GUIDES & GRIDS

Once of the nicer features of InDesign is the flexibility of measuring and aligning objects to a grid, or guides. You’ll remember the cumbersome trick to create a three-column grid in XPress. InDesign lets you specify a column number when you first create a new document, and you can change that at any time. You can also create a grid to your specifications, which will create the horizontal guides.

If you want to create column guides after you’ve already created a new document, go to the Layout menu and choose “margins and columns.” Here you can change the page margins, and establish column guides.

If you want to create a grid that will help you align objects using both vertical and horizontal guides, select preferences > grids from the InDesign menu.

The bottom portion of that pane deals with establishing a “document grid.” You can use either inches or picas to determine the space between lines, and specify the number of subdivisions within each major square.

If you want a regular grid pattern to appear on all your pages, establish your preferences, then "show document grid" from the View menu.

You can also drag guides from the rulers, or create a wonderful grid using Layout > create guides.

In the "create guides" dialog box, determine the number of rows you want, and the number of columns. You'll also need to specify the amount of space between each row and each column.

Choose to fit guides to the margins you established when creating the new document, or to the entire page size.

You'll also note that you can use this dialog box to remove previously created guides.

The result is a page with a wonderful grid that you can use to position elements with precision.

If you're working on a multiple page document and want the grid to appear on every page, double click on your your master page icon in the page pane and place them there.

HANDY TRICK: to hide your guides, type command; (semicolon) and to hide the edges of your frames, command H.