Chapter 4. Moving Beyond Text: Laying Out Pages
The preceding chapters treated Pages like it was just a hot new word processing program, which, of course, it is. But now it's time for Pages to step into the spotlight and reveal its other, flashier persona. Its page-layout abilities set Pages apart from other word processors; what's causing the program's well-deserved buzz is the incredible ease with which you can produce professional-looking layouts.
Apple's software designers realized that the plain text document age is waning. Photographs, artwork, movies, and music are just a click away on your computer. Nearly everyone has a color printer. Digital media convergence is a reality and the kinds of documents people want to create now are stylishly laid out, colorful, and filled with photos (Figure 4-1).
Pages can access the pictures, songs, and movies that you already have on your computer—probably in iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie—and give you the freedom to include these elements within a Pages document. As for the "stylishly laid out" part, Pages provides a graphic arts department in the form of its collection of templates—tastefully designed starting points for your next brochure, newsletter, or 'zine.
Templates: Ready-to-Use Page Designs
For writers and page designers, nothing is at once so exciting and so frightening as the blank page. Thanks to Pages' templates, fear of the blank page is a thing of the past. Though you can start with a blank canvas when the creative juices are raging, ...