Help
Like text columns, the columns of a graphic design grid are separated by gutters, the space between columns. Doing the math to figure out the spacing of these columns and gutters is a bit of a mind bender and then drawing the alignment guides onto the page at those intervals is a painstaking additional hassle. Fortunately, Pages' text-column features can save lots of time here, letting Pages do the column math and giving you column lines to trace. Here's how to quickly create a six-column grid in Pages:
1. Choose View->Show Rulers, and choose View->Show Layout.
2. Drag vertical alignment guides from the vertical ruler to the left and right margins of your pages—say, half an inch from the edges of the page.
3. Click the Text Box button in the toolbar to add a text box to the page. You'll use this text box as a temporary positioning tool to create columns and then line up your alignment guides along those column outlines.
Press command-Return to select the text box so that its outline appears with eight handles on its sides and corners.
4. Resize the text box so that its left and right edges align with the alignment guides you created in step 2.
Drag the handle on the left side of the text box to line up with the left-margin guide, and then do the same for the right side and the right margin.
5. Open the Layout Inspector and click the Layout tab, and add your columns.
Set the Columns box to 6, and leave the "Equal column width" option turned on. In the Layout Inspector, double-click any of the gutter values for these columns. Enter 0.18 in, and press Return. (This seems like an odd number, but it works well for six-column layouts with pages that have a 0.5 in page margin. Just trust it.)
6. Click outside the text box to deselect it.
7. Drag vertical alignment guides onto the lines traced out by the text box columns.
In Layout mode, the column outlines are visible, as shown in the figure below, showing you where to place your alignment guides.
8. Delete the text box.
Click outside the text box to deselect it, then click it once to select it. Press Delete.
9. Drag horizontal alignment guides onto the page.
Start at the top margin of your page—half an inch from the top edge, for example—and draw an alignment guide every inch down the page.
You now have a perfect six-column grid to help you lay out your page. If you prefer a five-column grid, you can follow the exact same steps but enter 5 in the Columns field in Step 5, and use 0.25 in for the gutters.
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/getfile?item=MDk3L2dpMDY1M2Y4cmEyN2R0L2kvY3BtZzhzOWUwaS5zZzQ5L20ycGdu
Create your vertical alignment guides by tracing out the column borders of a multicolumn text box. Here, a six-column text box shows you where to draw the column and gutter lines.
Because alignment guides work on a page-by-page basis, your grid won't appear on other pages of the document. To make sure that you can easily reuse your grid on new pages, capture this blank grid page so that you can drop it into your document whenever you start a page that requires a grid. Choose Format->Advanced->Capture Pages, and give your page a name like "6-column grid." To add a new page with your grid, click the Pages toolbar button and choose your captured page. It's also a good idea to save your blank grid page as a template: Choose File->"Save as Template" to add the grid to the Template Chooser.
Learn more about this topic from iWork '09: The Missing Manual.
With iWork '09: The Missing Manual, you'll quickly learn everything you need to know about Apple's incredible productivity programs, including the Pages word-processor, the Numbers spreadsheet, and the Keynote presentation program that Al Gore and Steve Jobs made famous. This book gives you crystal-clear and jargon-free explanations of iWork's capabilities, advantages, and limitations to help you produce stunning documents and cinema-quality digital presentations in no time.
