Now before we do that we want to reorganize things in layers, so I am just going to close the Swatches Palette there. Come on over to the Layers Palette again on the left-hand side and you will notice that we still only have one layer for the guides, everything else we build, we want to be on separate layers.
If you come down to the bottom of the palette, there is a page icon just like we saw in the Pages Palette, however, if you just click it, it would generate Layer 2 and then you have to double-click that to go in and change its name, and trust me, we want to name the layers as we go along to keep everything easy to locate.
We will undo that, instead, every time we generate a brand new layer inside of InDesign, hold down your Option key or the Alt key on the PC and click that icon again and you will notice that the new layer dialog box appears at the same time. So very simple shortcut which will save you a lot of time back and forth renaming layers.
Now this one we're going to call Tints, everything that's tinted out is used as a background element, we will place on this layer in the future, go ahead and click OK on that and then you will notice that even though the Tints layer was created, the element we have selected is showing out on the original layer.
Now you can tell that two ways. The first way is the outer selection color of this particular graphic is blue, and that's relating to the color of the layer that exists on i.e. the Guides layer. You can also tell because of this small blue square that appears right here on the edge of the Guides layer. That tells us we have an element selected on this layer.
If you go ahead and click anywhere, but on the gray shade, you will notice that small dot disappears. So if you select the item again the dot appears, you can now see it is indeed on this layer. We have got to do to get it onto the Tints layer is pick up the small blue dot, drag it up onto the Tints layer and as soon as you let go, you will notice the selection color around the outside now changes red to match the Tints layer over here. So very easy way to move things around.
Now we are going to add another layer on top of this now, so once again hold down your Option key or your Alt key, click to create a brand new layer and we will call this one Text. When you say OK, it will be added on top of everything else.
What I want to do just to be on the safe side, let's lock out the other layers so we can't accidentally add content to them just for now. Now to lock a layer, you have this empty icon next to each of these layers. You will see a small icon, suggests the layer is locked and un-editable. Do the same here for Guides, if you now go across and try select your gray shade, you will notice that InDesign has locked it out. So just a small safety feature there.
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