How do I implement an irregular page number design?

Question

Hello. I am relatively new to InDesign (<10 hours of experience), although I have much experience with other Adobe products such as Illustrator.

I have a problem at hand, I am creating a magazine and have created a page number design (a shape, a page number text box, and a paragraph style for it) in the A-Master and applied it to the document. However, certain pages of the magazine feature a large photograph covering the entire page, and it is difficult to see the page numbers on these select pages, as the numbers are black. I would like for certain pages to instead have a white-colored page number design (that is, identical to the original, only white instead of black). What would be the easiest way to go about creating such a solution? Only a few pages require the alternate, white, design. The vast majority do not.

Scott Falkner · Accepted Answer

As James said, you can use a custom parent page based on the existing parent that uses a different colouir for the page number. If this happens a lot, either over this one document or occassionally for several publications all based on this same design (e.g. a monthly magazine) I would do that.

To do that make a new parent page based on the existing parent. Hold Control+Alt (Windows) Or Command+Option (Mac) and click on the page number text frame. This will override it on the current parent page, allowing you to edit it. Select the text and apply a different fill colour (such as Paper). Now, whenever you need the paage number to be white just apply the alternate parent page.

If this only happens once or twice and this is a one-off, it might be easier to override just for this page rather than making a separate parent page. To do that, just override the text frame as described above and change the text colour.

James Gifford—NitroPress · Answer

The simplest method, while not automatic, would be to manually create the page number element on those pages, with a fixed number.

You could create an alternate Parent page with automatic numbering, but as you already have to assign that manually to any desired page... I'd just keep it simple and do those pages as manual compositions.

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