When I changed schools, I was given the job of making the school yearbook, so naturally I completely changed the old manual processes and replaced it with desktop publishing on a computer using Aldus Pagemaker. If you remember those days, the ability to do page layout on a computer, mostly thanks to the invention of the Mac and the laser printer, was an absolute revolution at the time.
Since that time, there have been many great tools for creating page layouts. From the consumer-level Microsoft Publisher, through to the professional publishing powerhouse that is Adobe InDesign, there are many excellent options for page layout these days.
One option that surprises many people is that you can do some pretty credible desktop publishing using Google Slides. What? Google Slides? Yep, all you need to do is change the page format and treat it as a publishing tool instead of a presentation tool. Here’s how.
First create a new Google Slides presentation.
Then go to the File menu and choose Page Setup. From the drop-down menu change to Custom and then enter the size of the page you’d like to work on. In Australia we tend to use A4 size paper (21 x 29.7 cm) but you can set the page to any size you like, such as A3, US Letter, postcard size… whatever you’d like to work on. You just need to know its dimensions.
Chris Betcher
Teacher
Director of PD for ANZ
EdTechTeam
Sydney, Australia
ChrisBetcher.com
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Kimberly Johnson says
Do you think Google Slides would work to make a 24 page sports program for a high school? We need to be able to save it as a PDF and then send to a printer. We’d like to have a cloud base software so multiple people could work on it. However, we don’t want to pay for LucidPress – we have no budget. ha
Sophia Mourphy says
Great Post.