Make text more interesting

Simple styling

To change the formatting of anything in Pages, tap it and then tap the paintbrush icon. Here we’ve tapped the Layout tab, changed our single column of text to make two columns and increased the line spacing.

Box clever

With multi-column text, headlines wrap to the columns. To avoid that, tap the Plus icon and choose the shape tab. Tap Text and you can now create a text box. Press and drag the corners to resize the text box.

Add images

Images make a huge difference, and you add them by tapping the plus icon and selecting the image tab. You’ll see that the text automatically moves out of the way, which is clever – but it’s not the effect we want in this case.

Add alpha

Tap the paintbrush icon, then the Image tab, and you’ll reveal our favorite feature, Instant Alpha. Tap it and then tap the image’s background to turn that color transparent. Drag over a wider area to include more colors.

Add images

A picture paints a thousand words, especially if you’re trying to draw attention to a poster or flyers We’re going to take advantage of Pages’ styles to create the effect of layered photographs on a background. First, we’ll import our photos.

Add background

Sometimes you want to add an image to be your background. No problem: just bring in the image you want to use and then tap the paintbrush icon. Select the Arrange tab. Tap and drag the slider to move the image towards the back.

Tighten up

You’ll see that the text automatically wraps around the shape that you’ve added. You can change how or if the text wraps, and how closely it hugs your image, by tapping the paintbrush icon, choosing the Arrange tab and tapping Wrap.

Get stylish

Tap the image you want to change and then tap the paintbrush, choosing the Style tab. Here you’ll see various effects to make your images more interesting. We’re going to use the slightly curved photo at the bottom right.

Move it

With each step your image will move further to the background until it’s actually sitting behind everything. Now it’s just a matter of resizing it to get it perfect. We’ll finish the job by adding a text box with our headline in it.

Wrap everything

The same wrapping that hugs our image can also be used to create pull quotes, which break up dull-looking blocks of text. Simply create a text box and drag it where you want it to go. The text then flows around the box.

Twist it

Rotating images on a desktop computer can be tricky, but not on an iPad; with a two-fingered twist you can turn it around – and if you go slowly you’ll see the exact angle of the image, so you can position it perfectly.

Twist again

The same rotation trick that we used on our three photographs works on text boxes too – and so does the wrapping, so you can flash text diagonally across a page and see the body text flow around it automatically.