Creating a Newsletter Template in InDesign: Step-by-Step Tutorial

In this video we'll be discussing our next project, our newsletter. Let's begin first by creating a new file, going to File, New, Document.

And from here, we're going to go to our Print Templates and select Letter. Next, let's change the details of our file. We'll start by giving it a new name, titling it Domus, D-O-M-U-S, as the name of the company, and then Newsletter.

Next, we'll change our units to inches and making sure that we have 8.5 inches by 11 inches. We're now going to change our pages from 1 to 8, since we'll be creating 8 pages. We'll then make sure that we have Facing Pages on, let's select our columns and we'll type in 2. We'll then edit our gutter, which is the space between our columns, and let's increase this to 0.5 inches.

From here, we'll maintain 0.5 inch margins, and for our bleed, we'll simply increase it to 0.125 inches, and click Create. Right away now, let's save our work, going to File, Save As, and we'll save it with the title we've already given it, Domus Newsletter, and click Save. The first thing that we'll notice about this page is we have two extra lines, and this is because we're using two columns.

In order to adjust the columns, we can go to Edit Page within our Properties panel, and from here we can edit our margins and columns. As we can see, we have two columns, and the gutter of 0.5 inches is the space between the two columns, and click OK. To exit editing our page, we can go to Back.

Before we begin, let's set up our layers. To do this, we'll go to our Layers panel, and let's retitle our first layer here. We'll double-click, and let's title this layer Images, and hit ENTER.

Creating another new layer on the bottom right-hand side now, we'll double-click this layer, and let's also give it a new name, Text, and hit ENTER. Finally, we'll add one more layer here, and we'll retitle this one Overlays, and click OK or Enter. As one more change before we begin editing our first page, I always like to have a center guide going right down the middle.

So let's go to Pages, and within our A-Master, let's double-click the left A-Master page, and let's simply add a guide so it's on all of the additional pages. We'll drag from the left, and holding Shift, release it right at 4.25 inches. As we can see here, the guide is green because in our Layers panel, we're within Overlays.

Let's now scroll to the right, and we'll also add one on our right-hand page. And here we now have two guides, and we're ready to begin working on our first page. Going back to Pages, and double-clicking Page 1 to exit from our A-Master page.

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Next, let's start working on our first page. For this page, we're going to first start by creating an image frame. To do this, we'll go to the left-hand side, and I'll select my Rectangle Frame tool.

And from here, we're going to simply click and drag all the way across most of our margin area. In order to resize this, we could click and drag, resizing it with the Selection tool. Or, we can also utilize our Transform properties.

In this case, since we have our image frame here, we want the total height of it to be 10 inches, or the same as our margin. So within our height, we'll simply type 10, and hit ENTER. Next, for our width, we want the width to be 7 inches.

We'll double-click, type 7, then hit ENTER. And now we have the right proportion for our frame. However, we need to move it in alignment within the margin.

So let's utilize our Selection tool. In utilizing our Selection tool, we'll click and drag it into our margin. Going into our Layers panel now, let's make sure that we select this object, grabbing the square on the right-hand side, and drag it down into Images.

We'll see it turns blue. Next, we want to add two image overlays. The first one we want to add will be a Rectangle.

And let's hit CTRL-Shift-A to deselect all of our objects. Next, before we begin our shape, let's also swap the Fill and Stroke. And finally, we'll go into Overlays for our layer.

From here, we want to create our first overlay. And to do this, we'll drag from the bottom-right margin. And let's drag so it's about halfway across, and it meets our guide.

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And we'll release. Again, if we go into our Transform, we can see the width is 3.75 inches. And for our height here, let's change the height from 2.46 inches to 2.5 inches, and hit ENTER.

As we can see, it's grown a little bit on the bottom, so let's realign it. This time, we can realign it up utilizing our Transform properties. And let's click the reference point on the bottom right-hand corner.

In this case, we want it to be at 8 inches. And for our Y value, we're going to simply type 10.5. And we'll see the object moves up, so it's right in line at 8 inches and 10.5 inches. Let's now create one more overlay.

And this time, rather than drawing it, let's simply click. And we can determine the size of it this way. For our width, we're going to type 1. And for our height, let's make it 2 inches tall.

We'll click OK. And now we need to move this object up above here. In this case, we'll do it without our Selection Tool.

And we want it to be at exactly 1 inch on the top, down to 3 inches, and right against this 8 inch margin. We can do this by going into our X and Y. And let's now select the top reference point, so that we're determining where this corner is going to be. For our X value, we'll double-click.

And the X value for this will be 8, so we'll hit ENTER. And see that our object is now right at 8 inches. And for our Y value, we'll double-click and type 1, and hit ENTER.