Learning Publisher - Most Used Features

[chasm]

Hi All,

As a newbie with many other work tasks assigned, I'm trying my best to carve a little time here and there in learning Publisher. I'd like to avoid the construct of how other software is taught. Ex. MS Word was taught as if every skill used in Word had the same importance to everyone. I learned over time that features like Mail Merge are rarely used by many (most?) word-processor users. Thus, a lot of time was devoted to mastering skills I've never or rarely used when it would have been more effective to learn the top, say, 15 or so features you'll use Word for mostly - ex. Find and Replace, Bold certain phrases, etc.

It would be very helpful and appreciated if those with actual Publisher experience would please share maybe a list of the name of the tops features used daily/often to create graphics form scratch? I'm wondering if there's any way to share (just as an example of building skills sets)  "with those skills you can create"... a flyer and with these additional sills you could create a newsletter and with these additional skills you could create an ezine?

When I teach patrons the 3D Printer I show then how they can find free files and then how to download those files and then take a simple file and print that just  so they can see what beginner skills can produce which results. Each session will advance their skills - designing a print from scratch, modifying an object, etc. so they can create something simple and then add to their 3D print creation skills.

I looked at a LinkedIn Publisher class but it just lists all these skills by name. As a newbie, you may not even know what those terms mean nor what they'll enable to to create.

There are plenty of YT videos but many try to cram as much as they can into 15 minutes or an hour and you just get lost or it's too much too soon and again without you knowing what you can create with those specific skills.

Thank you so much.

 

 

[Old Bruce]

14 minutes ago, chasm said:

It would be very helpful and appreciated if those with actual Publisher experience would please share maybe a list of the name of the tops features used daily/often to create graphics form scratch? I'm wondering if there's any way to share (just as an example of building skills sets)  "with those skills you can create"... a flyer and with these additional sills you could create a newsletter and with these additional skills you could create an ezine?

Publisher Features I use all the time:

Master Pages

Text Frames

Text Styles, Paragraph and Character Styles.

 

Master pages should hold things (graphics or text) that you want/need on every page or a set of pages. Sometimes you'll want an actual photograph on each page, most likely you'll just want a Picture Frame on each page so each page can have a different photo on it but in the same location. 

Text Frames are what hold the text in your ezine or newsletter. I put most of them in Master Pages but that is for the way I work. Text frames are in two flavours, Art Text and Frame Text. Learn about the differences. Frame Text text frames can have a background colour and a border, they can have offsets for the text on the top the bottom the left and the right. They can have a Baseline Grid so the text can be neatly aligned.

Text Styles are great, you can set them up so the text size for all your text can be increased or decreased very easily. You can change the font from a Serif to a Sans Serif font with a simple click. Bolded text can be made more bold through the entire document by changing one setting in the Character Style. Paragraphs can be changed from a bulleted list to a numbered list quite easily. All you need is to use the Paragraph and Character and Group styles.

If you are going to be using a lot of images, photographs or digital artwork drawings then read up on what the Picture Frame can do.

[chasm]

Hi Bruce,

That's exactly the kind of detailed info which helps  newbies!

Thank you so very much.

My best wishes to you for very happy holidays.

 

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, chasm said:

... the tops features used daily/often to create graphics form scratch?

"Graphics" could mean anything from vector objects to text to raster images (a.k.a. bitmaps), to name just a few of the possibilities. APub has tools for creating & manipulating all of these graphic object types & several others, but which of them you might use often depends greatly on the kind of projects you want to create.

So it would help if you mentioned the kind of things you are interested in making with the app.

Also note that there are a few samples you can download & open from the Welcome screen.

[chasm]

Hi RC-R,

My first creation will be a flyer in the spirit of the one attached.

It's for public library outreach to make residents aware of how a modern library can help their lives.

I'm not quite sure which skills I'll need to master to create that along the way.

Thank you so much for your kind help.

[Dan C]

Hi @chasm,

Our sincerest apologies for the delayed response here, we were extremely busy over the Christmas period and working from home during the pandemic is unfortunately extending our response window to be longer than normal, many thanks for your continued patience and understanding here.

I'd recommend checking out the following 'Creative Session' from the Affinity Youtube channel, as this should hopefully provide some insight into the best practices for the type of document you're looking to create -

I hope this helps