Read Me First

the Selector Tool (the large arrow at the top) and drag on the photo on this page. See how the text flows around it.  Try dragging on the large page heading. To resize an object drag on one of the corner handles shown around the selected object.  Try it on the pale flower symbol at the bottom of this page. Click on it with the Selector arrow, then drag a corner handle.  This flower and the page headings are special in one other way - they are ‘Repeating Objects’ and appear at the same position on every page of your document. More details on this later. To rotate an object click on it again so you get rotate handles in the corners. Drag on these to rotate the object. Try it with the petal shape, or one of the text headings, or the above photo. This way you can easily move, resize and rotate just about anything on the page. This photo is set to repel text around it, as you can see if you drag it around.

the edits are reflected across all pages.

Text Tool

You can create three types of text object.  On a blank area of the page you can: 1. Click and just type. This creates a simple, single line text object. or 2. Click and drag rightwards to create a text column, and type. You can drag the ends of the column to adjust the width. or 3. Click and drag diagonally to create a text area.

Text Areas & Columns

When text overflows the bottom of a text area you see a 'flow arrow' that you can drag to any other empty text frame to create a flowing text story. Or click on the overflow arrow and turn on the option to create new pages automatically. Now when your text area overflows, a new page is added for your text to flow onto. The text areas in this document are set to automatic, so if you overflow page 4 with text you will see page 5 get created.

You can ask Page & Layout Designer to arrange your text areas for you, to quickly make a 1, 2, 3 or more column page. Right click in the text and choose Columns... Enter the number of columns you want and the gap between them. Press Convert and the text areas on the page are reformatted. If other pages in the document have exactly the same layout, you’ll be asked if you want to make the same formatting change to those other pages.

Text flow around

To make any object repel text, right-click on it with the Selector Tool and select Repel text under. Now, as you move the object around the page, it repels text. You can also anchor graphics to text. This means that the graphic can move with the text. The small flower graphic on the left  is an example - add a few empty lines into the paragraph above to see it move down. You can also embed any object into text as if it were a character. Here’s that same flower symbol , but this time it’s embedded inline. To embed an object just select and copy it (Ctrl+C), place the text caret where you want it and paste (Ctrl+V).

Text Styles

When using the Text Tool there is a Style drop-down menu on the InfoBar, that shows a list of Text Styles used in this document. ‘Normal text’ is the main body text of this document, and there are several heading styles. The ‘Heading 2’ style is the one used on top of this paragraph and others. To update the appearance

of all such headings, just select one heading, make the required changes, such as font, size, color, etc. and then in the Style drop-down select Update style.

Page selection and view

The Page & Layer Gallery is  shown on the right side of the window. Just click a thumbnail to move to the required page.  Click the small triangle next to each page thumbnail to expand the Gallery to show the layers on the page.

Re-ordering and renaming

pages

Just drag the page thumbnail in the Page & Layer Gallery to re-order. To name a page, first select the page by clicking on it, and then perform a second click on the small page name shown on the bottom of each page thumbnail.

Adding or removing pages

If you want to create a new page similar to the current one, just click this icon on the top bar. (Or the Edit > Pages menu.) If you want to add a new page from the templates in the Designs Gallery, just drag the page design onto the current document.

Adding a page number

To add a page number (as shown in the footer), place the text cursor, right click and select Insert -> Page number.

Google fonts

To access any of the 600+ Google Fonts, in the Text Tool click the font drop-down list and then in the Google fonts section click the Add link to show the Google font picker (this will take a few seconds the first time it’s opened).

The Google font picker allows you to filter by style, weight etc.  You can preview the fonts on the right, and use the size slider at the top to adjust the preview size. The best quality Google fonts are hand-tuned to look good at small sizes (e.g. body text). Select the ‘High Quality Body’ check box to list those.

Other Tools

Let’s explore some of the other tools and features of Designer. You can try these things on the ‘speech bubble’ graphic below right. Remember for most operations you must select the item first (click on it using the Selector Tool). Change its color: Drag a color from the Color Line below onto the shape. Or try the Color Editor (Ctrl+E). Change its size, position, angle: Using the Selector Tool just drag on the 4 control points around the shape. Give it a soft shadow: Select the Shadow Tool, and drag on the bubble shape. Adjust the controls using its InfoBar. Give it a graduated color fill: Select the Fill Tool  (paint tin icon), and drag across your shape. Drag the ends of the arrows to adjust. Try dropping a color on the ends of the fill arrow. Or select an arrow end and try the Color Editor (Ctrl+E). Make it semi-transparent: Select the Transparency Tool (wine glass) and adjust the transparency value using the slider at the top.  Better still: In the Transparency Tool, drag across the object. You’ve just given it a graduated transparency. Edit Shape: This is a little more advanced. Select the shape, go into the Shape Editor Tool (on the flyout menu of the fifth tool down). Then drag on one edge of the shape, or on one of the small control points. If

you’ve used vector ‘bezier’ editing tools you’ll be familiar with this.

Publish your document for all to see

The final stage is to print or publish your document. You can create a PDF to send to people (see below) or use the unique ‘Web Document’ publishing feature of Page & Layout Designer. This creates an exactly accurate web version of your document, and publishes it on the web. You can use your own web space, or use the free web space included. To preview your web document, click this ‘Preview’ icon  on the top bar. Select File > Publish Web Document  to put this document on the web and get a link you can share.