Lay Out Pages in Affinity Publisher

NOW THANKSGIVING AND CHRISTMAS ARE OVER, chances are there are a lot of copies of the Affinity apps freshly installed on hard drives across the nation. If that sounds like your situation, and you took advantage of the discounts offered in the end-of-year celebration of spending, you may be wondering just what to do next.

Getting started in Affinity Publisher doesn’t have to be terrifying. To get the best results, it’s worth putting some time into the setup of your documents, but once that’s done, the hard work of placing image and text frames is rendered easy by the software. Here, we’ll cover creating a new document, setting up guides, and importing image and text files. We’ll split a text frame into columns, and link two together so the text flows from one to the other. We’ll also switch to the Photo persona for a bit of quick and dirty image editing, too.

This only scratches the surface of what Publisher, and the entire Affinity suite, are capable of. But if you can get the basics right, the chances are greater that you’ll produce the kind of documents you want to see, and get them properly printed, too.

1

A NEW DOCUMENT Once you’ve got Publisher running, start a new document with “File > New,” or by clicking “New Document” on the Welcome screen. You get a lot of options, including the paper size you want to print on, the measurement units and color system it will use, the margins (check with your printer), and whether image files are linked to (smaller file, greater risk of something getting lost) or embedded in the document (greater safety, enormous file). Once you’re happy—and it’s worth taking your time, especially if you’re outputting to a commercial printer—hit “OK.”

2

GUIDES Underneath each document is a framework that will stay the same from one page to another, perhaps throughout your entire publication. Open the Guides Manager from “View > Guides Manager,” and set up what graphic designers like to call a “grid” [ Image A]. It’s not a grid, it’s a series of columns, but that’s designers for you. A common number of columns to put on a page is seven, as this allows for three columns of text, plus an extra bit you can use for a narrow boxout or bit of artwork. We’ve set up a seven-column layout, with 5mm gutters between them.

3

HEADERS AND FOOTERS Look up. Now look down. At the top of this page is a header, with the name of the section—“R&D”— and a representation of how far through you are. At the bottom is a footer, with the page number, name of the magazine, and date. All magazines are different, and these aren’t the most exciting parts of a page, but they are important for reader navigation. Page numbers go on the exterior edge of the pages, and headers and footers mirror each other across spreads, so you need to create them differently depending on whether you’re on a left or right-hand page. Do this on the Master A page, in the Pages palette, and you can add it automatically to every page you create.

4

FRAMES In Affinity Publisher, everything lives in a frame, and each frame lives on its own layer in the Layers palette. Knowing how large the frames should be is a bit of an art, so let’s start with something with a fixed aspect ratio—a screenshot [ Image B]. This will be 16:9, and fitting it to the width of the page gives us its height. Select “File > Place,” navigate to your image files, and choose one. Your cursor changes to an arrow—this is

loaded with your image file, and you can drag a frame on the page to house it. Make sure the magnet icon at the top center-right of the interface is selected; this makes your cursor stick—or “snap”—to the guides on your page. Drag out the frame from the top-left, and the aspect ratio should be preserved, meaning it won’t be distorted. Make it the full width of the page. If you need to adjust it, use the black arrow tool (Move) on the drag handles.

5

TEXT Adding text is similar to adding images, but you should set your frames up beforehand [ Image C]. The headline runs the full width of the page (this isn’t always the case, but this is a simple single page), so drag out a text frame (don’t confuse the Text Frame and Artistic Text tools) large enough to hold your text in a font and at a large enough point size that will be consistent across your publication. Below, the body text goes in a (usually) different font, and a much smaller point size. The seven-column grid comes in handy, allowing a spare column we can pop a bit of artwork in later, so we’ve got two text frames creating three equal-width columns of text covering six of the seven columns. We’ve linked them so the text flows from one to the next, using the triangle that appears on the edge of the frame. Use “File > Place,” or copy and paste, to import your text.

6

THAT EXTRA COLUMN Cutout artwork is a staple of the magazine trade, making pages look good since the days of QuarkXpress (which, before we get letters, is still going strong on version 2019). Affinity makes it easy— import a picture as you did before, and size the bit you want to fit the column. If it doesn’t already have a white background, or something convenient like an alpha channel or embedded path you can use, flip into the Photo persona (you need Affinity Photo installed), and use the Erase brush to remove the bits of the image you don’t want. We’re left with a revolver sticking out into our text, and we can flow the text around it using “Text Wrap” back in the Publisher persona [ Image D]. Set it to wrap to the “Largest Side,” otherwise it tries to insert words in every tiny gap. You could also use this space for a caption, or for laying out the recommended specs for a PC game. There you have it: a simple magazine page.