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In this tutorial, you will learn to produce a simple brochure or pamphlet handout, in this case, a party invitation.
The first step is to open a new document, and resize the page to a specific brochure size.
Resizing the page:

Brochures are often smaller in size than most other projects you will be making with AbiWord.
To set the page size to different specifications than the default 8.5 x 11 inches:

Click on File --> Page setup. The following dialog box will show.

In the above dialog box, set the parameter as specified. Under the paper size frame, there are many pre-set size templates; we'll be primarily concerned with setting our own custom size. For this specific project, let's choose Custom, and 3" by 5". You'll notice that by default, the unit measurement size is set to millimeters. Set this to inches first, then procced to adjust the width to 3, and the heigth to 5. This will give us a nice size for our invitation.

Leave the scale at 100%, as we do not need to change this parameter.

In addition to these setting, we need to adjust the margins of our sson-to be brochure. In the same dialog box, click the "Margins" tab located next to the "Page" tab. This will now allow you to change the margins for this particular document.

Adjust the margins as stated above. This gives us more room to play with and complete our invitation. Once all settings are finished being set, click "OK." Let's start our invitation with a simple heading, stating the intentions of the handout. In this case, party.

Change the font to Comic Sans MS, and the size of that font to 18, and complete the follwing:

Once the heading is accomplished, change the font back to size 10, and type the following party information:

We've now completed the important part: the information. Now let's make it look interesting so people might actually come!

First, let's center the text to make it look less formal. Highlight all text on the page by pressing "Ctrl+A" on your keyboard: Mac users press Apple+A. Once all the text is highlighted, center align the text by locating the Center Align icon:

This is the icon that has the text represented as vertically symetrical. The other icons in this group move the text as their faces display. Click on the second icon to the left, and you will see your text centered like so:

Our text look good! Now lets work on the rest of the invitation.

Choose a background color by performing the follwing simple steps: On your menu options.. click Format --> Background.... This opens up a new dialog box that will allow you to choose the color of your negative space in the document.

Choose the color of your choice. Just remember that choosing too dark a background color will make your importnat text impossible to read. Once you have clicked on your favorite color, click "OK." You'll notice that the background of your invitation has changes to the color you have choose.

Now let's insert a picture: Choose menu item Insert ---> Picture. Browse until you find a suitable picture you would like to insert... the file format must be a .bmp (bitmap) or a .png (portable networks graphic) Once you have found a picture that you would like to represent, the click "OK."

Congratulations! You have just completed your first invitation project on AbiWord. Feel free to expirement further and produce more handouts and brochures tailored towards your specific needs. For help on printing see "Printing your document" or your printers help manual.