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Dealing with Asymmetrical Margins In Facing Pages

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    • #116859
      Jeremy Howard
      Participant

      Hello All!

      I am wondering what techniques you all might use when dealing with asymmetrical page margins in a facing page document.

      I am currently working on a catalog consisting of hundreds of pages that have a wide margin design on the outer edge of each page. The page content is allowed to go much closer to the inside edge of the page than it is to the outside edge. The issue that I have is that the client may add or remove pages from the document after I send the initial proof and when I add or remove a page, all of the page content then appears to be “shifted” for the remainder of the document.

      How do I avoid this? I dealt with it last year to get the job done but I don’t feel like going down through and manually adjusting dozens (if not hundreds) of pages when I know that there has to be a better way.

      Here are a couple of screenshots of an example that I drew up to help demonstrate the issue:

      View post on imgur.com

      View post on imgur.com

    • #116860
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      Hi Jeremy: The best option is to just give up all hope. ;-) The second best option, of course, is to only add or remove an even number of pages at a time.

      The third best option is to get clever with a combination of primary text frames, styles that have horizontal alignment “away from spine” or “toward spine” and carefully set up anchored objects based on spine alignment.

      The fourth best option is this script that Ole Kvern wrote some years ago (Ole will be at CreativePro Week!)
      https://creativepro.com/move-every-object-on-every-page-toward-or-away-from-spine.php

    • #116861
      Jeremy Howard
      Participant

      Hey David,

      Thanks for the response, I was afraid that was going to be the case. =) First, thanks for letting me know about the script, that will be very useful either in this or in future projects! Second, I managed to find a workaround (however clunky it may be)…

      For easy math, let’s assume the following:
      • The final page width is 8.5″
      • The margin design on the outer edge is 1″
      • The margin near the spine is 0.5″

      Now we can follow these steps:
      1.) Go to “Document Setup” and set the page width to (final page width – margin design width) or, in this case, (8.5″ – 1″) – This will bump the margin design off of the page and onto the pasteboard

      2.) Go back to “Document Setup” and add the inside margin to the page width (7.5″ + 0.5″) – Now we have equal margins on the inside and the outside of the document

      3.) Add and/or delete pages as needed

      4.) Go to “Document Setup” and restore the document to the final page width (8.5″)

      5.) Move the margin designs back onto the page on the master pages.

      I realize that this seems rather convoluted but it does work! And, as many are known to say in our industry, If it works, it works!

      Here is a screenshot of the proof of concept file that I cooked this method up with:

      View post on imgur.com

    • #116879
      Vinny –
      Member

      Hi Jeremy.
      Do not give up all hope ^^

      There’s something that InDesigners are not always well aware of.
      Something that looks like black magic…
      It’s called: the POWER OF MARGINS!

      See the 2 animations below.
      First one is based on your layout.
      Second one is based on “power of margins”

      Enjoy!

      View post on imgur.com

      View post on imgur.com

      • #116904
        Jeremy Howard
        Participant

        Vinny,

        Sorry for not seeing this and getting back sooner, you are 100% correct! Setting the amrgins properly made it so that the entire document reflowed without an issue!

        Who knew margins were good for something other than looks? =)

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