Improving publicity
material
This month, I want to offer a little advice on
improving publicity material. Whether you use a word
processing or desktop publishing program, you can always give your leaflets, posters,
invitations, flyers or other printed material more pizzazz by incorporating one or more of
the following 4 features:
1.
Dropped Caps:
This is the term applied when changing the look and
position of the first letter of any paragraph - a computerised version of an old
manuscript.
Without
a dropped cap
ith a dropped cap
You will find the option on the Format menu, and in most versions you can change
the type of character (font), size, number of lines by which it will drop, and also the
colour of the text.
2.
Borders:
There are two different methods for adding borders to
text depending on whether you type normal text or
include text in a frame or text box.
For word processed text - select the paragraph(s) with
the mouse and then open the Format - Borders and
Shading menu. You will see that on the Borders
tab you can select a box, shadow or 3D border, and have various thicknesses and styles of
border to apply. A preview will show how the border
will look, and you can click part of the border off or on e.g. if you don’t want to
border one side.
To add an unusual border round a complete page, select
the Page Border option that is available in most versions and look at the Art
selection. If the pictures are too large, change the
width settings before clicking OK.
To border just the text, rather than the whole
paragraph, select the actual words with the mouse and choose this option in the Apply
to: box.
Applied
to whole paragraph
Applied
to text
Sometimes, the border will appear as separate boxes if
you want to border more than one paragraph. In this
case, try typing the first paragraph, border this and then press Enter inside the
border to carry on typing.
For text boxes, or awkward borders e.g. round several
drawn shapes, you need to use the drawing tools. Select
a text box and then use the Line Colour or Line/Border Style toolbar buttons for simple
text boxes. In DTP applications, you will have the Border Art selection to set more
exciting borders, and can also choose borders from the clipart gallery.
Alternatively, draw a Rectangle AutoShape round your
objects to enclose them. This may hide them
temporarily, so you can now choose to send the rectangle to the back by clicking the Draw
menu and selecting Order - Send to back, or click the arrow next to the Fill Colour
button and choose No Fill to make the rectangle transparent.
3.
Shading:
For coloured printouts, you have a wide choice of
effects, which can even give a varied look in black & white. Select your text or text box and use the Fill Colour
options or Shading on the Format menu.
Following up More colours or Fill effects, you can mix colours to
offer gradients, or choose from a range of patterns, textures such as marble, wood or
canvas or even add a picture as background.
4.
Watermark:
If you would like a faded picture behind a block of
text, you need to play around with the image. In DTP
applications, this is fairly simple. Insert your
picture in a picture frame, choose Washout from the
Image Control list in the Format - Picture box,
move the picture over your text and select Arrange
- Order - Send to back.
If it is a
picture e.g. from the clipart gallery, inserted
in a word processed document, you need to show the picture toolbar (right click and select
this option if it hasn’t appeared automatically) and select Image Control - Watermark. This will fade the picture.
Now drag its corners out until it is the appropriate size - it will push aside the
text but don’t worry. Apply the Draw - Text Wrapping - Behind Text option
and you will find you can now move it over the text without displacing it, as you have
changed the picture to a drawing object. At
this stage it won’t be behind, so apply the option again or select Draw - Order
- Send behind text.
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