Kendra Schaefer

SECTION 2: CONTENT

We have our newspaper, but alas, no news. So we’ll do like real journalists and just make it up (ba dum chshhhh). First, we’ll make a reasonably realistic-looking newspaper page layout. Then, we’ll bend it so that its contours match the background we created in section one.

First, find a decent font (I prefer serif fonts for this), and type “NEWS” in nice big caps. The font I used here was Optimus Princeps.

Next, let’s add some heading lines, the price of a paper, and the paper’s circulation. I did this, as I will do the rest of the content, in Times New Roman.

Now for a column layout. Select your text tool, and drag out a column box. Fill it up with random type, so you can see what you’re working with. The type should be small. I’m using Times New Roman 5pt. Duplicate your column 3 times (select it, Ctrl + C, Ctrl +V). You should have four copies of your column now, and you should be looking at something like this:

Line the right-most column up with the right side of your template. Line the left column up with the left side of your template, like this:

Now select all four columns by holding down Shift and clicking each column in turn. With all four columns selected, in the Align Palette, click Horizontal Distribute Center once, and Align Center once. Your columns should now be evenly spaced and straight.

Select only the middle two columns, and resize them by dragging them downwards, so they’re about half the size they used to be:

In a new text box, type the headline “National & World”. I used Times New Roman 16.9 pt font. Position it above your two short columns.

Now we need to import a photo. It’s important that your photo is black and white, and ideal if it looks, erm, “newsy”. To find a photo, check out www.sxc.hu, my favorite free stock photography website. Or if you’ve got one of your own, go ahead and use that. Once you’ve found a suitable shot, you can import it by going to File > Place and choosing your photo, or by simply dragging it from your file system onto the Illustrator art board.

Size and position it so that it sits above the “National & World” headline. You may need to adjust the height of your columns a bit more to make everything fit.

And to finish off this section, fill up your columns with some more realistic-looking text, if you haven’t already. If you plan on using your newspaper at size that the article content will be readable, you might want to go find a real news story to include. Since I’m just making an icon, I’m going to add some latin typography filler text, also known as Lorem Ipsum. You can generate as much Latin text as you need here, using the Lorem Ipsum generator: http://www.lipsum.com/

There! We’ve created some news content. Now to apply our content to the background pages we created in Section 1.