Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Backgrounds: using Musical Poster template.


In this post I want to show 
- how elements from iWork templates can be used in our own designs 
- and how to combine multi-column layout with text boxes and graphic images.

The background for this magazine page (picture on the right) with a historical theme is from the Musical Poster template. 

Background from Musical Poster

Open it with File>New From Template Chooser

The image of a yellowed piece of paper in the background is locked, you cannot select it. 

To unlock, Arrange>Unlock. When the image shows handles, copy it and paste into your document. (picture at bottom left). 

Then resize to fit your design, send to back or move to background, also under Arrange menu. You can rotate it by dragging the handles while pressing Command and change proportions: uncheck 'Constrain proportions' in Metrics Inspector and drag handles to resize. 

When the poster image is in the background you can arrange other elements of the page on top of it. To avoid accidentally moving the background image, choose Arrange>Make Backround Objects Unselectable.


The images here are screenshots, actual PDFs will have a high definition suitable for high-end professional printing.

Note that the magazine page has a combination of one, four and three column formats for text.

Next, I'll show how to use a combination of layout and text boxes to design pages like that. 

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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:00 pm

    Some things I don't understand on this - When I open the template the yellowed paper is NOT locked. I tried copying to both a Page and a Page Layout blank. I can copy it, but in neither case can I send it to background. That choice is greyed out. In the regular Pages form, I cannot lock it either, and whenever I drag and drop an image on it, the background disappears? I can Lock the background in the Pages Layout option. Do you know why I am finding so many problems?

    ReplyDelete
  2. When you open a new document, open it as a blank Word Processing document, not Pages Layout. Copy the yellow paper image into it, open Wrap Inspector (in Inspector it's the third icon from the left) and tick 'In Background' checkbox. I've just checked, it works.

    But you are right, trying to do the same via menus isn't possible - background option is greyed out. And it doesn't work in Page Layout mode.

    I've had a number of similar questions - don't ask me why this difference, I don't write the programme, I only find workarounds and solutions with what we have!

    Good luck with your project.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous8:52 pm

    Thanks. That helped. I was able to duplicate the moves. Another quick question. How do you decide whether to work in the Word Processing side or the Page Layout side? I do like being able to move the pages around in the layout side.

    ReplyDelete
  4. good god,
    'Word processing' is good enough for whatever you do. Really don't need Page Layout.
    [Qualifier] only my opinion, not fact.

    ReplyDelete

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