How to Create Pages in InDesign? Part II

continue from part I ...............

Ruler Origin
Ruler orientation is also affected by choice of facing or nonfacing pages. Although you can override this in Edit >Preferences >Units & Increments, by default InDesign orients the horizontal ruler’s zero-point to the top-left corner of the spread. Thus, in an 8.5 x 11-inch document of nonfacing pages, the right edge of every page is at 8.5 inches. With facing pages, though, only even pages and page one end at 8.5 inches. Page three and all odd pages (except page one) begin at 8.5 inches (the spine) and end at 17. Positioning an object onto the right page of a spread using the Control or Transform panels, for instance, requires X positions greater than 8.5 inches. The Origin field in the Units & Increments preferences can change the horizontal ruler behavior (see Figure D). Spread is the default and works as described previously, beginning at the top left of the left page and growing across the entire spread. Page restarts the numbering for each page— at the spine, the right-read page starts over again at 0 inches. Finally, setting the Ruler Units Origin to Spine orients the ruler zero-point on the spine itself; pages to the right of the spine get positive measurements while pages to the left of the spine have negative measurements emanating from the spine.

Page Layout
If you graphic designer readers are considering skipping this section because you believe bleeds and slugs are in your print service providers’ sphere of concern rather than yours, don’t. Failure to create proper bleeds is among the most common reasons designers’ printed output is flawed and service providers charge for cleanup time and simply kick the job back as unacceptable. You print providers shouldn’t skip this section either. While I doubt I’ll teach you anything you don’t already know about bleed, live area, and slugs and why they’re important, you might learn a different way to explain these concepts to designers so they get it. Bleed is when artwork or text runs to the page trim edge. The cover of this book is a good example. Notice how the ink bleeds off all four edges of the cover leaf. The bleed area is how far beyond the page ink must extend in order to safely ensure against slivers of paper appearing in the finished piece should pages misalign on the cutter.

Let’s define the terms we’re talking about visually. In (Figure D1) you can see a trifold brochure.The blue guide box is the slug area. Inside that, with the artwork running right up to them, are the red bleed area guides. Next, the paper edges—turned green in the figure for easy identification—are the trim, the expected final paper size post-print, post-trim, post-finishing. Finally, within the page are the magenta margin guides that form the document live area (sort of). The white area beyond is, of course, the pasteboard.
Slug
Slug is a nebulous term that can be applied to a lot of different things. In my travels and two decades in the business I’ve noted its usage change regionally and by specialization within each of the print, prepress, and design industries. Quite a few people use the term slug to reference headers and footers or parts of them, like the page number. (The page number is properly called a folio, not to be confused with folio referencing a folded sheet of paper comprising two leafs or spreads.)

In this context, slug refers to any information that must accompany a design through prepress and print but that will be trimmed off during finishing. What should you put in the slug area? Whatever the designer or print service provider may need. Job name, job number, document title, InDesign filename, client name and contact info, date, designer’s name and contact info, color bars, short knock-knock jokes for your service provider’s amusement—anything can go in there. What should go in there is whatever is needed by the designer, the prepress bureau, the printer, the finishing and bindery service, and whoever will retain the film or plates generated from the artwork (if there are film or plates). It’s a great place to put special instructions to providers down the line, too. For instance, if your job contains a spot color intended to be a varnish, in addition to setting up the ink properly in Ink Manager, note in both the job ticket and the slug area which ink is the varnish. Even if the prepress and press operators miss the note on the job ticket, they’ll see it in the slug because the slug will output to every piece of film and every printed page. If you’re running film for the job, include enough information that, a year or five down the road, you’ll be able to immediately identify the job, client, designer, and corresponding digital document. Many a wasted hour has been spent at swapping sheets of film on a light table trying to figure out which page 14 cyan plate goes with which yellow, magenta, and black plates. Before sending a job to press, I typically add one small table into the slug area above the page and another table below. In the top, I include the job name as given to my print and finishing providers, the page number, the date, my account number(s) at the service provider (for proper billing and tracking), my name and contact information (so I can be called or emailed about something without a trip to the customer database), and any special instructions echoed from the job ticket. Within the lower table is information for my reference, including internal job name and number, client name, digital document title and filename, and authoring application and version. I often send PDFs to press, so I want to know on the film if I should be searching archive DVD-ROMs for an InDesign, QuarkXPress, Illustrator, or some other type of document and what version of that software I used in case whatever version I’m currently using has trouble translating from older ones (InDesign had that problem with version 1.0 and 1.5 documents). Knowing the authoring application and version can also help my prepress provider understand the document and any unique RIP considerations (once in a while it’s a factor, even with properly made PDFs). Of course, I put all this information on the master page rather than doing it manually page by page. Marks and symbols like crop marks, bleed marks, and registration marks vital to the proper output of your job will, by definition, wind up in the slug area. Setting up a slug area is simple. When you’re creating a new document (or later in Document Setup), clicking the More Options button reveals the Bleed and Slug area (see Figure E). The chain link button on the right will mirror all four sides’ measurements, which is usually not necessary. In most cases, you want to put all your slug information on one or, at most, two sides of the output. Your service providers will often add additional marks and symbols or their own tracking information, and you want to leave them space in which to do so. Additionally, because the slug will print on film and paper, too generous a slug area can unnecessarily enlarge the required substrates, potentially increasing the cost of the job. Slug areas should only be large enough to hold the required information comfortably.

to be continued............. in part III