Lesson 2 - Buster Keaton

The second lesson of digital graphics we had a tutorial on how to use Adobe InDesign CS3, with the files we got given we had to make a magazine page all about 'The King of Silence Buster Keaton,' after a three hour lesson this is what I managed to create.

This magazine page may look quite simple to create however, there is a lot of different tools and skills you need to produce a page like this.

First you need to know the different areas of the page, for example: Bleed Area, Trim Line, Margin Area, Gutter & Columns.

Bleed Area: Is a area which will be outlined in red, any text or images that touches the crop mark has to reach the bleed area.

Trim Line: This is the area where the guillotine will trim the page when it goes through the priniting process.

Margin Area: This is the area which is a certain size around the page which everything that you insert e.g. text and images must be inside, to make sure it won't be cropped off.

Gutter: This is the area that seperates the columns and rows.

Columns: These can be inserted to position your content.

Now you know what each of these area do, then you are ready to learn about the tools needed to create a magazine page.

The main tools you are going to have to know how to use are: Selection Tool, Pen Tool & Free Transform Tool.

Selection Tool: This tool allows you to select: a guide, image or piece of text and edit or move the item how you wish.

Pen Tool: This tools allows you to draw onto the document, the most useful thing this tool can help you do is , to draw on top of an image to get the outline,which you can then delete the background image and add text inside or add a heavier boader to make the outline standout.

Free Transform Tool: This tools allows you to select mulitiply items e.g. if you have and outline and you have inserted a image inside, then this tool allows you to select them both and move or edit them how you wish.

Now you have mastered how to use these tools, all you need to do is remember that you are working in layers, and you should be able to produce a magazine page just like this or better.

Here is a screen capture showing my documents in 'Details' view:

As you can see I have many different file formats for different documents, the reason for this being is, different file formats contain different qualities and some are designed to do jobs better then others, for example: I have exported my Buster Keaton magazine as a 'PDF File,' becasue the quality of the file will be higher then if I exported it as a 'JPEG File.

Also by viewing my documents in 'Details view' I am able to see the size of the file which I have created, what file format I have saved it as, as well as the date and time of which it was modified.