Save Time with InDesign Parent Pages

It’s time for another tip. This time I want to discuss the advantage of using Parent Pages in your InDesign documents.

If you find yourself manually adding the same things over and over again, things like header and footer information, page numbers and so on, then you know how much of a time suck it can be!

That’s where Parent Pages come in. They’re one of Adobe InDesign’s most useful features. Parents help you to work smarter, not harder, by automating repetitive design elements across your document.

Now, if you’ve been using InDesign for a while, you might remember these were originally called Master Pages. Adobe updated the name to Parent Pages as part of a move away from older terminology like master and slave that was once common in tech. The new name still reflects the same idea,  a parent page controls the look and feel of its child pages, but it’s a more modern, approach that makes sense for new users.

In this article, we’ll explore what Parent Pages are, why you need them, and how you can use them to save time and maintain consistency in your designs.

What Are In Design Parent Pages?

A Parent Page is a bit like a kind of template for your document. It has reusable page layout elements like logos, background graphics, and text boxes, that you want to appear consistently across multiple pages. Once you apply a Parent Page to a document page, those elements will automatically show up in the same position on every assigned page.

I said a bit like templates, but they are a little different. If you think about templates, you will typically have one template that governs the look of an entire document. On the other hand, you can have as many Parent Pages as you need in a document, meaning you can pick and choose which Parent Page should be applied to a specific page. That means they’re much more flexible than your garden variety template.

One of the best things is that if you update something on the Parent Page, it updates across all the linked pages, saving you the pain of manual edits.

Why you Should use Parent Pages

Consistency: Standardising design elements like headers and page numbers across the document is important if you want a polished, professional look.

Flexibility: You can create multiple Parent Pages for different sections of a document, making it easy to adapt designs whenever you want.

Error Reduction: There’s less chance of mistakes like misaligned elements or missing graphics.

Hopefully at this point you’re seeing the benefits, so let’s have a look at how to do it.

How to Use Parent Pages in InDesign

1. Select Window > Pages to open the Pages panel. At the top of the panel, you should see the default “A-Parent.”
2. Double-click on the “A-Parent” to open it.
3. Add your design elements to the Parent page, such as a header with your company logo, a footer with page numbers, or decorative borders.
4. Drag the A-Parent thumbnail onto the document pages where you want it applied. You can also do this by selecting multiple pages in the Pages panel, then right-clicking, and choosing Apply Parent to Pages.
5. If you need to make a specific change to a single page, you can override the Parent Page element by holding Shift + Ctrl (Windows) or Shift + Command (Mac) and clicking on the item. Once overridden, the item can be edited without affecting the Parent Page.
6. Since many documents will require variations, such as a different layout for the first page of each section, you can create more Parent Pages by clicking the Pages panel menu and selecting New Parent.

How InDesign Parent Pages will Save Time

Imagine you’re designing a company report. You could use Parent Pages to:

• Include the company’s logo and tagline in the header of every page.
• Automatically number pages in a consistent font and position.
• Add a watermark to appear across the whole document.

Once you’ve set it up, you can focus on content and fine-tuning, instead of tediously recreating elements page by page.

Conclusion

Parent Pages are one of those brilliant InDesign features that can potentially change the way you work. Take some time upfront to set them up, and you can save yourself hours down later down the track. It also helps reduce the risk of inconsistencies slipping through the cracks.

If you’re not already using Parent Pages, now’s the perfect time to give them a try. With a little bit of practice, they’ll almost certainly become part of your design toolkit, leaving you more time to focus on creativity and less on repetitive tasks.

Happy designing!