Laying out Facing Pages Vertically
Erik wrote:
For most jobs the current page/spreads setup in CS2 works fine, but I am currently designing a brochure that opens like an airline ticket cover (or many landscape-style greeting cards) – up and down, not left to right!
Is there a way to create the pages in doc setup to achieve this. As designers we all want to design for reading pairs, its how the pages will look in reality, so this has me stumped. I could setup my pages in the typical way and rotate my artwork 90 degrees, but this is a most uncomfortable way to work and I don’t have one of those old Radius monitors that could rotate.
Well, Erik, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that you’re not alone; this is a question that comes up at almost every InDesign Conference. That’s good news because you’re going to need someone to commiserate with at the local pub when you hear the bad news: There just isn’t any good way to make InDesign display facing pages vertically rather than horizontally.
In general, if you need to lay out a greeting card or a matchbook or a calendar or something else that folds in this direction, you should probably lay out the whole thing on a single page. Just put a guide down the middle of the page for visual feedback. (Don’t forget you can add a horizontal guide, then jump to the Control palette and type the page height divided by 2 to place the guide perfectly. For example, type “17/2” to place the guide halfway down a 17-inch page.)
Then, if you need to print each page separately, you’ll have to either use Manual Tiling (by adjusting the zero point of the rulers) or Cut and Paste the proper objects onto a proper-sized page.
Alternately, you could hire an intern to stand and hold your monitor sideways while you work.
Anyone have any other clever techniques you use in these situations?
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Well, speaking from a prepress position, and someone who handles these types of files everyday – you need to set your artwork up as your printer is going to be printing it (speak with them first), not as you would like to work – sure, that’s harsh but your printer/prepress persons are going to love you for it!
Brendan, when it comes to normal printing situations, you are absolutely correct. When I said “if you need to print each page separately,” I probably should have said:
For proper output, you will probably need to transfer each half of this “dummy” page to a new document.
On the other hand, if you’re making greeting cards or something that you’re printing on your own printer, you can leave the pages as is.
Alternately, you can set up single (not facing) pages at the folded size (half of the trim length). When you need an imposed proof (or final), export the single page file to PDF and place that into a template file that is at trim size. In the template file, place two picture frames, one at the top of the trimmed page and one at the bottom, and rotate one (usually the top) 180°. That way, you can just drop in your PDFs of your single pages and everything should already be in position. To allow for bleed, make sure your single page document is set up in ID with no bleed on the top, but bleed on the sides and bottom. Upon exporting the PDF, make sure that “Use Document Bleed Settings” is checked. In your template file, enlarge the picture boxes by the bleed settings on the sides and bottom. Make sure when you place the PDFs, you’ve got “Show Import Options” checked, then select “Crop to Bleed”. Should fit right in.
Caveat: this method will get you reader’s spreads. Your printer should be able to impose you file properly for printing.
The cleverest way to do a spread out of pages is to set it up as not facing pages. Insert for example to pages, these will insert underneath each other then mark the two pages and click on the arrow in the left side corner of pages. Choose keep spread together and then you can drag the bottom page up beside the top one. And now you can add more pages beside the spread, and get a spread of 3-4-5 pages if you want. The only thing now is that the spread may have wrong page numbers. Click on a page you want to alter numer to and go to the arrow again and use Numbering and Section Options and alter the numbers.
The last alternative is the best! :D
Hi, can someone explain in a step by step form the second to last response? I can layout the document as non-facing pages, but it is not clear at all what “arrows” are being spoken about in the left corner of the pages, nor how to drag the pages up. I’m trying to create a layout that will allow me to have stacked pages, with the binding along the top edge, and am not having much luck finding the solution… Thank you in advance for any assistance,
afia.
afiah20: Check out this post for more information about how to lay out a document vertically (such as a calendar). There’s no way to do that using drag-and-drop in the Pages panel.
cheers Mona Godø that worked fine
There actually is a workaround to this. Set the pages you want to spread vertically as facing pages, then go to View>Rotate Spread>Rotate 90 degrees clockwise and voila! Your pages will spread vertically.
WHy should not be possible to do so?
Turning pages in view would create turned baseline grid, that’s not what I want.
Try this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmjfa5f12zr2g81/Horizontal_Spine.pdf?dl=0
Hi, Wilhelm Georg Adelberger, can you send me a link for english version, please…
Fantastic…. really wil this solve all the probs. Thanks!!
Just had this problem, and i’ve switched the wxh in the original setup — then rotated spread view in the actual doc. volia! vertical layout!
Rotated spread makes vertical baseline grid. If you need a page based document baseline grid this will become a problem.