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Design a professional-
looking magazine
John Knight attempts to make sense of magazine publishing app
Scribus,DQGÀQGVWKDWWKH complexity is all part of the fun...
e hada certaintrepidationtakingon
Scribus.Althoughit’smuchmore
powerfulthansomethinglikeMicrosoft
Publisher,theinterfaceiscompletelydifferentto
whatmostpeopleareusedto,whichgivesit an
intimidatingreputation.Butthisreputationis
undeserved,andit canbeanexcellentwayto
getintodoit yourselfpublishing.
CoveringallofScribuscouldfillanentire
magazine,soinsteadwe’lltakeyouthroughthe
primaryelementsoftheinterface,givingyou
enoughtogetstarted.We’llbefocusingon
makinga magazine,butthesameprinciplescan
beappliedtoanythinglikea villagenewsletters
ora schoolnewspaper.
TheeasiestwaytogetintoScribusistowork
froma template,andformanyprojectsit maybe
sufficienttosimplyfinda templateyoulikeand
justreplacethetextandimages.Sowe’llbegin
witha template,andthenstartfromscratchto
exploretherestoftheapp.No newideas
WhenyoustartScribus,theNewDocument
windowwillopenautomaticallywiththeNew
Documenttab,readytostartfromscratch.
We’renotquitereadyforthatyet,soif youlook
totheright,thenexttabiscalledNewfrom
Template.Hereyou’llfinda reasonablylargeselection of templates with a description on the
right. To keep things simple we decided on
‘Newsletter 1’. It’s quite straightforward in its
layout, its images are all free, and its author has
designed it so you can simply replace any text or
images with your own.
Although the controls in Scribus can get
quite technical, at its heart it’s quite simple and
revolves around two concepts: everything sits
in frames, and it’s all stacked in layers.
Scribus is designed primarily around Text
Frames and Image Frames. Whether you’re
working on text or images, either kind of frame
can be resized or reshaped to taste, and you can
generally replace any existing content with
whatever you like. Let’s start with text.Adding text
Pick any text frame you like and right-click. A
menu will appear with quite a number of
options, but for now we’ll be looking at two: Get
Text and Edit Text. Get Text will take the content
from an external file and put it straight into the
frame. Very cool, but you’re more likely to just
copy and paste into Edit Text.
Edit Text opens the Story Editor window, which
resembles a basic word processor. Most of the
controls you should be able to guess, though
there are a few oddities. When you’re done
editing you can just click the big green tick
button. However, there’s no preview function in
the Story Editor, so you’ll need to keep clicking
Edit Text every time you want to make a change.
It’s better to move the Story Editor to the side
so you can see the original text frame you want
to edit. Then when you’ve made some changes,
click Update Text Frame from the Story Editor’s
main toolbar and you’ll see your original text
frame change in the main window.Image control
To replace an image, right-click in the frame
and choose Get Image. This will open a file
browser. Click OK when you’ve chosen your
image. The picture frame will now have your
image but unless the aspect ratio was the
same the dimensions will probably be wonky,
with some white space left in the frame, or
only part of the image.
To alter an image’s dimensions right-click
the image and choose Properties. In the
Properties window, click the Image tab. TheW
Linked text frames is the killer feature that could woo you away from that word processor.BEST TIP
Pick a font and stick
with it. A lot of
magazines just use
one or two fonts. Your
choice will help set the
feel of your magazine,
so choose wisely.42 |^ |^ December 2019