Create a Simple Magazine Template in Adobe InDesign

Step 2

Expand the Pages panel (Window > Pages), which is docked to the right side of your workspace. This page, Page 1, will form the front of our cover.

front of cover

In the Pages panel, click and drag the Page 1 icon onto the Create New Page button at the bottom of the panel, to duplicate the page. This will be the reverse side of your cover.

back of cover

Step 3

From the Pages panel’s drop-down menu, click on Allow Document Pages to Shuffle

shuffle pages

Grab Page 2 (the back of your cover) in the Pages panel and drag it up to the left side of Page 1, dropping it into place when you see a black bracket appear ([). 

shifting pages

Step 4

With your cursor still placed on the back cover page (which is now Page 1), click on the Create New Page button at the bottom of the panel.

This will insert a new page directly into the middle of the spread. This page will be the spine of your cover. By creating it as a separate page, you can easily change the width to suit the number of pages in your issue.

create new page

To do this, select the Page Tool (Shift-P) from the Tools panel and click once onto the central page to select it. 

page tool

To make the spine width quite narrow, you’ll probably have to reduce the margin size of this page to allow InDesign to compress the page. Go to Layout > Margins and Columns, and from here reduce the Margins to something like 1 or 2 mm. Click OK.

margins

Then, from the Controls panel at the top of the screen, set the new Width of the page. Here, I’ve set it to 10 mm

spine width
final cover template

You’ve now got an easy-to-edit cover template.

edited cover