For over a dozen years, I’ve been heralding the benefits of Pages, Apple’s word processing and page layout application. Around 2008, I offered to teach a master class to some of my colleagues.

In grad school in 2013, I shared its simplicity with peers who were avid users of Adobe Illustrator. They were wowed and I convinced them to use it for some of their less sophisticated design and prototyping work.

What is Pages?

Pages is one of Apple’s office productivity applications, distributed for free on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. First released in 2005 and offered for several years as part of the iWork package with Keynote and Numbers, many would say Pages competes with Microsoft Word.

Like Word, it comes with a slew of document templates, but Pages goes far beyond the letters, résumés, reports, and other basic layouts offered by Microsoft.

More advanced template layouts include books, flyers, and brochures. Pages also offers several choices in each template category.

As a vector-based design and page layout app with PDF composition at the core, Pages also effectively serves up a number of the pro features of Adobe’s illustration and publishing apps, like rulers, guides, and masks.

Remove the Document Body

For word processing, Pages offers the default presence of a document body, meaning that the text cursor is immediately visible so you can just start typing. But what if you want the freedom to design your document with text boxes, images, shapes, and other objects placed as you wish?

You can easily disable the document body altogether and start with a clean slate. Just visit the Document inspector, turn off the Document Body, and convert to a page layout document. Then, the sky’s the limit.

Achieve a State of (Text) Flow

Text can easily flow around objects on the page and from one text box to another, anywhere in a document. Pages comes with lots of beautiful vector graphics—like this fern—and that means you can fill them with any color under the sun. Or the sun itself!

The design options for styles, text, and graphics are well organized and easy to interpret in the Pages window. Additionally, there are simple shortcuts for resizing proportionally and rotating, and every object is further editable to customize every line, curve, or intersection. Bet you’ve never seen a fern grow quite like this.

Go Bonkers

Now that you have the basics down, just imagine what you can do. Design a logo t-shirt. And the logo, too! Or make a new business card and the rest of your stationery. Or even write and illustrate a cartoon.

I have my bike on my mind, so that’s about all for me today.

Most of the features of Pages work equally on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. This means you can create a document on one device, put it down, and easily pick up where you left off using another device.

There’s also simultaneous app- and web-based collaboration via iCloud, enabling shared work with non-Mac users, too. Any Pages document easily exports to PDF—or Word, or even an e-book.

If you’re interested in diving into the world of Pages and want to learn any of the features at any level of tech savvy, feel free to reach out and we’ll book a coaching session.

I can help you build confidence with the document controls, feel the freedom to explore, be okay making mistakes and undoing them, and discover new opportunities with your (unknown) art and design skills.