Design your own publications

For technical reasons, Scribus needs Ghostscript installed. To get it, click here. Click the gs904w32.exe download link and, if the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and choose a location. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder. Now double-click the downloaded file and click Yes or Continue. To install Ghostscript, accept the default settings in the setup wizard. Once this has completed, click to remove the tick from the Show Readme box and click Finish.

To get scribus visit the Scribus website and click the Download link. Click the link that says ‘Windows 32’ and follow the instructions. Double-click the download scribus-1.4.0.rc6-win32-install.exe file and click Yes or Continue. Follow the prompts, leaving Full as the type of install. Click to remove the tick from the ‘Show readme’ box and click Finish to start. When the New Document window opens, switch to New from Template tab, select Newsletters in the left column, choose Newsletter2 and click OK.

The newsletter’s cover page will be displayed, showing dummy text. Right-click the Newsletter Title box and choose Edit Text to change the newsletter’s masthead. The Story Editor window will open. This is where text is edited. Start by selecting all the existing text – either by choosing Select All from the Edit menu, or by pressing Control (Ctrl) and A. Then type the newsletter’s title to replace the dummy copy. Now either press Control and U or select Update Text Frame from the Edit menu to update the masthead without closing the Story Editor.

It’s likely the new title won’t fit the space. This is rectified by styling the header. When styling text, it’s better to set up styles that can be consistently applied to the newsletter’s content rather than style up each individual element separately. With the story editor window still open, click the Edit menu and select Styles to open the Style Manager. Click the New button and select Paragraph Style to get started. Start by giving the style a name and then switch to the Character Style tab.

Pick a typeface from the dropdown box, choose a style and click Apply. Switch to the Story Editor box. Click the No Style entry in the left-hand pane to reveal a dropdown menu. Select Masthead and choose File, then Update Text Frame and Exit. Return to Style Manager and tweak the font, size, style, colour and spacing, clicking Apply to update the masthead each time. Align the title of the newsletter in the Properties tab. Click Done when you are finished.

Save the document, repeat Steps 3 to 5 for the boxes that currently read ‘Company’s weekly newsletter’ and ‘3.5.2004, issue 1’. Use the Style Manager to create a new style called ‘Issue details’, and apply this to the text in both boxes. When applied to the issue number and date box, it will align the text to the left of the box. Click the ‘Align right’ button in the Story Editor window to override the default style settings on this occasion. It’s also possible to style up and colour selected parts of the text using the Story Editor’s other style icons too.

Next, right-click the Article 1 header, choose Edit Text and type in a short headline. The text has already been assigned the Sub Header style, so edit this from the Style Manager instead of creating another new style. Once complete, it’s time to write the main story. Right-click the main text again and choose Edit Text to get started. The text can be typed from scratch, or imported from a text (.txt) file. To import the text, open the File menu and choose Load from File, choosing Yes to clear the existing text.

There are two paragraph styles or articles. Select the first paragraph and change No Style to Article First Paragraph. Select the rest of the text and change to Article Following Paragraph. Press Control and U to update, then switch to the Style Manager to edit both. When editing, keep them identical (font, size, style etc), except one element: select Article First Paragraph, switch to the Properties tab and tick Drop Caps. Set it to 2 or 3 lines. Click Apply to preview, and Done when finished.

Check the flow of text in the story. If necessary, cut or add lines to make it fit on the page. Once complete, press Control and W to close the Story Editor, then save the document. Next, add an image to accompany the story: right-click the graphics frame above the main headline and choose Get Image to select an image, which will appear in the frame. It’s likely to be the wrong shape and size, so open the Windows menu and select Properties to open a Properties window.

Switch from the X,Y,Z section to Image by clicking the Image button. Select Scale to Frame Size: if the image doesn’t fit, choose Free Scaling instead. Click the small lock button to the right of the X-Scale and Y-Scale settings to lock the aspect ratio. Then increase either setting until the image fits the picture. To reposition the image within the frame, press Control and L to unlock the frame, then double-click the image and drag it into position using the mouse. Once it’s in the correct place, press Control and L again to lock it.

Using the techniques learned so far, place a caption underneath the image. If the caption text appears too close to the image, click the caption frame to select it. Move the mouse over the centre of the top line. When the pointer changes to a double-headed arrow, click and hold the mouse button before dragging down to shrink the box and shift the text away from the image. Once you are happy with its position, press Control and L. Finish editing the first page by filling in the side panels that reveal what else is in the newsletter, saving regularly. ▼

Click the ‘1 of 4’ dropdown menu at the base of the screen and select 2 to view pages two and three of the newsletter. These can be filled using the techniques already described. Alternatively, you can delete unwanted articles and resize the others to fill the space. To remove an article, click each unwanted frame and press Control and L to unlock it. Then press the Delete key. Once the article has been deleted, select the article above, press Control and L, and resize the frame to fill the space.

To insert a new image by an article, select Image Frame from the Insert menu. Point at the top of the text frame, click and drag to create the new frame: make it one or two columns wide. Press F2 to open the Properties window, select Shape and choose Use Frame Shape. Add a caption by returning to page one, right-click the caption frame and choose Copy. Return to the new article, click on the text frame, press Control and V, drag and resize the caption frame into position.

Add more pages to the newsletter the newsletter from the Page menu. Select Insert and choose the required number of pages (in multiples of two). Click the At End dropdown menu and change it to after Page. Type 3 into the box. Select InnerPageLeft from the Left Page dropdown menu and InnerPageRight from the Right Page dropdown menu and click OK to add the extra pages. Blank pages will be created: either copy and paste text and image frames from other pages, or create them from scratch via the Insert menu.