Click the image in the background to select it. They're used to connect frames together so that you can float text from one frame to another. The box in the upper left corner is called the Inport, and the box in the lower right corner is called the Outport. You can tell a frame is meant to hold text because besides the eight handles, there are additional small boxes in the upper left and lower right corners. Click to select this paragraph of text over here to select its frame. This one is used to anchor the frame to other frames, and this one is used to change the corner radius. All frames you select also have these color boxes. Move the pointer over the bottom middle handle of this frame and then drag it up to make it a little bit shorter. These are used to control the size, rotate it and more. All frames have eight handles around the edge of the frame. Select the Selection tool in the Tools panel on the left and then click to select this color box. To ensure that you can see the whole page, choose View, Fit Page in Window. Also know that you can always change your mind when it comes to the content of frames, like adding an image to a text frame instead of text, for instance. You can draw empty placeholder shapes using these drawing tools and later insert content into these frames. They're called unassigned frames, since they don't contain text or graphics, but you can add text or a graphic to them later. The shape tools below the frame tools in the Tools panel are used to create shapes that can be used as graphic elements, like a shape filled with a color. Frames drawn with any of these tools will have an X in the middle, usually to indicate that a graphic will go there. If you press and hold down on the Rectangle Frame tool, you'll see three frame shape tools you can draw with. Now the frame tools found here in the Tools panel are used to create placeholder frames, usually for graphics like a picture or a logo. After drawing a text frame, a cursor will appear in the frame, so you can add text. Then press and drag to create an area where the text will go. To add text, you can create text frames by selecting the Type tool in the Tools panel on the left. If you can't see the gray area to the left of the page, choose View, Zoom Out as many times as necessary till you do.

To start, you'll explore creating a few different types of frames and you'll create them in the gray area off the left side of the page. If you want to add text to your design or you like to import an image, you'll either need to create a frame to hold that content or let InDesign create the frame for you as you import or place text or images. And so that you can see the entire page, choose View, Fit Page in Window. You can open this practice file for this tutorial if you want to follow along. In this video, you'll explore the different types of frames available in InDesign and the tools used to create them. They can contain images, text, and design elements like a shape with a fill color like you see here.

Frames in InDesign are the building blocks for your layouts.

Indesign add border to text box