the picture. Good design is built on this internal tension and the balance of opposites.
Coming down to earth with a bump, it's important to remember that good design doesn't exist in a vacuum, but is determined by real world considerations. The most important of these are the intended audience and the intended effect. If you are producing a mail-shot for a bargain-basement special offer, for example, a left-aligned mono-spaced letter that looks as if it has been knocked up on a typewriter will almost certainly be more effective than a lavish full colour brochure. Just as important are the practical considerations of time and money. The typewriter approach would not only be far cheaper to produce, but also far quicker.
For our project the parameters are clear. The publication is a programme of upcoming, mainly arts-based events organised by the French Institute in Edinburgh. It's therefore safe to assume that the intended audience is sophisticated and that, with the events' emphasis on contemporary art, the programme should be appropriately clean and modern. Budgets are tight, however, so all of the information must be fitted onto a single double-sided page. Full-colour is also out of the question, and in any case many of the supplied photos are black and white, so we'll have to try and maximize the impact of two colours.
OK, we know what we're supposed to do, so how do we go about it? Basically the process involves six separate stages (see Putting It Together walkthrough). First the layout grid is created by setting page size, margins and columns. Second the text is roughly laid up and positioned on the grid. Third the typography, the formatting of the text is determined. Fourth the graphics are introduced, sized and positioned. Fifth the overall effect of the combined text, graphics and colour is fine-tuned to create the maximum impact. Finally, when the design is complete, the separated output is proofed prior to sending out to commercial print.

Preparation

The first decision to be made is the size and shape of paper to be used for the programme. Often no thought at all is given to this, which is why many beginners find that they have actually designed their masterpiece to the software's default of US Letter! In many ways, however, this decision is the single most important one we will make as it determines the canvas on which we are going to work. Psychological tests have shownthat taller layouts tend to seem formal, while squatter designs seem more informal. They have also shown that a particular shape, the golden rectangle, tends to be selected as the most aesthetically appealing - a fact the ancient Greeks discovered long before market research.
This aesthetic ideal is slightly shorter than our typical pages - A4/A3/A5 - but there are practical reasons for the appeal of the ISO sizes. A0 is exactly twice the size of A1, which is twice the size of A2 and so on. What this means in practice is that an A4 sheet, for example, rotated on its side and folded in half will produce two A5 pages. This has huge advantages in terms of conserving paper and so in keeping costs down. Because the ISO pages are such universal standards they also have the advantage that they will easily fit into their corresponding envelope sizes - and into the post box. 
Slightly reluctantly then, I think we should fall into line with the vast majority of users and select A4 as the page size. At least by selecting a landscape orientation we can break out from the absolute norm. The next step is to set up the grid onto which we will fit our text and graphics. With a number of separate categories of events to include, together with background information on the Institute and an eye-catching cover, our single A4 sheet will have to be divided into sections. Folding in two would only give us four A5 pages, but folding into three will give us six taller sections. These will be slightly out of the ordinary, slightly formal and well suited for carrying large amounts of information.
To set up the grid we have to set up the margins and columns. Again many users treat the software's in-built defaults as if they are givens, but each publication will demand different settings. The general rule for multiple page layouts is to have a wider bottom margin than top and a wider inside margin than out, although like most design rules these can be broken for effect. It's also important to be as generous as possible with margins as the resulting "white space" should not be seen as wasted, but as a crucial part of the overall look of the document. Without decent margins your design is always going to feel cramped.

In fact it's often worth shrinking your body copy's point-size to gain space to add to margins, but that's a luxury we're not able to afford. Instead we're going to have to be comparatively mean with left, right and top margins of 7mm and a slightly larger bottom margin of 1cm. The next step is to set the number of columns - three - and the "gutters", the space between columns. Because each gutter is actually going to be a fold we have to make the width exactly twice the size of the left and right margins - 14mm - to ensure that each panel is correctly centred.

Text Handling

With the basic grid ready, we can load up the text to see just what we've got to deal with. PageMaker automatically picks up styles from supported word processors so features like the headings are already picked out. With frame-based packages like Ventura, the text would automatically flow through the columns from beginning to end. That would be fine if we were producing a book, but for a folded leaflet we need to paste the text in non-consecutive order so that the pages read correctly when folded. PageMaker allows this to be done easily with its freeform text blocks which are positioned and sized manually. The process demands more intervention, but allows more control.
By sizing each text block so that the right text is positioned on the correct panel even if it runs over the bottom of the page, we can get a good idea of what's involved. At the moment the text blocks are all linked so that if I drag up the window shade on one block the overflow text will automatically flow into the next. To break the links, it's necessary to select each block, cut it and then immediately paste it back. It's an unnecessarily nerve-wracking process and PageMaker's default of slightly offsetting pasted objects is infuriating - though this can be avoided by using the power paste shortcut Ctrl + Alt + V.

With all the text in place, it's a good idea to load up all the graphics (shortcut Ctrl + D) onto the surrounding pasteboard. This is important as we need to know roughly the amount of space they are going to require before we take the next crucial step of choosing our body typeface. This decision is determined by a combination of factors. The typeface has to be appropriate to the intended audience, but also suited to the particular circumstances. In our case this means a typeface with a contemporary but classic feel which reads well at small point-sizes. The solution I came up with is the sophisticated but highly legible Optima which is a modern interpretation of the Roman lettering on triumphal arches - if only it was the Italian Institute!
With the typeface chosen the next step is to choose the point-size and the interline spacing or "leading". For easy reading of long sections of text, point-size should be between 10 and 12. Unfortunately even at 10 point it's clear that there would be no room for white space - or even the pictures - so I settled on 9.5. In fact on text-heavy jobs like this that's by no means bad going and it also means that each line contains around 55 letters, within the accepted maximum for comfortable reading of 65. In terms of leading PageMaker defaultsto 1.2 x the point-size which would be 11.4 points. With our relatively long lines I'd prefer larger leading to make the travel easier for the eye, so I can afford to round it up to 12 points. 

This body copy leading is particularly important because it sets up the horizontal structure of the grid. To tie the separate columns/panels of our spread together it's important that the lines of body text actually align across the design. The reader probably wouldn't consciously notice if they didn't - so long as the bottom of the columns lined up - but subliminally the design is tighter and has greater internal logic if they do. In other words, if I want my design to win an award it's a must. The problem is that, as the grid is invisible, it's very hard to work to. However, this can be overcome with a bit of effort and with the help of PageMaker's Grid Manager utility to add repeating baseline guidelines (see this month's Real World Publishing article).
The formatting of our body copy is almost complete with only the indents and alignment to be decided. In terms of first line indents these are only really necessary to indicate paragraph breaks, which will be clear enough anyway in our freeform layout, so they can be dispensed with. Setting the text to be justified produces a more block-like and so modern look and has the added advantage that it fits in slightly more copy into the given space. It will also allow us to add variety and to highlight information by using left-aligned bullet points and dates. 
Of course all of these formatting decisions could be being applied directly to selected text, but far more powerful is the ability to group attributes as named styles that can easily be applied and edited. The easiest way to apply styles within PageMaker is by clicking on the style name on the Style palette (Ctrl + B). Local overrides can always be added and are then marked in the palette by a plus symbol after the style name. Existing styles can be edited by Ctrl-clicking on them in the palette, while new styles can be created with the Ctrl + 3 shortcut.
Apart from the body copy, the most important items of text in the design are the headings. Their relative difference and significance has to be identified which is most easily done by increasing their point-size, emboldening, and centring. This has to be done while still ensuring that the following paragraphs fall back onto the interline grid. This means ensuring that the combination of each heading's leading and its above and below spacing adds up to a multiple of the 12-point body leading. We also need to clearly identify the separate category headings but, with absolutely no room for manoeuvre, have to find other ways of marking them off. 
One of the most obvious ways to do this is by using upper case, but this is generally frowned upon because it interferes with the recognition of word shape that is the basis of easy reading. For single word category headings, however, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. I've also marked off the headings from the body copy by using a ruling line below - perversely this is hidden away as a sub-dialog in PageMaker's Paragraph command (Ctrl + M) - and by introducing a second typeface, Gill Sans. Used in its bold condensed form this will give the category headings considerable weight while opening up some surrounding white space.