Lesson D: Insert Cover Pages

For the covers, we need pages at the beginning and end of the document that don’t use the reg-ular pages master. We want them to be blank until we place the appropriate image on each. That’s what the [None] master is for.

When we add a new page to the beginning, pages that were on the left will be on the right, and vice versa. Sadly, that means the primary text frames may be on the wrong sides of their pages. We will have to fix that if it happens—luckily, the fix is easy.

Add a Front Cover at the Beginning

• Locate the Pages panel. Right-click in the lower section or use the Pages panel to choose Insert Pages….

• In the Insert menu, choose At Start of Document. For the Master, choose [None]. Click OK.

You’re now looking at the new first page. We will be ignoring those margins. It won’t matter what layer is active, either, as there will be no other content but the images we are about to place.

• Be sure nothing is selected (⌘-shift-A/Ctrl-Shift-A) then go to the File menu and choose Place…. Uncheck Show Import Options. We won’t need them for the rest of this project.
• Navigate to the project assets folder and double-click on the file called frontCover.pdf.
• With the loaded cursor, click near the upper-left corner of the page. To perfectly center the image, use the Properties panel or the Control panel. Set the Align menu to Align to Page. Then click on the buttons called Align Vertical Centers and Align Horizontal Centers (the order in which you click them doesn’t matter).

Add a Back Cover at the End

• Locate the Pages panel. Right-click in the lower section or use the Pages panel menu to choose Insert Pages….

• In the Insert menu, choose At End of Document. For the Master, choose [None]. Click OK.

You’re now looking at the new last page. We will be ignoring those margins. And just like with the front cover, it won’t matter what layer is active because the only content will be the images we are about to place.

• Be sure nothing is selected (⌘-shift-A/Ctrl-Shift-A) then go to the File menu and choose Place….
• Navigate to the project assets folder and double-click on the file called backCover.pdf.
• With the loaded cursor, click near the upper-left corner of the page. To center the image, use the Properties panel or the Control panel as described for the front cover.

Remind Pages of Their Masters

If you look at the pages in between our new ones, the text frames or the text may be dislocated. Depending on your version of InDesign, a bug may afflict those primary text frames.

The text on a left (even-numbered) page should be aligned to center vertically, and the frame should be within the margins well away from the spine. If either of these things is not so, use the following fix. Heck, this will do no harm even if everything is OK, so why not try it?

• Right-click anywhere in the Pages panel and choose Apply Master to Pages….

• Set Apply Master to reg-ular pages. Set To Pages to 2–7. Click OK. The masters and the document pages now understand each other again.