Creating Brochures In Pages

You can use the page layout tools in Pages to create brochures. The hardest part is to set the guides so you can fold the printed brochure into thirds. Then you can use text boxes and images to fill the brochure. You can also link text boxes so text flows from one box to the other.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Let's look at creating a brochure in Pages. Now in Pages 6.2 in the templates at the very bottom there are already two brochure templates. You can look at them and you can see basically a brochure that you break up a page into thirds so when you fold it, it folds perfectly and looks like a normal brochure. 
Notice how under Document and then Document I've turned off Document Body to change it to a page layout document so it gets rid of the body text. Now I'm going to make sure the rulers are on. So, View, Show Rulers. They are on so I can drag rulers here to setup my divisions of the columns in the brochure. 
The problem is, is calculating where those folds are going to be. So you want them to be perfectly where you divide the page into thirds. So you have eleven inches across. I'm going to use Spotlight here, Command space, to do the math. So 11 divided by 3. You can see it's 3 2/3. The first one should be at 3 2/3. The second one should be at           7 1/3. So let's get that approximately. 3 2/3 right there and 7 1/3 is right there, give or take. So we want to actually create a little bit more of a margin with it. So we'll just create some sort of quick margin. You can take the time to get them just right. We also, of course, want to have a margin on the right and left that's the same size. So I'm not going to take the time here to get the numbers perfect but you certainly can. 
Let's create a guide here at the top by dragging off of these rulers. That's at 1/2 inch at the top or maybe even less. Like that. So basically now we've got where our folds are and where we're going to use margins to make sure that text and things don't go over the edge. We'll add a text box and we'll make this like the first headline here. I'll select it and set it to the Title style and then I'll use Command Dash to shrink it a bit. Center it. I'm going to set the Arrangement to None. Like that. 
Now I'm going to Option drag just for speed to create a copy of this text box so I don't have to copy things. I'm going to set the text here to be Body Text and I'm going to insert some sample text in here. Grow it a bit. Now let's try to put an image. I just dragged and dropped an image from the Finder. We can put that in here. You can see how I can keep adding elements to it. 
If I want this to wrap to another text box I can Option drag here. What I'll do is set this to be green. I'm just clicking on this dot here to be the green one. I'll click here and I'll click again and also set it to green. Let me clear out the text first.There we go. So now it will wrap. So as I paste more text in here you can see that the two text boxes are linked. I can continue to do what I want in terms of moving things around. Adding more elements. That's the basics for it. 
You, of course, want to understand how if you're going to do two pages of this that you're going to have to redo the rulers again on the next page. But you want to think about how this folds. So when this folds, of course, you get if this is the outside. This would be the front of it. This would be the back and this would fold inside. It would be kind of the opposite for the inside sheet of paper. 
So that's your basics on how you just set it up to create a brochure in Pages.

Comments: 11 Responses to “Creating Brochures In Pages”

Jean-Claude

7 years ago

What does turning off the "Document body" option do exactly?

Gary Rosenzweig

Jean-Claude: In addition to deleting that continuous body text box, it also gives you the ability to create and move pages through the thumbnail sidebar. I think there are a few other page-layout-related functions that only work once you switch too.

Cathrine Lawie-Phillips

I need to fold brochure into four pages using double sided landscape printing folded on short side. Is this possible?

Bob

Thanks for the topic.
Sorry, Gary, you went to quickly:
as if we already knew all of the commands.

Scott Smith

FYI-Dividing the page into equal increments is not the correct way to layout a brochure. Due to the different folds, space needs to be adjusted to allow the folded piece to align properly. Most sites that offer brochure printing have templates that set this up. There are several different folds available. I imported the template from the printer into Pages as an image, sized the outer dimensions, then matched my guides to theirs and viola, there's even bleed margins.

Ruth Jessop

Hi Gary, I agree with Bob - you went too fast and used command terms I'm not familiar with. I also agree with Scott Smith that space has to be adjusted to allow the folded piece to align properly.
Thanks for the topic - I will have to play it several times to try to understand all your commands.

Cathrine: I think so. Not sure what you are doing exactly, but why not do a sample document and try it.

Scott: I believe in the tutorial I'm giving margins properly, at least for home printing. If you plan on going to some professional printer with the document, then I'm sure they would suggest exact margins to use, so no guesswork is needed.

Ruth: Is there something in particular you would like me to clarify? Just mention the time in the video and I'll let you know. Thanks.

Gazza

What did you use to generate/import the dummy text into the text box? It looks like a system wide process sitting in the Menu Bar?
TIP: To place guides accurately I sometimes create an empty text box and make that into 3 (or whatever) columns with a gutter determined in the toolbox set up area. Then drag the guides onto the gutter edges. It would be helpful to have guides that can be placed by typing a figure, rather than dragging and dropping, but maybe next version! 👍🏽

Gazza: Little Ipsum. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/littleipsum/id405772121?mt=12

Comments Closed.

Creating Brochures In Pages

Comments: 11 Responses to “Creating Brochures In Pages”

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