Make Multi-Page Docs
in Affinity Publisher
1
MASTER PAGES
We touched on this last month, but if you’re creating a multi-
page document, you can save a great deal of time by setting up
masters first, especially if you want your pages to be consistent.
We set up a master page with a header and footer last month,
but you can take this further by populating the master with all
the empty frames you’ll need to create a page, and by having
multiple master s to create dif ferent st y les of page, such as those
balanced for appearing on the left or right of the publication. So,
create a new document or open an existing one, and click “View
> Studio > Pages” to open the Pages palette if it’s not already
open. By default, the master page at the top is a spread—two of
the pages you specified when you created the document. This is
fine if you want your spreads to all be the same, but if you want
to mix it up, you can add single masters by clicking “Add Master”
and choosing “Single.” You can set different margins and even
different page dimensions on the master, but as we want a
consistent look, we’ll keep them all the same [Image A].2
POPULATE THE MASTER
If you’ve got an idea for a layout that will appear more than
once in your document, that’s a candidate for a master. On
your newly created master page (probably called Master B), lay
out your page as though it were a normal part of the document.
Place frames for text and images, and place any logos or otherLAST MONTH WE CREATED a single-page document in Affinity Publisher, but Serif’s app is
capable of so much more. The creation of entire magazines, catalogs, and books in a single
document is not outside of its capabilities.
This time we’re looking at master pages, which enable you to replicate elements on every
new page you create; text frame linking, which allows text to flow between pages; baseline
grids, which enable you to lock your text in place and keep it lined up; as well as use of the
Assets panel, which stores content you need frequently, but not regularly enough to place on a
master page. There’s a lot of depth to Publisher—we’re not even touching on switching between
Personas this month—and the app is well on its way to challenging InDesign and QuarkXPress
at the top of the page layout (what used to be called desktop publishing) tree.
Once again, this is very much the way Maximum PC is produced, its ranks of highly paid
graphic designers sweating under the lash of the art editor as they use Adobe InDesign on high-
powered computers. –IAN EVENDENYOU’LL NEED THIS
AFFINITY PUBLISHER
See https://affinity.serif.com
to find out more.graphics you know you’ll want on every page. Remember
to line things up using a grid of guides and columns as we
did last month. We’ve got two 16:9 image frames (create
a frame, then use the Transform palette to resize it to
16 x 9mm; drag one of its corner handles to resize it, but
hold Shift to lock the aspect ratio), with text boxes under
them to hold captions. Then there are three columns
of text laid out across a seven-column grid, allowing a
bit of white space. We’re making two of these: one for a
left-hand page, with the images on the left, and a mirror
image version (Master C) for right-hand pages [Image B].3
CREATE PAGES FROM MASTERS
Now, we can quickly create pages. The opening
page of our document will be custom, with a
header and large image, but the text will flow on to three
subsequent pages. Create the new pages using “Add
Pages” in the Pages palette, and they appear as a spread
and one single page after our existing opener. To apply
the masters, drag the one you want from the Master
Pages palette to their targets on the Pages palette—we
dragged Master C to pages 2 and 4, and Master B to page- From here, you can flow the text across pages using
the blue arrow on the right of a full text frame, and insert
images into the image frames as you want [Image C].
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