Adobe InDesign: Ultimate Guide

1. Class Introduction: Hello, and welcome to the ultimate Guide to Adobe in design. If you're looking to take your layout design more seriously and want to level up your publication design, then this is the course for you. Come join me on an epic creative adventure where you will learn how to master industry standard software to create publication design like a Pro. So over the past two decades, with its powerful layout tools and ever evolving features, Adobe In Design has become the industry standard software for publication design. From simple documents like business cards, flyers, packaging, pamphlets, and social media to more advanced documents like guidelines, booklets, magazines and eBooks, there is nothing you cannot create in Adobe Indesign. Now this course has been created specifically to take beginners and turn them into masters of in design. So my name is Gareth David, and I am a creative director with close to 20 years of experience in the design industry. And since 2011, I have been creating online courses like this one to help aspiring designers. In my experience, I have created a lot of designs for both print and digital, where in design has proved to be a crucial program to create all my layout design. All the design software I feel in design is one of the most vital. With its powerful and flexible tools, in design enables me to create precise layouts fast and deliver quality design to my clients. So in this course, I'll be sharing everything you need to know to get up to speed and create professional industry standard layouts. Design and layout is a particular passion of mine, so I'm really excited to bring this course to you. So what makes this the ultimate in design course you may ask? Well, simply put this course will be unlike any other in design course you will find. I've spent over two years crafting this class from the ground up to make it the most engaging experience possible. This course also comes complete with a download folder that contains over 40 sample documents, which you will be able to download, open, and work with straightaway to see practical examples. Not only that, but this course also comes complete with tons of carefully designed worksheets for you to get hands on and practice essential tools and features. So in this class, you won't just have to watch can get real hands on experience with everything I demonstrate and learn by doing, not just watching. And to help you navigate this course, you can also download the free course interactive PDF Index. This document has been designed to make it really easy to engage with the class content, where you can keep it on your desktop, will make it super easy to jump back to at any time. Simply navigate using the index to see exactly what this class has in store and click the watch button to jump back to this class at any time. This course index also contains all the links to the assets you could use to follow along with the class. To get the course index, check the class description. Now, the best part about this class is that this is just the beginning. There is lots more content planned, so over time, this course will grow with updates and extra tutorials and practice videos in future. Honestly, you won't find any other in design course like this anywhere else. So to help break down the ultimate guide to Adobe in design and make your learning experience as effective as possible, I have structured it into two main sections. Section one, learn and practice, and Section two, create a project. Now, in this class, we will be focusing on Section one, which consists of two stages. Stage one, introduction and stage two essential practice. First stage, I'll be introducing you to in design and bringing you up to speed with everything you need to know to start your adventure into in design. Then in stage two, I'll be covering all the essential tools and techniques you will need to know in order to create your layouts. Here, you will be able to open multiple document types and worksheets carefully prepared to help you get hands on and learn specific features. After this class, you will be aware of all the main features and how to use them. Once you have finished this class, you can then move on to another class where you can focus on Section two, where we will take everything we have learned in this class and apply it to create projects from scratch. In this class, I'll be using the most up to date version of in design, so it will help if you have the most up to date version. However, there will be backwards compatible files available in the course download folder. So be sure to check the troubleshooting folder in the course download folder to learn more. So get comfortable and get ready for a creative adventure, unlike anything you may have experienced before. If you want to learn how to use Adobe in design like a P, then let's get into it. 2. SECTION 1: Before You Begin: So before we begin, there are a few things I would highly recommend you do to get fully prepared to start this class. First, I would recommend you download the course PDF. This is an interactive document that has been carefully put together to help you get the most out of this class. This PDF breaks down every step with visual references. This is going to be a good reference to get fully engaged in this course, see the full scope of what you can learn and acquire everything you need to follow along and practice your skills. Next, I would recommend you download the course folder. During this class, we're going to be opening a lot of in design documents and worksheets for you to get hands on experience. Also, there will be a lot of design elements you will need to follow along. So be sure to download the class folder to get everything you need. Next, I would recommend you download and install the fonts that go with this course. During the class, we're going to be opening a lot of in design documents and using a lot of different fonts. All the fonts that I have used in this class are available for free, so be sure to check the fonts links in the course PDF document to see where you can acquire them. Can also get access to the main folder where you can just simply download them all in one go and install them. So make sure to install all the fonts before starting. So once you have downloaded the course PDF, downloaded the course folder, and downloaded and installed all the fonts, we are now ready to kick off this class. 3. STAGE 1: Introduction: Hello, and welcome to the first section of this course. Now, a lot of courses I have seen when working with creative apps tend to jump straight into the creative side of things and immediately start using tools. Now, as fun as this can be, it can often lead to a lot of questions and a lack of context, which can often discourage and confuse new users. When learning, any software, especially more complicated applications like in design, it's really going to help you to understand how everything works first. So it all makes sense when we come to get hands on later. So in the first section of this course, I'm going to introduce you to the program itself and then prepare you for when we start getting hands on with tools and features later in the course. In this section, we are going to look closely at in design and cover some of the fundamental paradigms of the program. Not only will I explain how everything works, but I'll also help you set up the program in a way that will help you later on. After this section, you're going to feel really comfortable and ready to start getting hands on with in design. So in the first video, we're going to take a closer look at in design and what it's good for. So see you in the first video. 4. What is Adobe InDesign & What Is It Good For: Adobe in design. What is it and what is it good for? If you're new to the program and want to learn more about it, then join me as we discuss what makes in design the best program for publication design. So let's get into it. So Adobe in Design is part of the Adobe Creative Suite, and since its release, has become the industry standard for professional designers to create quality design for print and digital publishing. Indesign is essentially a desktop publishing app and was created specifically for layout. If you need to create layouts for brochures, leaflets, business cards, posters, books, menus, presentations, flyers, and even social media posts, Design is the program to create them in. And in recent years, in design has included interactive features where you can create layouts for digital publishing to include interactivity, animations, video and audio. Now, some of you may be familiar with other apps like Adobe Illustrator, where it is possible to create layouts for publishing, but it's important to keep in mind that Illustrator does have its limits. Illustrator is not a desktop publishing app, so does not have the powerful tools like in design. Where you can easily create multi page documents, use parent pages, add interactivity, manage multiple images, manage multiple pages, work with enhanced text and table features with powerful exporting capabilities. If you're a beginner to design, then programs like Photoshop and Illustrator and apps like Canva are the gateway apps. These software tools are easy to pick up and seem the most creative. But if you're serious about design, you should get into in design because this is the key to professional design and layout. When it comes to anything layout with more than two pages for print, in design is the best application to use. So in design was originally released back in 1999, and since then has been a huge change in the way we consume content. Today, I design has evolved to become a powerful tool not only for print but for digital design, where we can create rich interactivity and include motion graphics. Want to create booklets and brochures, no problem. Want to create social media campaigns and carousel posts, EasyPsy. Want to create an interactive PDF for your clients? I design Hans you covered. Want to create an eBook, piece of cake. And if you want to create an interactive presentation for an event or conference, in design has all the functionality you need. There is nothing you cannot do when it comes to publishing in in design. In this course, you are going to learn how powerful this program really is and the synergy in design has with other programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. No matter what your creative field, once you learn in design and get comfortable with in design, it's really going to inspire your creativity in new ways. In design is one of my favorite programs for many reasons, which we will be discovering in this course. So now we have a good understanding of in design, what it is, and what it's good for. It's time to jump in. For those who are unfamiliar with in design, like most programs, the interface can initially appear confusing as there is a lot going on and a lot to take in. But don't worry, in the next video, we're going to take a look at the interface where all will be revealed. In the next video, I'm going to show you around and introduce you to some of the key things you need to be aware of. So see you in the next video. 5. Interface Introduction To Adobe InDesign: For those that are unfamiliar with in design, like most programs, the interface can initially appear confusing as there is a lot going on. The first version of Indesign was released back in 1999, and with all the innovations and new features that have been introduced over the years, up until now, the interface itself has not changed all that much. For those of you who are completely new to in design, the interface may look a little daunting and confusing. But don't worry. In this video, I'm going to show you around and introduce you to some of the things you need to be aware of. Now, I'll be showing in design on Mac. So if you're using an earlier version or working on APC, some things may be a little different in parts, but in principle, it should be the same. So let's jump into in design. So if you have Indesign open and wish to follow along, you will need to first come up to Window, scroll down to workspace, then scroll down to select essentials. Then to make sure we all have the same setup, we must again go to Window Workspace and then scroll down and select reset essentials. This will then set the interface to the essentials default layout, and you should have something that looks like this. Now, don't worry if your setup is not exactly the same as mine. What you should have is the default settings. Just follow along, and you should be fine. What you'll come to learn later on is that you can customize this layout, but what would help right now is for you to have the same or similar layout so you can follow along with me. What I have done here is stripped back the program to the bare minimum so we can build up to get to know everything. One other thing you need to make sure you have active is the application frame. The application frame is the gray space you see here in the background. If we come again to Window and scroll down to the bottom, we have the application frame here. If I click this to turn it off, we can see the desktop. Now, we can work like this, but I find it much easier to work with the application frame on. So for the duration of this course, we will need the application frame on. So I'll come back to the window, scroll down, and click to activate it there. Another thing that is really useful to have opening design is the control panel. If I come up to Window and click on Control, we will see the control panel across the top. This is a really useful panel that will show a lot of properties for tools as we use them. Perfect. So with our interface setup, we can make a start. To begin, I'm going to open a document. This document is going to help me demonstrate to you the various functionality of the program, which we are going to be covering a little later on in this video. So be sure to open this to follow along. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a tan of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description with the download folder open, click into folder three, document samples. Click into folder two, double sided. Click into the pamphlet multifold folder and click to open the Kingdom Zoo Visitor Map in design document, and the document will open. Now, for this document, I'm using the font HK grotesque. You have not already downloaded all the fonts for the course, this is a free font that you can acquire online. To get this font, I would recommend you check out the course fonts page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that are going to be used on this course and where to get them. Simply click on the HK grotesque link, and this will take you straight to where you can download it. Simply close this document, install the font, open it back up, and you should be able to follow along just fine. For now, I'm going to press W on the keyboard, and this will toggle between normal and preview mode. For now I want to be in preview mode, and I'll press W so I can clearly see the document. So in Indesign, we have the option to toggle the interface color. If you wish to toggle this on Mac, you can come to Indesign on the top toolbar or edit on PC, scroll down to preferences and select Interface. In here, you can toggle between light and darker modes at the top of this menu. I like it dark, so I'm going to select the darkest option. Now, while we're in the Preferences menu, if we click on user interface scaling below, you can also change the UI sizing and anchor point scale. Can help with how you would like to view your in design interface to make it more comfortable to use. For now, I'm going to leave it as is and click Okay. So let's take a closer look at the interface. Now, all of this may look a little complex right now, but don't worry, it's all fairly straightforward. At this point, it will help to break the interface down into seven key sections, the canvas area, the tools panel, the control panel, the application bar, panels, the status bar, and the menu bar. First of all, when you have a document open in in design, you have what is called the canvas area or document area. This is what will contain all the visual elements we place inside and what we will focus on when creating layouts. This will always be central in the interface, and all the tools and properties will revolve around it. On the far left, we have this slim panel. This is the tools panel and contains all the tools that can be used in in design. As you can see, we have lots of icons. To activate a tool, we simply click it or press one of the many shortcut buttons on the keyboard. We know which tool is active because it will have a highlighted square behind it on the tools panel. In in design, we will be using many tools, and most tools have their own unique mouse cursor icons. You will notice that as we use the tool, the mouse cursor will change indicating which tool we have activated. If we look carefully, we can see that almost all the icons have a little white arrow in the bottom right corner. If we click and hold an icon with a white arrow, this will reveal more tools in that set. For example, if I click and hold on the Pen tool, we can see an extra four tools within that set. If I click and hold on the shape tool, we can see a variety of shapes that can be created very easily. So keep in mind that some tools work in sets. If we take a closer look at the bottom of this panel, we can see two overlapping squares. If you're new to in design, you may not be familiar with this. What this represents is a fill color and a stroke color. The top square is the fill and the bottom square is the stroke color. Right now, we can see that the fill color on the top is black and the stroke color is transparent, which is represented by the red line that goes through it. If you look closely, just above the fill and stroke color, in the tools panel, we have this little button called swap fill and stroke. And if you press this, it's going to swap the fill and stroke color like so. So very easily, we can swap the fill color and stroke color. Now, to the left of the swap fill and stroke, we have another little button, and this is the default fill and stroke. If I press this, it's going to set the fill to transparent and the stroke to black. Under the fill and stroke colors, we have some further options. Directly under the fill and stroke colors, we have two formatting buttons, one for container and one for text. Every object placed onto the canvas area is placed into a container, also referred to as a frame, and some will contain text. These two buttons serve to help easily select either the frame or the type on a selected object in order to apply the fill and stroke colors above. Under these two buttons, we have a button where you can click and hold and quickly apply a fill color, a gradient or sector transparency to a selected frame. And lastly, two buttons which enable you to quickly turn on and off some interface properties. If we click on the top box, from here, you can toggle on and off a series of options from frame edges, rulers, baseline grid to hidden characters. Now, lastly, we have a really important feature, which is the display view. Right now we are looking at the document in preview mode. This enables us to see the document very clearly and preview our layout. However, if we click and hold the view option, from here, you can select a few. If we click normal, this will change the view dramatically. The normal view, we can see what is called the pasteboard area around the canvas area and all the visual aids like bounding boxes and guides. As you come to use in design, you will see how we will be working mainly in normal mode when creating our layouts. By clicking and holding on the view option, we can either go back to preview mode or even select presentation mode. This will take away all the interface aids and show the entire document in full screen in presentation mode, which is great if you want to present your documents, and I'll press Escape to exit out of that. So as you can see here, the tools menu is currently one column. If we look closely up in the top of the tools panel, we can see these little arrows pointing left. I come and click this once, we can change the panel to a double column. And if we press it again, we can go back to the single column. For the duration of this course, I'm going to click and set my tools panel to a single row. So just above the tool bar, we have the control panel. The control panel spans the entire width of the screen just under the application bar at the top. This control panel is really useful as this will display various properties and options of a particular tool you have selected at any given time. You will soon realize that this is one of the key panels in the program, and as you use in design, you'll be referring to this panel a lot. Keep in mind, as you use your tools, keep an eye on the control panel as it's really useful. Some other things to keep in mind with the control panel are the settings. Over on the far right of the control panel, you will see a cog. Click this and you'll be able to toggle a range of objects which you want to appear in the control panel. And if you click the menu below this, you'll be able to customize further like where the control panel is placed. Here you can place it at the bottom of the screen, the top, or even float. Personally, I like to keep it set to the top. Now, just above the Control panel, we have the application bar. If we look on the far left, we have a little home icon. This can be clicked at any time, and if we click this, this will take us to the in design home screen. From here, you can access recent documents you opened or click the earn tab to find out more about Idsign. I find this really helpful to access documents I have recently worked on, and from here, you can also create a new document. If we simply click the back button, we can go back to our work area. Over on the far right, we will see some icons. If we click the light bulb, this will open up the learn tab and to the right of this is the share feature. Now in in design, if you want to share your the client for feedback, you can simply click this button, and I design will generate an online link which you can send to a client. From here, they can see your layout online and give feedback to your design, which will feed back into your document here in in design. This is a really cool feature which we will be discussing more in depth later in the course. Now to the right of this, we have a drop down. From here, we can change our current workspace, which I'll be discussing more shortly. And lastly, we have a search field for Adobe stock. Type in here and press Enter, and this will take you to your browser and show you results for Adobe stock. So some nice features up here you will want to keep in mind. So over to the right hand side, we have some panels. Here we can currently see three panel tabs, properties, pages, and CC libraries. And if we click on these, we can reveal them. What you will soon discover is that these panels like the control panels are essential in order to produce work in Adobe in design. In order to have a swift workflow in this program, it will help to have a comfortable setup of these panels. What you will see right now is a default setup. In in design, you can arrange and customize these panels in various ways. I'll be demonstrating how to do this in the next episode and recommending an effective setup. Now, if we come to the very bottom of the screen, we have this thin strip. This also contains some useful tools and visual aids and is referred to as the status baar. If we look over on the far left, we have the magnification of our document. This will give you an indication at a glance of what percentage we are looking at the artwork in the canvas area. You can also use this to zoom in and out of our document precisely. We can do this by clicking in the box and typing in a specific value. For example, I can type in 50 and press Enter, and we will see my artwork at 50%. To the right of this, we have an index which allows us to skip through pages. If you have multiple pages in your documents, here you can click through them one by one or click the drop down to select a page and you can jump straight to it. To the right of this, there is a button which you can click to reveal your document in Finder or bridge. And to the right of this, you have what is called a pre flight tab. This is actually really important, and it helps to keep an eye on this. This will give you indications if there are any issues in your documents such as missing links, fonts or overset type. For example, right now, we can see there is a little red light here with a number. If I click this, the pre flight tire will pop open, and here it will tell me what the issues are, which I can look to resolve. A really helpful tool. So finally, over to the far right, we have a split layout view button. If we click this, we will split the view into two, which allows you to look at one page on the left and scroll through the rest of the documents on the right to view multiple pages which can come in really handy. And if I click this again, we can go back. Lastly, if we move to the top of the window, we can see the standard menu across the top. From here, we can access various properties, controls, and initiate some of the creative features in in design. Here, we can do things like manage document setup in file, manage software settings, edit our margin or layout, change and manage type settings, insert tables, manage our view options, manage plugins, and hide and reveal various panels. So those are the main parts of the interface you want to be aware of. Next, I want to touch on document tabs, which are part of the canvas area. Currently, we have this single document open. And if we look carefully in the top left corner, just under the control panel, we have a tab that shows the document name. Sometimes you may find yourself using multiple documents at any time. In design, you can have multiple documents open at once. For example, let's quickly open a new document with the download folder open. Click into folder three Document samples. Click into folder two double spread. Click into the Business Card folder and open the Sheftry Business Card in design document. And you should have something like this. Let's open one more with the document folder open, into folder three, document samples, into folder one, single sided, click into the Billboard folder and click to open the Design Expo Billboard in design document, and you should have something like this. If we look again closely at the top left under the control panel, this time we have three tabs. We can click these to navigate to other documents. If I click the far left tab, we are back to our first document. If I click the next tab along to the right, we can see the new document, and if I click the next tab along, we can see the other document. As we use multiple documents, we can simply click on the tabs to navigate around. When we start to use multiple documents later on in the course, we will be using document tabs in this way. For now, I'm going to close these two new documents down by clicking on the X on the far left of the tabs until I am back to my original document. So those are some of the interface features that exist around our canvas area. If we want to toggle away these outer panels to just look at our artwork without anything selected, we can simply press tab. And if we press Command plus zero on Mac or Control plus zero on PC, we can fit the height of the document to the work area. And in this case, since we have a spread of pages, if we press Command plus Alt plus zero on Mac or Control plus Alt plus zero on PC, we will fill the spread to the work area. And if we press W on the keyboard to toggle, preview, and normal mode, we can get a good look at the document here. Also, we can press Shift W on the keyboard to go into presentation view. If we press Escape, we can exit, and I'll press Tab to bring back the panels and W to toggle back into normal mode. And now we can take a closer look at the document itself. So as mentioned earlier, when working in in design, you can work in two view types, normal mode or preview mode. So in normal mode, we can see here on the document there is a lot going on. We have a column grid in the background, and we can see the frames around the items set on the page. For now, I'll come up to view, scroll down to guides and grids and hide the baseline grid so we can see things a little more clearly. Now with the selection tool, if we start to click on various items, you will see as you select them, you will get bounding boxes around each frame. What you'll notice is there is eight anchor points you will be able to click on for any bounding box, allowing you to click and drag to perform various actions. If we move our mouse cursor over these, it will prompt you to take action. Now, with any item selected in a document, we can right click, and this is really important because there is a lot of things we can do here, such as add an effect to an object, rearrange the object, and lock the object to name a few. I won't go into this too much right now, but keep in mind that right clicking an object reveals lots of options. If you press Command plus R on Mac or Control plus R on PC, you can activate the rulers, and you will see rulers around the far left and above the document area. This will allow you to drag out guides or pop them back into remove. For now, I'll keep my rulers visible. Now we can also toggle the visibility of the guides and grids by pressing Command plus colon on Mac or Control plus colon on PC. And if you press Command plus apostrophe on Mac or Control plus apostrophe on PC, you can toggle on and off the document grid. So I'll bring back my column grid and baseline grid. Now, the last thing to talk about is the contextual menu. If I come up to window and make sure there is a tick next to contextual menu, when we click on an object, you will notice this little menu appear. Now, this will only appear with a frame selected. And in here, we have some features like being able to generate an image directly into a frame and other features like importing and relinking images in the document and content aware. Fill. Now, as this menu appears, you will also have the ability to move it around. If it gets in your way, simply click on the far left, drag up to the top left, click on the dots and pin it in place. That's a brief overview of the Adobe in design interface. A lot to take in, right? But don't worry, as we progress on this course, we will be looking at a range of documents and seeing how this all works together seamlessly. Now, another really important part of Idsign to keep in mind is preferences. If we come up to in design, click this and select preferences, we can see there is a long list of options we can consider. At this early stage, it will be good to take a look at this and the things we need to keep in mind. In the next video, we're going to look at some of the important options in our preferences we will need to be aware of when working in in design. See you in the next video. 6. Preferences Introduction In Adobe InDesign: One essential part of in design to keep in mind is preferences. On Mac, if we come up to Indesign, click this. We can scroll down and click preferences. On PC, you will have to go to Edit, scroll down and click preferences, and here we can see there is a long list of options we can consider. At this early stage in the course, it will be good to take a look at this and the things we can change as there are lots of options. Now, I won't go into every option as this will be a long video. However, there are some you will want to keep in mind initially. So let's jump into Idsign and take a look. Begin, I'll click on General to pull up the menu with the Preferences menu open. An important option to look at when starting is interface and interface scaling. You may remember we jumped into this one in a previous video. From here, you can change options for the color of your interface and tweak panel options. But there are also some additional options below you will want to consider. For panels here, you can tweak how your documents open. For example, you can toggle whether your documents open as tabs, and you can change the tab size from normal to large. Other important preferences are units and increments, grids and guides and pasteboard. Into units and increments, you can change the units of the ruler, stroke, and keyboard increments. Now, this is useful if you're designing for print, as you want to change this to millimeters, centimeters or inches depending on your preference. And then if you're designing for digital, you may want to set this to pixels. Below this, you also have options for stroke units and a useful one for keyboard increments, where you can change the values of how far an object will move upon pressing the arrow keys and default increments for leading and kerning when applying. In grids, you can change the color and options of your baseline grid and the color and options of the document grid. This can help you set the Units to your desired setting and also control how you see your baseline and document grid. Also really important is this little button here, grids in back. It's good to have this one checked if you don't want to see, for example, the grid on top of your images. With it set to off, you will see your baseline grid on top of your images. Depending on your workflow, you may or may not want this on, for now I'll set this to be in the back. In guides and pasteboard, you can change the color of your guides to your liking in the color section. Again, we have an option to set a guide in the back. Below, we can toggle some smart guide options and edit the pasteboard options. Here you can change the size of your pasteboard around your artwork. For example, here you can change the vertical margin in your pasteboard. If I set this to 50 mil, we can see the space above and below the pages increase. If I set this to ten, this will make the space above and below the work area much smaller. Which can make scrolling through a document easier. Other important settings are dictionary, spelling and autocorrect. From dictionary, you can change the language to your preference. In spelling, you can enable dynamic spelling, where in design will underline misspelled words. And in autocorrect, you can enable autocorrect and change your language of choice and even add words to the list below. This will help you when typing into Idsign to keep an eye out for any typos. Other important settings are display performance and GPU performance. From here, you can change the default view when documents are open by setting this to typical or high quality. Keep in mind, setting the option to high quality can slow down your performance, especially if you have a lot of images in your document. If your documents are only a few pages, you should be fine. But I've had documents up to 300 pages, and it can be very slow for me. So I like to keep this set to typical. Setting this to typical, you will still be able to see your images, and this will enable your system to run smoother. Below this, you can even adjust the settings for each view option. And in GPU performance, you can toggle on GPU performance and toggle on and off the animated Zoom. If you have this option enabled, this allows you to click and drag in and out smoothly with the Zoom tool. Tweaking these options can help improve the performance of in design on your computer to help it run smoother. Lastly, another important option I like to consider is file handling. For a number of recent items to display, I'll push this up to 30. If I come up to file open recent, this will expand the list to remember previous documents. Also on the home screen, the list is present here with thumbnails. Now, I use a lot of documents in in design, so I like to max this out to make it easier to open recent documents. Below, we have options for links. This is crucial to help find missing links before opening a document, and below, we can click to Auto Activate Adobe fonts. So that's a brief overview of preferences and some of the options to keep in mind initially. In the previous video, we covered document tabs, and I mentioned workspaces. In in design, there is a good level of flexibility you can achieve to create your own unique and tailored setup. So in the next video, we'll be taking a closer look at the work panels on the right, where I will be showing you how you can customize your panel layout to get a more comfortable and tailored workspace. So I'll see you in the next video. 7. Panels & Workspaces In Adobe InDesign: Since its first release, in design has structured and organized many creative features into panels. Now, there are a lot of panels in in design specific to various types of jobs, which not all of us will be using initially. So we won't need to use every single panel. In in design, we have the flexibility to move these around to best suit our own unique needs, to create a customized setup. Once we have a setup we like, we can then save this into what is called a workspace. At this early stage, where I am introducing you to the program, it is a good time for us to look at how we can tailor the program to our specific needs. In this video, we're going to take a closer look at panels and workspaces in Adobe in design. And later on, I will also be recommending a workspace that I use that I find really effective. So let's jump into in design. To begin, I just want to open a quick document to demonstrate the panels and workspaces. You can either create a new document or open the doc I have opened here. This document can be found in the download folder that comes with this class. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we will be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder in the description. With the download folder open, click into folder three document samples. Click into folder two, double sided. Click into the folder pamphlet multifold folder and click to open the phantom motorbike pamphlet in design document, and the document will open. Now, for this document, I'm using the font type Bold. If you have not already downloaded all the fonts for this course, this is a free font that you can acquire online. To get this font, I would recommend you check out the course fonts page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that are used in this class and where to get them. Simply click on the typodlink and this will take you straight to where you can download it. Close the document, install the font, open it back up again, and you should be able to follow along just fine. If you have in design open and wish to follow along, you will need to first come up to Window, scroll down to workspace, and then scroll down and select essentials. Then to make sure we all have the same setup, we must again come up to Window Workspace and then scroll down and select reset essentials. This will then set the interface to the essentials default layout, and you should have something that looks like this. Now, don't worry if your setup is not exactly the same as mine. What you should have is the default settings. Just follow along and you should be fine. What you will come to learn later on is that you can customize this layout, but what would help right now is for you to have the same or similar layout so you can follow along with me. Over here on the right, you have a slim panel that currently contains a panel with three tabs. Here we can see properties, pages, and CC libraries. Now, these panels contain various tool options and properties regarding objects in the canvas area. What you will soon discover is that these panels are essential in order to produce work in Adobe in design. In order to have a swift workflow in this program, it will help to have a comfortable setup of these panels. So at the moment, we are looking at the default setup for the essentials panel workspace. If we look at the top right of our interface, we can see we have the word essentials, and next to this is a drop down icon. If we press this, we can see a list. Here we have advanced book, digital publishing, essentials and typography to name a few. As we start to select these, we will notice the panel layout changing. This is in design attempting to create an ideal workspace for that given task. If you're using in Design for working on a book, for example, then clicking on Book, I design will offer an ideal panel setup for working on a book and Idsign. If you're using in design for just typography, then by clicking on typography, Indesign will offer an ideal panel setup for typography and so on. So I'm going to come up and click on the dropdown, but notice this time at the top, I have one called GD Workspace. This is a personal setup I have saved before, so don't worry if you don't see this in your in design. If I click this, watch what happens. Just like earlier, the panels have changed, but this time they have changed to my personal setup. Here, you can see there are a lot more panels here this time, and the panels are arranged slightly different from the other panel setups. So this is my workspace, and this is what I find works really well for me. I actually use a lot of tools in in design, so I have arranged my panels in this way. I have arranged the panels in a column on the far right. They are clearly visible at all times, and the various panels are arranged in accordance to their context. Have all my color panels at the top. I have my layers, links, and pages under this, and I have my stroke, character, and paragraph panels at the bottom. Also, you can see I have a row of iconsre just to the left of my visible panels. These are panels I like to keep tucked away and pull out when I need them. As I click on them, you will see them pop out, easy. So now I'm going to show you how you can create a custom workspace like this. Before we begin, I'm going to come back to the top of my workspace setup and click Essentials, and this is going to put me back to the default setup. What we are going to do now is carefully click and hold a panel tab name and drag it out like Z. What we just did there was separate the panel. I'll do this again on the next tab, carefully click and hold on a panel tab name and drag it out like Z and again for the last tab. And now I have all my tabs here separated and floating on my screen. Next, I'll come up to the top menu and click Window. Now upon click, we will see a long list. This is a list of all the panels we can activate here in Indesign. I'll start by clicking into color and click the Swatches panel. Upon click, that will appear, and I'll drag that into the middle like so, and I'll just remove any other panels that appear with it. Next, I'll click on the Layers panel. Notice that here it also includes other panels inside. Just like earlier, I'll drag this out and separate it for now. Next, I'll come into type and tables. I'll click on the character panel, the paragraph panel, the Effects panel, and the gradient panel. So now I have a bunch of panels all scattered around. Next, I'm going to make sense of this. Starting with the Swatches panel, I'll grab the CC library's panel and drag it into the Swatches panel. What you're looking for is the blue line inside the panel, not the top but inside. On release, you will notice the tab is now placed inside the swatches panel, and that is now essentially one panel group. Great. I'm going to do this again, but this time, I'm going to drag the Links tab into the Layers panel, drag the paragraph tab into the character panel, and the Pages tab into the layer. If I put my mouse cursor over the bottom right of the panel, I can click and drag out to expand. So now I have some panel groups and some single panels here. Now I'm going to organize these. By clicking on the top bar of each pal group, I'm going to drag these into the middle. This time, I'm going to click and hold on the top bar of the layers, links and pages panel, and begin to move it around. But this time move this just into the bottom of the panel group containing the swatches panels. What you're looking for is a blue line across the bottom. When you see this, release. This will then snap that pal group to the bottom, and they are now joined. And if I click and hold the top bar of the top panel group, you can see they move together. Excellent. Now I have a neat little panel group, and I'll drag it over until I can see a blue line on the left hand side of my screen. I'll release, and that will snap to fit the panels to the side of my screen like so. Easy. These are now fixed to the side of the screen. Here I can click and drag on the left side to pull them out and push them in. I can click on the tabs, and I can click and drag on the bottom of each tab to expand and contract. Now, if you wish to customize the order in which your tabs are arranged in each panel group, you can simply click and drag the tab to the left or right like so. Okay, so with my last few panels, I'll come and drag my character panel down to the bottom of my layers, links, and pages. And just like before, I will see the blue line, and upon release, that will snap into the column there. Now I have a few panels left. This time, I'm going to do something different. This time, I'm going to click on the properties panel and click on the two arrows in the top right, and this will collapse the panel into what looks like a small tab. This time, I'll click on the icon and drag it over and hover on the left side of the panel edge. Again, with the blue line, I'll release and snap it in place. Now, if I drag this in, we will see it's now an icon. And if I click on this, it will expand and show the panel. Again, I'll click the small icon on the top, right of the gradient panel, click the icon, drag it over and under the properties icon and release, and now we have another one last time for effect. And now we have the visible panels on the right and some quick panels on the left to access real easy. We want to add more panels, again, this can be done easily. I'll come up to Window. I'll click on stroke and effect. I'll be sure to drag them out and remove any other panels that are here. Drag the icons, and again, up and anda on the left side, and we can continue to add panels as we wish. Now, one very last panel to activate, and that's the Control panel. I'll come up to Window and click on Control, and now we have the Control panel at the top there. And this is a nice setup I find works really well for me. I have my main panels on the side and some really helpful panels I can simply click on when I need them. So once you're happy with your panel setup, come up to the top menu, click on Window, scroll down to Workspace, and then come across and scroll and click on New Workspace. Up we'll pop a window, and I'm going to name this new space. I'll make sure to capture panel locations and customizations and click Okay. If we come back up to the top and click on one of the other workspaces, we can then come back again and activate the workspace we just created. And as we continue to add and change our panel setup in this workspace, here I can bring in another panel. For example, I'll open character and paragraph styles. And in design, we remember it and save any changes to our custom workspace. Easy. So that is how you can create and customize a workspace in Adobe in design and save it. This is going to make using the program far more comfortable for you and again, empower you to control how you want to use the program yourself. Now, one of the crucial features to learning in design is links. When we create and build our layouts, it's very common to bring images into our document, created in other programs like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. These may be raster images, vector images, PDFs, and either other in design documents. One of the most important panels to keep an eye on in in design is the Links panel. This is where we manage everything we bring into in design, and it's really important to know about this and how it works. So in the next video, we will be taking a closer look at the Links panel and the key things we need to be aware of. So see you in the next video. 8. Links Panel Introduction In Adobe InDesign: One of the crucial principles to learning in design is Links. When we create layouts, most of the time we will be bringing in assets into our documents created in other programs like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. Now, these may be Raster images, vector images, PDFs, or even other in design documents. One of the most important panels to keep an eye on in in design is the Links panel. This panel represents all the linked elements that you will have within your document, and you're going to need to pay close attention to this panel. This panel is pretty crucial to your workflow. So in this video, I'm going to explain exactly how the Links panel works and how you can customize this panel so you can get more detailed information and get complete control of the links in your document. So let's jump into in design. So to begin, I want you to open a document so we can focus on links and work with them in context. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this class. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we will be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder three document samples. Click into folder two, double sided. Click into the Accordion folder and click to open the Chef history Accordion in Design Document. Now, for this document, I'm using the font Monsorat. If you have not already downloaded all the fonts for the course, this is a free font that you can acquire online. To get the font, I would recommend you check out the course fonts page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that are used in this document and where to get them. Simply click on the Montserrat link, and this will take you straight to where you can download it. Simply close the document, install the font, open it back up again, and you should be able to follow along just fine. So in the last video, I recommended an in design workspace and demonstrated how to set it up in this way. In this tutorial, we are going to be focusing on the inks panel located here in the middle panel group. If you don't have your workspace set up like this, you can either watch the previous video or simply come up to window, scroll down and activate the Links panel here. So here is the Links panel, and I can currently see it contains a list. This is a list of all the linked elements within my document. Every time you place an image into a document, place it into the pasteboard area or in the layout area, it will show up in this panel. What you are seeing here is the default setup of the Links panel when you start in design. Now keep in mind the Links panel can be customized. For example, I'm going to come to Window, come down to workspace, and in here I have a workspace I have prepared earlier called course Links. This is a workspace I have set up and saved previously, so you won't see this in your workspace. So I'm just going to click on this and my workspace will change. Though it has not changed massively, what you can see now are these extra properties visible here in the Links panel. Starting from the left, I have name, status, page number, color space, actual PPI, and size. Now, these are additional property columns that can be activated in the Links panel. These are here to clearly display information about an image in the document at a glance. And these are pretty crucial to help you keep on top of your project and maintain the quality you will later need in order to get a document printed. Now, I highly recommend you have these extra property columns visible in your links panel like this. But before I explain why and the benefits, I will quickly show you how to get them. First, I'm going to come back to my previous workspace with the default Links panel, back up to Workspace, down to Workspace, and click on New space, which we created in the previous video. So now I'm back to the default Links panel, and we no longer see the properties columns. I'm going to simply come to the top right of my Links panel, click the menu and activate the panel options. And here you can choose from a vast variety of properties. For now, all I'm going to need is the properties mentioned previously. So I'm going to go ahead and click to activate the ones I want. I'll click on size, color space, and actual PPI. Now, while I'm here, I can also look at the top of this menu and click the drop down on row size and set this to large rows and then click Okay. This will now set my preview thumbnails to be larger, and we can see our new tabs. Once you have these loaded, it's up to you what order you want to have them. Here we can click and drag the tabs left or right to change the order, and I'm going to order them like so. So let's go through what each column is and why we need these. First, I have Na and this will show the file name and an image item and the little thumbnail to the left. Here you'll also be able to see the file extension. Next, I have status. Now, this is really important because this will inform you of any issues with your images such as missing links or if they need to be refreshed. Here you will see a warning icon if there are any issues. Next, I have page number. This basically states which page the link is on. For example, if I drag a link off a page and onto the pasteboard, you will notice the page number changed to PB. This stands for pasteboard. So in instances where you can't find a link, you may have placed it into the pasteboard somewhere. Simply clicking on the page number, it will take you directly to the link in your document so you can find it. Next, I have actual PPI, and this will tell you the resolution of the link. Now, I can't stress how useful this is. If you're composing a document that is going to print, then you will need at least 150 to 300 DPI. If you place an image that is 72 or lower, for example, then this will give you time to address the image straightaway before finding out later. Here we can see that all my images are 150 DPI. So really good for print. Next, I have the color space. Again, very useful. As you already know, images can either be RGB or CMYK. They're depending on what your intention is for your document. If it's digital, then you're good to use RGB. But if making layout for print, you may want to make sure all your images are CMYK. However, this can depend on which printer you're working with. They may require all images to be CMYK, but some printers are happy to receive documents with RGB images as they can convert them on their end. In this document, all my images are currently RGB. So last, I have size. This will tell me the document size of the image. There's nothing particularly important about this other than peace of mind and to keep on top of how big some of my images are in terms of file size. So one tip here, if you click on the tab, it will arrange the links by order of largest first or smallest first. You can do this for each tab. So by clicking on the size tab, you can see which images are the largest in your document and also in order of how they appear in your document. So those are the key property columns you can have open to keep on top of your links. Now I want to quickly draw your attention to the bottom of the links panel. With an image selected above, I can see some extra information about the image name, file path dimensions, and so on. This can give me a good insight if the link is of good quality. And if I look just above the Link info area to the right, I have five buttons. These are pretty important, and you will need to familiarize yourself with these. Starting from the left, I have the relink from Cloud button, the relink from your computer button, then the go to link, refresh and Edit original. The relink buttons will enable you to change the link. If I have an image placed in my composition area, but I want to replace it with another one, I can easily do this using this button. Simply click a link you wish to replace, then hit this button and navigate to the new image on your computer. Next to this, you have the go to button. This is convenient if you have a large document with a lot of images or perhaps a link that is sitting in the pasteboard somewhere. With the link in question selected above, you can click this button and it will take you straight to the link in your composition. The next button is the update Link button. Let's say you had to make a change to an image. For example, if you're working on some document images while your in design document was open, but you did not have it on screen. I'm going to minimize in design and come into an image in my document assets folder and just open it with a download folder open, click into folder three document samples, click into the Assets folder, click into the PS folder and click to open the Shefford Street salad bowl image. Photoshop, I'll just add a black and white adjustment layer. I'll close and save the file. Back into my in design document, if we take a look in the Links panel, now we can see a warning icon in the status column. And if we navigate to the image in the document, we can see that the image we just changed is still in color. Now in the Links panel, this is in design telling us that this link has been changed or modified, and we can change to refresh the link. If I now press the update Link button, the image will now change to the upto date state. And we can see that it's now black and white, and the warning icon has disappeared. Looking back at the icons at the bottom of the panel, on the far right, I have the edited original button. Now, you may find yourself using this button a lot. Once an image is placed into your in design composition, there may be times you wish to make modifications to that image on the go. Change the color, create transparency, or just make simple photo manipulations. Let's come back to the image I just changed into black and white. If I want to change it back to color, I can use the selection tool to select the image frame. Now, the link will also become selected in the Links panel. If I come down to the Edit original button and click that, I design will open the image in Adobe Photoshop, so I'll toggle off the black adjustment layer to go back to color. Then if I close and save the image, come back into in design, you will then notice the image actually update, and I can see the changes I just made. Easy. So that's a brief introduction to the Links panel in in design and some of its functionality. This is one of the most important panels in in design to help your workflow and keep on top of your linked assets, and I find myself keeping an eye on this one regularly. So that is how you can customize your Links panel with a brief insight on how to manage your assets inside in design. Later in the course, we will cover links and how to manage them in more depth. But for now, this is good to know to get you started. Now, another crucial feature to learn in in design is pages. Like the Links panel, another important panel we will be using in in design is the pages panel. Now, in design is a desktop publishing program, and one of its most powerful features is to develop multiple page documents. And this is all managed in the pages panel. In the next video, we'll be taking a closer look at the pages panel and how to manage multiple pages in our documents. So see you in the next video. 9. Pages Panel Introduction In Adobe InDesign: Adobe Indesign is a desktop publishing program, and one of its most powerful features is managing and organizing multiple pages. One of the most important panels we will be using in in design is the pages panel. This is one of the main features that makes in design stand out from other apps used to create layout design like Illustrator. In this video, we will be taking a closer look at the pages panel and how to manage multiple pages in our documents. I'm going to explain exactly how the pages panel works and how you can customize the pages panel to make it much easier to create documents in Idsign. So let's jump into in design. So here I have a relatively large document for an education prospectus, which consists of over 100 pages. This is a good example of a large print document one may create using in design. This tutorial, we are going to focus on the pages panel, located here in the middle panel group. In a previous video, I recommended an in design workspace and demonstrated how to set it up in this way. If you don't have your workspace setup like this, you can either watch the previous video or simply come up to window, scroll down and activate the pages panel. Now, what I'm going to do here is click on the Pages tab and drag it out of the panel group into the middle of the screen. And what I'm going to do is click and drag on the bottom right corner and drag down to expand the panel so we can get a better look at the contents. So what is the Pages panel? Well, this panel is a visual display of all the pages you have in your document. Looking at the pages panel here, as I scroll down, we can see at a glance the pages that make up my current document. This can also be referred to as the pagination of a document, which is the order and flow of the document. Under each page, we have a number. This can be really helpful, especially when creating multiple page documents as it can help you navigate and organize your document, especially if you're working on a large document like this. So let's open this document here where you can have a go and see the Pages panel in action. Document can be found in the download folder that comes with this class. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder three document samples, click into Folder four, multiple spreads, click into the booklet folder and click to open the International Nature Trust Report in Design Doc. This document, I'm using the font HK grotesque. If you've not already downloaded all the fonts from the course, this is a free font you can acquire online. To get this font, I would recommend you check out the course fonts page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that are going to be used in this course and where to get them. Simply click on the HK grotesque ink, and this will take you straight to where you can download it. Simply close this document, install the font, open it back up again, and you should be able to follow along just fine. So here we have a document with far fewer pages than the previous example. Unlike the prospectus document we just previewed, here we have a report document. Now if we come into the gray area in the panel and right click, we can see some options. From here, we can customize a number of things. But the first one I want to look at is the panel options. With the panel options open, from here, we can change the size of the pages. For example, I'll click into the size of the pages and set this to extra large and click Okay, and now we can see the page thumbnails in the panel are much larger. This can help get a better visual representation in your pages panel. Right now, we can see the spreads are on top of each other, which for a large document like this can make using the pages panel awkward. If I right click again on the gray area, and this time, click on View pages. If I click on View horizontally and drag the menu out a little we can see all the pages inside the pages panel. So in this panel, you can click on individual pages. As you do this, you will see the page turn blue. This is in design indicating which page you have selected. Now, one handy tip to remember is if we scroll up and down in the work area, in the pages panel, you can then double click on the page, and this will take you directly to the page in the work area. So should you have a large document and want to move to a specific page real quick, you can jump to a page like so. If we come to the bottom left of the panel, here we can see how many pages and spreads are in the dock. And over to the right, we have three buttons. The first button is Edit page size. The next button is Add page, and the last button is Delete page. As we click on pages to select them in the pages panel, we can then do a number of things. With a page selected, we can easily change the size by clicking on one of the preset pages or click on custom. If we want to add a page, for example, after page 13, with a page selected in the pages panel, we could click the Ad Page button and a new page will be added, and we will see this present in both the pages panel and the work area. So as easy as it is to add a page, it's just as easy to take them away. If we click on that new page, with the page selected, I'll hit the delete button in the pages panel, and that will remove it. And the page will be removed from both the document and the pages panel. Now, if I wanted to remove two pages, we can select multiple pages here in the pages panel. So I'll click on page eight, Hold Shift and click on page nine. And now I have two pages selected with them selected. If I hit the delete button in the Pages panel, that will remove them. Now, another thing to keep in mind is you can use the Pages Panel to move your pages around in your document. For example, if I click on page ten, press and hold shift and click on page 11 to select multiple. With them both selected, I can click and drag them across. And when I see a line after a spread and release, this will move the spread to the next place in the document. So that is how you can quickly select pages, add pages, remove pages, and move pages around in your document. As well as managing pages, there is another important feature that can be managed sir in the pages panel, and that is parent pages, previously referred to as master pages. Parent pages is one of the most sought after features that in design offers and can really help speed up and manage repetitive elements in a multi page document. If we look closely at the page thumbnails in the pages panel, as well as page numbers on the bottom, on the top of each page, we can see some letters. This represents the parent pages applied to. If we come to the top of the pages panel, we can see here there is a thin gray line just above the pages. If we click this, we can drag it down, and here is where we can see our parent pages. Like below, here we have a visual representation of them. Currently, I have some parent pages set up in my document, but like pages, you can create as many as you need. Now, like pages, you can click on these, and if we double click on them, in design will move into a different view. Here we are no longer looking at the page layout, but now the parent page layout and what it contains. Here you can see there are some visual elements. As mentioned earlier, parent pages are really helpful for repetitive elements in your pages. For example, here we have the page numbers and some other small details. To exit out of the parent page view, we can simply double click on the document page thumbnail below, and we will go back to the page view. This is a pretty important panel, and we'll take up a fair bit of screen space to see your thumbs. What I'll do here is click on the tab and drag it into the left side of my panel menu to pop it out with the others. Now, if I click to expand, I can drag the bottom left panel and drag out and down like so to make this panel a lot larger. So now, every time I click on that icon, it will expand and contract and remember the size I set it to. Easy. So this is how I would recommend you manage your pages panel in in design. But this can get a little annoying sometimes, having to constantly click on and off the icon. One issue I sometimes face when using the pages panel is when creating large documents, there can be a lot of pages, and it can be really helpful to see the entire pagination at a glance. This is where having a double monitor setup can really help. So here I have a very large document I created previously for a client. When working in I design, I will often drag my pages panel out of my main interface and place it into another monitor and expand the entire panel out to the size of the screen. When I'm working on a large document with lots of pages, I can have one monitor with my workspace nice and clear and then also see the entire pagination easily to the left or right of. Here, I can easily double click on pages to jump straight to them all while keeping my workspace clear. This makes the entire workflow much easier having a double screen setup when working on large documents. And, of course, where you place your panel, your workspace will remember it. So if you have more than one monitor, I would highly recommend placing your pages panel on another screen. So that's a brief introduction to the Pages panel. Now, we will be going into how to manage and use pages in more depth later in the course. But for now, this is good to know to get you started. So over the past few videos, we have focused on the links and the pages panel, which are fundamental to your workflow in in design. But there are lots of other key panels to be aware of. In the next video, we are going to look at some other key panels we will want to keep in mind and be aware of when using in design before we start getting hands on. So see you in the next video. 10. Key Panels In Adobe InDesign: Over the last couple of episodes, we have looked specifically at the Links panel and the pages panel and how fundamental they are to producing work in in design. These are some of the most important panels when working in design. However, there are some other panels worth mentioning that you will need to know about. Soon, we are going to get hands on with in design. But before that, there are just a few other panels you should be aware of to get started using in design. So let's jump into in design and take a look. So here we are where we left off at the previous video, and right now I'm working with the current workspace I set up earlier with all my panels in place like so. If you don't have the same workspace, don't worry, as I'll be taking you through it shortly and showing you how you can access all the panels I'll be mentioning in this video. So to begin, let's open this document to explore the panels. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder in the description. The download folder open, click into folder three document samples. Click into folder two, double sided, click into the flyer folder and click to open the blow dry crew flyer in design document. Now, for this document, I'm using the font made Tommy Soft. If you have not already downloaded all the fonts for this course, this is a free font that you can acquire online. To get this font, I would recommend you check out the course fonts page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that are used in this course and where to get them. Simply click the made Tommy Soft Link, and this will take you straight to where you can download it. Simply close this document, install the font, open it back up again, and you should be able to follow along just fine. So as well as the Links and pages panel, which we've already looked at, there are lots of other crucial panels we should be aware of. And one of those is the Control panel. The control panel is located at the top of the screen and will display various properties and options of a particular tool you have selected at any given time. For example, if we simply click on a frame in the Canvas area with a selection tool, up in the Control panel, we will see a range of information and options from the size of the frame to rotation, object wrap, frame fitting, stroke size to alignment options to name a few. If we click into a frame with some text, double click and select some text, up in the Control panel, we will see options to change text formatting criteria. We can edit a whole range of typography options. And if we look closely with text selected, you will see over on the far left two icons. Right now, we have the top one selected, which represents the character options. Below this is an icon that represents paragraph options. If we click this, we will reveal more options specific to paragraph options we can edit. Now, the control panel is also crucial for managing objects in your work area. If you have multiple objects selected in your work area, the control panel is good to access align tools to easily manage alignment inside frames and in your composition. So there is an extensive range of options we can change up in the Control panel with various objects selected in the work area, especially when working with frames and type, it's good to have this panel visible. If you cannot see the control panel, you can come up to window and click it there and it should appear. So while we're on the topic of controlling objects, another important panel to be aware of is the properties panel. The Properties panel helps to simplify and accelerate your workflow, especially when working on designs that involve frequent switching between text, images, and objects. The Properties panel complements the existing tools in in design by offering a centralized, dynamic workspace, helping both designers and professionals work more efficiently. If you cannot see your Properties panel, come to Window and click on Properties. Now, if there is nothing selected in the document, the properties panel will display page related controls, including document setup, margins, adjust layout, rulers and guides, and text to image. Here, you can edit document settings, toggle on and off the grids and guides, and also generate a text to image using AI. Now, when an object is selected in the work area, this panel will work similar to the control panel, where it will show you options specific to selected objects. Now, one small detail to pay attention to, with an object selected, any sections in the properties panel that have more options than shown will have these little three dots in the bottom right. If we click these, we can reveal more options, and by clicking again, we'll collapse the options away. I like to keep my properties panel to the left of my main panel. This makes it really easy to pop out on the fly. I also like to drag the bottom left corner down, so when it is active, I can see all the options clearly inside. The properties panel dynamically changes based on your current selection, whether it's text, an object or an image, showing only the tools and options relevant to that element. This minimizes the need to switch between multiple panels, keeping your workflow focused and efficient. The Properties panel combines the best of both worlds by showing only what's relevant and keeping the interface clean and accessible. If you cannot see your properties panel, come up to window and click it there. So another important panel to be aware of is the Swatches panel. A pretty obvious one here, but nonetheless, pretty important. When working in in design, we will be managing color a lot in the Swatches panel. It's here where we can create new swatches and color groups for our document. I like to keep my swatches panel up in the top row with my CC libraries and color, which is pretty much visible the entire time. If you cannot see your swatches panel, you can come up to window and click it. So while I'm up here in the top panel, another important pal to be aware of is the CC Libraries panel. Now, this is a good pal to have available, as this can help if you work across multiple adobe programs. Here you can add things like colors and visual assets, which you can easily access across Adobe apps. Here, for example, I have multiple libraries for various projects I have worked on in the past. I like to keep colors for various projects, which helps me access them easily. I can simply click a particular library to open and start using the elements right away in my document. Typically, as I build a project, I will drop any elements I use a lot and any styles into a library to easily use it again in future and especially across devices. I like to keep my CC libraries panel at the top with my swatches and color palettes, which I can easily access at any time. If you cannot see your CC libraries panel, you can come up to Window and click it there. Another important panel to be aware of is the Layers panel. If any of you are familiar with Illustrator and Photoshop, you will know this panel and how layers work. But for those of you who may be not familiar, the Layers panel is crucial to set the hierarchy of your content in your canvas area. Using this panel can help add new layers and organize your visual elements when creating your layouts. Here, I like to keep my Layers panel with my pages and links, as this is where I like to focus on managing the content of my document. If you cannot see your Layers panel, you can come up to Window and click it there. Other key panels to be aware of are the character and paragraph panels. So again, super obvious but super important. While using in design, you are going to be working with text constantly. Earlier, I showed how the Control panel and the properties panel can keep you on top of text and formatting, which is great, but you can also have your character and paragraph panel open, too. If you want to make a quick change to any type inside a frame, you can simply select it, and in the character or paragraph panel, you can change the type without having to double click inside. Here, I like to keep my character and paragraph panel down here in the right corner. If you cannot see your character or paragraph panel, crap a window, scroll down to type and click it there. While we're on the topic of text and paragraphs, another key panel to be aware of is the character and Paragraph Styles panel. One of the most powerful features of in design is the ability to create styles. This can help you maintain consistency with your type and can be especially helpful when working with large documents. Here you can set a style for your type and easily apply that style to new type and make updates to existing styles. As I create my layout and work with type, I like to use styles. Now, each of these is a separate panel, and I like to keep them to the left of my main panel. This makes it really easy to pop out on the fly. In these panels, we can create new styles, create folders, and organize our styles, and also add them to the CC libraries. If you cannot see your Styles panel, come up to window, scroll down to styles, and click the Character and paragraph styles from there. Other important panels to be aware of are the Object and table styles panel. So just like character and paragraph styles, we can also apply styles to objects and tables, such as stroke effect, color, and so on. Just like having multiple text in a document, you may also have multiple objects or tables. If you cannot see your object or table Styles panel, you can clip to window, scroll down to styles and click to open them from there. Just like with the character and paragraph styles, in the Object Styles panel, we can apply formatting to an object and create a new style and then simply apply the same style to a new object. If we make any changes, it will apply to all objects throughout the document associated to that style. And the same goes for any tables you may have. Again, I like to keep my object and table Stars panel to the left of my main panel. Makes it really easy to pop out on the fly. Another important panel is the effect panel. Now, as you create your objects in your layout, there will be times when you may want to apply effects such as adding transparency effects, blending modes, out to globes and drop shadows to name a few. This can all be done easily from the Effects panel. For example, if I click on a frame in the Canvas area up in the effects panel, I can click to expand the panel, and we can see things like opacity of the object, the blending mode applied, and keep an eye on any effects applied to the object. So you can click on the Effect button at the bottom, and from there, you can see a range of effects you can apply to your object or any effect currently applied. Again, I like to keep my effect panel to the left of my main panel. This makes it really easy to pop out on the fly. If you cannot see your effects panel, you can come up to Window and click it from there. Another key panel to be aware of is the stroke panel. Working with strokes is something else you will be doing a lot in in design. So it's good to have this panel accessible. This is useful to customize all stroke criteria and apply using start and end points and stroke styles such as dashed lines, stroke weight, and how it may be aligned on an object frame. Again, I like to keep my stroke panel to the left of my main panel. This makes it really easy to pop out on the fly. And one last key frame to be aware of is the preflight panel. Now, while working in design, you will want to keep on top of any issues or mistakes you may have in your document. If you cannot see your preflight panel, you can come up to Window, scroll down to output and click it there. Now, the preflight panel is great to keep an eye on, and it can help inform you if you have any issues with missing links, type or missing fonts. Sometimes you can have overset type in a frame where a frame may include more type than the frame is large enough to show. So the preflight panel can let you know, so you can go straight to it and correct it. Likewise, with links, if there are any issues, you can go straight to the link and correct. Before exporting your document, you want to make sure that there are no issues in this panel. Here, I like to keep my preflight panel at the top of my quick menu to the left of my panels for easy access. So those are some of the key panels I would recommend you familiarize yourself with and have easy access to when working in in design. These panels will make it very easy for you to start using in design to create layouts. So now we're starting to gain some fundamental understanding of in design, and we're starting to get ourselves ready to get properly hands on. So let's jump into the next subject. 11. IDML Files & Backwards Compatibility In Adobe InDesign: So up to this point, we have looked at in design and should now be aware of how it works and some crucial things to keep in mind to get us started. Soon, we are going to get hands on with in design to practice some of the essential tools and features. But before that, there is one last important thing to keep in mind, and that is IDML files. Those of you who are familiar with Photoshop and Illustrator will know that whatever version you edit a photo or create a vector graphic, you can always open the document in earlier versions. Now this is not the case in in design. Since I design was created, there has not been any backward compatibility with in design documents. So if you created a document using Adobe CC 2024, you would not be able to open that document using any previous version. For example, Adobe 2022 or CS six. This can be an issue if you're working with someone who has an older version of in design. So how would you open a document in an older version? Well, to do this, you would first have to export your in design document as an IDML file. And to do this is simple. If you need to share your in design document with someone who is using an older version, with your document open, simply come up to file, scroll down to Export. Upon click, you will see the browser window, and from here, you can click the dropdown on the format option and select Indesign Markup IDML. If we save it as an IDML file and send that to anyone using an older version of Indesign, then they should be able to open it just fine. If you open the download folder that goes along with this course, click into folder three document samples, you will see folders containing various documents. In here, you will see I have provided all the documents as IDML files. Now, I've done this, so whoever is watching this course will be able to open up the files regardless of what version you are using. Now, one thing to keep in mind with IDML files, when you open an IDML file in your respective version of Indesign, if you click Save, Indesign will then ask you to save it as an in design file. Keep in mind that if you now save it as an in design file, you will then lock that file to the version you are using. Should you want to share that file again with someone with an older version, you will have to prepare the IDML file again. However, if you have a file that is made in an older version of in design, it will open just fine for anyone who opens it in a newer version of in design. So that is how you can prepare to send and receive files to open in earlier versions of in design. Another important thing to know when using in design. So let's move on and jump into the next subject. 12. Common Document Types Adobe InDesign: One of the keys to mastering in design is understanding the wide range of projects you can tackle. At this early stage in the course, it would be good to get an idea of the creative scope that in design has to offer from posters and business cards to booklets and social media graphics. In this video, we're diving into the common document types you can create. Now, this is going to be a big one. After this, you'll have a good insight into the power of in design. So let's get into it. So in in design, depending on the type of project you want to create, you'll be setting up and managing documents in multiple different ways. Before we get hands on, I just want to quickly take you through some of the common print and digital documents you may work on when using in design and the different ways pages can be applied. Here we're going to start off with some really simple documents and then see how things can get a little bit more complex. So here I have a document that shows a quick overview of the main types of documents you can create in in design. If you want to open this document to follow along with me, you can find it in the downloadable course folder that comes with this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder three document samples, and this time, click to open the document types in design file. So if we scroll down to the second page in this document, you will see the four key types of documents you can create in in design. When creating a document in in design, it will fall into one of the four key categories. Single sided, double sided, multiple slides, and multiple spreads. Working in in design can be very simple or it can be very complicated. And at a quick glance here, you can see that I have a difficulty level going from easy to hard. Now, one can spend their whole design career in in design only scratching the surface of the type of things that can be done. If one only works on documents like single sided, double sided, and multiple slides. However, if designers work on more complicated documents with multiple spreads, then they will need to be aware of how to manage pages and lots of content. And this is where it can get very complicated. If we look at each one of these categories, we can see the types of documents that can be created. One, single side. Looking at this first category, we can see the types of documents that will fall into the single side document category. The examples here are some of the most simple documents you can create in in design, and the difficulty level here is easy. Here we have a wide range of documents like posters, ID badges, certificates, and packaging labels to name a few. Documents such as these will typically only be printed on one sheet, on one side, or displayed on one screen. So they will only require one surface to be designed. Now, for the sake of this video, I'm not going to go through every single document, as you can see, there is a lot here. If we come to the next page, we can see some document samples that fall into this first category. Now, you're free to explore each of these in your own time, but what I'll do in this video is go through some of the crucial document types you should be aware of to get a good idea of the ways documents can be set up and used. Now, we're about to open a few documents in design. If you want to see them properly, you're going to need to have some of the fonts installed. Be sure to check the fonts page of the course PDF document to make sure all the course fonts are installed. So as you open each one of these documents, you should be able to follow along just fine. Also, keep an eye out in the top left of document as we open them, as this will state which font is used in each document. So with the selection tool, let's come into the first category, select the image frame for the first item poster. Now, I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the sample thumbnail, and the first example will open up in its own document. So here you can see in the work area and in the pages panel, it consists of just one A three page. Now, it really doesn't get more simple than this in in design. So back into the sample doc, next, I'll select the item folder print. I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt to the keyboard and double click on the sample thumbnail. And here we have something a little different. In this document, we have a die cut for a folder. In a document such as this, we would include die elines in Magenta, which outline where the printer would need to cut and fold the document once printed. In the work area and in the pages panel, it consists of just one page set to a custom size. When printed and cut, this would indeed have a two side dimension. However, to prepare the document on a flat outline, we would need to do this on one side in in design. Like the poster, this is prepared on one sheet, and once submitted to the printer, it would be carefully cut out and folded to make the finished folder. Back into the sample dock, I'll select the next item, social media skins, Hold Alt on the keyboard, and double click on the sample thumbnail. And here we have something quite different. In this document, we have multiple pages to manage all the single key assets one can create for YouTube. Down here in the thumbnail area, we have multiple thumbnails that are linked to other documents. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the sample thumbnail, and this will open in its own document. So instead of having a separate in design document for each asset, here we have one document that simply includes single side pages for assets like a profile image, profile header, and thumbnails. In the work area and in the pages panel, we have multiple pages with different dimensions, but nonetheless, all single side documents. From this one document, we can prepare our single side graphics for social media or we can use it as a way to contain and navigate other in design documents such as thumbnails. When working in single side documents and in design, it can be as simple as an A three poster, or it can be a little bit more complicated, for example, when using social media, where we can have different sized canvas areas and include links inside. If you explore some of the other documents in this category, you will see they are pretty much set up the same set on a single page, two, double sided. So looking at the second category, we can see the types of documents that will fall into the double sided document category, and the difficulty level here is medium. Here we have documents like business cards, pamphlets, bookmarks, menus, letterheads, and book covers to name a few. The examples here again are some of the most simple documents you can create in in design. Documents such as these will be prepared for double sided printing, and unlike the first examples, we require layout for two sides. If we scroll down to the next page, we can see some document samples that fall into this second category. So I'll select the first item, business card. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the sample thumbnail. And here we are looking at a relatively simple document which consists of just two pages. For this document, you can see we have two custom page sizes in my pages panel, one for the front and one for the back. Here you can see that the two pages are sitting next to each other to be clearly seen at a glance. Again, one of the most simple documents you may encounter in Idsign. Back into the sample dock where things start to get a little bit more complex with greetings cards, leaflets, and pamphlets. Again, these are double sided prints, but will require folds. I'll select the next item, leaflet. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the sample thumbnail. And here we are looking at a document which consists of four pages but in two page spreads. This is a common layout for a simple leaflet. In the pages panel, we can see four pages, but this time composed in spreads. Page one and two are positioned together in a spread, and page three and four are together in a spread below. A document set up like this will make it easy to export the spreads and for the printer to see the lines, where to fold the document down the middle. Back into the sample doc, I'll select the next item, pamphlet, I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the sample thumbnail. And here we are looking at a slightly different document. Here we have a pamphlet document which consists of six pages set across two spreads. Similar to the leaflet, this document will require two folds instead of one and contain more content. In the pages panel, we can see that the document consists of six pages across two spreads, three pages for one side, and three pages for another. Again, a document set up like this will make it easy to export each spread and for a printer to see the lines where to fold the document. If you explore some other documents in this category, you will see that they are set up pretty much in the same way, some with and some without folds. Three, multiple slides. So looking at the third category, we can see the type of documents that will fall into the multiple slide document category, and the difficulty level here is again medium. Here we have documents like keynotes, presentations, mood boards, social carousel posts, portfolios, calendars, and Eoks to name a few. The examples here again, are relatively simple documents you can create in in design. However, these documents tend to have a lot more content, which will flow across multiple slides and may either be presented on screen or printed out on paper, so it will require a lot more formatting. If we scroll down to the next page, we can see some document samples that fall into this third category. I'll select the item guidelines. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the sample thumbnail, and here is a very common document that designers may create using in design. This is an example of a brand guidelines document ideal for viewing on screen. Here we see single 16 by nine pages stacked on top of each other, containing over 20 slides. And in the pages panel, we can see these are individual pages. In this document, we can see there are parent pages present and applied to the pages below. We have sections applied, and we have paragraphs and character styles applied. This is where some of the more advanced features of in design are used to manage multiple pages and larger volumes of content. A document like this would be easily exported as a PDF and shared with the client and other designers where it could be mainly viewed on screen, but could also be printed out. Back into the sample doc, I'll select the next item, interactive presentation. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the sample thumbnail, and here we're looking at another slide document, but this time for a digital presentation which consists of over ten pages. This document, again, we see single 16 by nine pages stacked on top of each other ideal for viewing on screen. And like with the previous document, we can see there are parent pages present. We have paragraph and character styles included. And this time, we also have a bread crumb menu at the top of each page where hyperlinks are included. This document is designed to be strictly digital and exported as an interactive PDF. When exported and viewed in Acrobat Reader, the hyperlinks would allow the viewer to click the top buttons and navigate the document easily. Documents like these are also created in apps like PowerPoint and Keynote. In Design is also extremely powerful and useful for creating screen presentations where you can use the flexible and powerful formatting features and also include added interactive elements that might not be possible in apps like PowerPoint or Keynote. So back into the sample doc, I'll select the next item, Carousel post. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard, double click on the sample thumbnail, and here we have a very different layout. This time, we are looking at a document for social media static and carousel posts. On the top row, we have four square pages set up with space between each individual post. The pages panel, we can see on the top row we have four pages. On the second row, we have the same content, but this time across four landscape pages with different dimensions. Below these, we have two examples of carousel posts where we have a square post and a landscape carousel post. These have been prepared to enable seamless design across each page with the ability to export them all out as individual JPEGs to be used on social media as carousel posts. In the pages panel, we can see the bottom two rows. We have four pages each next to each other. So a single document here with multiple pages, however, set up with different page dimensions. So back into the sample doc, I'll select the next item calendar. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard, double click on the sample thumbnail, and this time, we have a document intended strictly for print. Like the guidelines and presentation documents, this one, again, is set up on multiple slides, set to a custom document size. Pages panel, we can see the pages set up individually. And when exported, these slides will be on individual pages and printed back to back to make a document that can be bound from the top and turned over. So a good example of a document with multiple slides intended for print as opposed to digital. If you explore some of the other documents in this category, you will see they are set up pretty much the same though with different page sizes, four multiple spreads. So looking at the fourth category, we can see the type of documents that will fall into the multiple spreads document category, and the difficulty level here is hard. So this is where things start to get a lot more complex. Here we have documents like booklets, magazines, newspapers, user manuals, and novels to name a few. The examples here are some of the most complicated documents you can create in in design. Documents such as these can include multiple page spreads, anything from four spreads up to 100 and beyond. Documents like these will include all the advanced features like parent pages, sections, character, paragraph, and object styles. If we scroll down to the next page, we can see some document samples that fall into the last category. I'll select the item report. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the sample thumbnail. And here we are looking at a print document for a report that consists of many spreads. Now, unlike the previous documents, this document has been set up using facing pages where at the start, we can see the first page is a simple page for the cover. The last page is a single page for the back cover with all the spreads in between. If we look in the pages panel, we can see the layout reflected here with the pages next to each other and the single page at the top and the bottom. This is a very common setup when working with documents for print that include multiple spreads. Documents like this will typically use all the advanced features of in design to manage parent pages, styles, sections, and so on. Back into the sample doc, I'll select the next item, novel. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard, double click on the sample thumbnail, and here we have a classic layout for a book design. As simple as a book layout can appear, a layout like this will still use a lot of the formatting features in in design to manage and organize the vast amount of content included inside. Looking at the pages panel, again, we can see we are using facing pages. You may also notice that the cover is not present in this document. That is because the book cover design will typically be created in a separate document using a different document setup. Back in the sample doc, I'll select the next item, booklet. I'll hold Alt on the keyboard, double click on the sample thumbnail, and here we have another document containing multiple spreads, but this time, we see something different. Unlike the first two documents that use facing pages to manage the document, in this example, we're not using facing pages. Here the pages have been set up differently, as opposed to the front page at the top and the back page at the bottom. This is another approach one can take when creating a document with multiple spreads, where the front and back cover will be set on a single spread at the top. Looking at the pages panel, we can see the spreads. So when working with documents with multiple spreads, it really doesn't change from this sort of setup. There may be different page sizes, but when working with multiple spreads, you will always be working towards this paradigm. If you explore some of the other documents in this category, you will see they're all set up pretty much the same where there'll be a page on the left and a page on the right with a fold down the middle. And if you're working with facing pages, you'll have one page at the top and one page at the bottom. So as we progress in this course, we're going to be coming back to various document types and going deeper to understand the tools and features that we can use to set up, format, and manage content effectively. So now we are all clued up on the potential in design has to offer. It's now time to move on to the next subject. So see you in the next video. 13. InDesign VS Illustrator and Photoshop: So the big three Photoshop, Illustrator and in design. A question that every designer will ask themselves at some point is, which one is the best? And when should I use Adobe in Design instead of Illustrator or Photoshop? Now, while all three programs are amazing in their own right, they serve very different purposes. It's fair to say that apps like Photoshop and Illustrator are gateway apps for beginners in the graphic design industry. These apps are simple and easier to pick up initially, however, do lack a lot of the advanced features that I design offers to manage content and produce professional publications. Reflecting back on my design career, it did take me a few years to get into in design, and there was a steep learning curve. But in design is now probably one of my most used and favorite apps. In design is extremely powerful for graphic designers who want to go pro. So in this video, I'm going to break down why and when you should choose in design and how it can make your design life easier. So let's get into it. So first, let's talk about what I design is actually built for. Well, Adobe in Design is the industry standard for layout design and publishing. It's perfect for working with multi page documents like magazines, brochures, books, reports, and even digital publications like eBooks and interactive PDFs. So if your project involves multiple pages, lots of text, and a need for structural layouts, in design is your go to. Think of Indesign as your best friend for long form content and precise layout control. Now, let's compare in design to Photoshop. So Photoshop is amazing for editing and manipulating images. If you need to tweak photos, create complex image composites, or apply pixel based effects, Photoshop is your tool. But here's the catch. Photoshop is not great for handling large amounts of text or creating multi page layouts. Trying to create a multi page brochure in Photoshop can get messy really quickly. Plus Photoshop works in raster format, which can result in lower quality output for print designs if you're not careful with resolution. In Design, on the other hand, is built for handling large amounts of text and multi page layouts with ease. You can format text, create columns, use grids, and easily adjust styles across an entire document. It also integrates seamlessly with Photoshop, so you can use those beautiful images you've edited inside your in design layouts without sacrificing quality. Plus, I design can export PDFs that will vectorize text and other elements that will keep text and graphics sharp and a file size down. Now, I have seen a lot of designers creating things like poster designs in Photoshop. Some simple compositions like this with not a lot of text can be done. Though this is probably as far as you really want to take it in Photoshop. Remember, Photoshop doesn't really work as well when creating grids and managing and formatting text. So let's talk about Illustrator. Now, Illustrator is fantastic for creating vector graphics like logos, icons and illustrations. If you need to create detailed illustrations, patterns or scalable graphics, Illustrator is your tool. But here's the thing. Illustrator isn't designed to handle long documents or a lot of text. While you can technically create brochures, posters, and business cards in Illustrator, managing text across multiple pages, applying consistent styles or flowing text across linked frames becomes much more complicated than in in design. Design is built specifically for those types of projects with features like parent pages, text flow, and paragraph styles that make handling multi page documents a breeze. So if you're designing a logo or a simple document like a business card or a poster, Illustrator can be a suitable choice. But if you need to design a 20 page magazine, a corporate brochure, or even a social media carousel with lots of text, pages, images, and styles, you'll save yourself a ton of time and headache by using in design. So then, when should you use In design? Well, some of the key features that make in design really stand out include parent pages, text flow and threading, multi page handling, pre flight and packaging, and interactive features to name a few. These are features that just don't exist in Photoshop or Illustrator and can save you a lot of time and improve your design process. As mentioned earlier, simple apps like Photoshop and Illustrator are the gateway apps for graphic designers and will typically be the first apps they will engage in when they start their career and begin to practice their craft. Using Photoshop and Illustrator to create simple documents like business cards, posters and flyers is doable. But if you want to create multi page documents, develop text heavy projects, prepare streamlined print ready files, use advanced exporting options, and add interactive elements, you're really going to want to use in design. So in design is a powerhouse when it comes to layout design and publishing. It saves you time and gives you the flexibility to manage large projects efficiently. While Illustrator and Photoshop are awesome for their specific purposes, in design is where you need to be for anything layout related. Now, the key thing to remember here is it's not about replacing Illustrator or Photoshop. It's about knowing when to use the right tool for the right job. Now, personally, I use all three of these apps together to create my design work. In design, Illustrator and Photoshop each have their strengths, but when used together, this is where the magic really happens. So now we are all clued up on the potential in design has to offer. It's now time to move on to the next subject. So I'll see you in the next video. 14. STAGE 2: Introduction: Welcome to stage two of Section one in this class. Up to this point, we have been looking at how in design works and learning some of the fundamental things to keep in mind to get started. Now, this was really important to give you a good foundation of knowledge to prepare you for what we are about to cover in this section. Now it's time to get hands on with in design. In this section, we're going to learn all the key tools and features where you'll see the full creative potential in design has to offer. Over the next set of videos, we will go deeper to focus on specific tools and features we will need to be aware of to develop layout design effectively in Adobe in design. After this section, you're going to understand how everything works and be equipped with new skills, knowledge, and the confidence to make your very own layouts from scratch. So to kick it off, we're going to look at one of the fundamental features that allows us to start working in design to create documents. 15. Pages In Adobe InDesign: One of the fundamental features in in design is pages. Now, it may seem like a small thing, but working with pages is fundamental to working in in design. It's where it all begins. In the previous video, we looked at the 16. Parent Pages In Adobe InDesign: One of the most useful features we have when working in in design is parent pages. Parent Pages enables us to manage elements that can appear multiple times throughout the document and help with organization and time saving. Currently, applications like Illustrator don't offer parent pages. So this is why Indesign is so good when working on documents with multiple pages. Imagine having a document with over 100 pages and having to edit the page number on each page. What a nightmare? This is where parent pages comes in. So let's jump in and see how this works. So here I am in design, and this is a classic document where parent pages come in immensely helpful. Here I have a document set up in a book format with over 120 pages. If we look down on each page, we can see we have these small footer elements here. We have the page numbers, a website address, and what appears to be a section title. Now, these are all managed and applied using parent pages. The last video, we looked closely at the pages panel. Now, if we look at the top of the panel, we see a row here. As well as managing our pages, we also manage our parent pages here in this panel. And in this example, we have multiple parent pages. Also, in this instance, the pages are set out as spreads instead of individual pages. This is because the document is set up in a book style using facing pages. Now here is another example, but this time with multiple slides as single pages instead of spread. Looking in the pages panel, this time we can see the parent pages are set as single pages instead of spread like in the other document, more on this later. So back into my other document, each parent page or spread, in this case, has its own name and prefix. And if we look below, we can see which parent pages are applied as we can see a label on the top corners of the pages. So to access a parent page, we can simply double click on them. Upon click, the parent page will open in its own work area where we can see the contents. In this example, it's not a lot of content, but here we have elements that are repetitive throughout the document. So in the bottom left of the first page and the bottom right of the second page, we have a special character, and this is for the page number. Right now, this is set to A, but don't worry, we'll be getting into this shortly. On the bottom left of the right page, I have a website link, and over on the right next to the page number, I have a section. Now, bear with me, you're going to see what magic this is in a second. So if I now double click back onto a page in my pages panel, we will come out of the parent page and back into the document content. And if I click back to the document for page 45 and 46, we can see the elements are visible. Now, if, for example, I come into the pages panel, click on page 45, press and hold Shift and click on page 46 to select both, right click and click on Apply parent pages up or Pop a menu. If I click the apply pages Drop Down and select none and click Okay, we will see those elements have now disappeared. If I right click again and select apply parent pages, hit the dropdown and select a dark elements, they will return. So in the pages panel, I'll click on page 43, and this time on page 44, we can see we have the same elements, but this time in white. So back up to the pages panel, we can see that we have another parent page spread called light elements. And when we click on this, we can see we have the same elements, but this time in white. Now, if we look closely at the pages panel, for page 43, we have the parent page A, dark elements applied. And for page 44, we have the parent page B light elements applied. So for this spread of pages, we have two different parent pages applied to ensure the correct visual elements are applied, dark on the left on white and light for the right page to appear on a solid color background. Now, if I come back down to page 46, here we can see we have the correct page number, but we also have something else. Here we have something that was not present in the parent page. This is what is referred to as a section. Now, if I scroll through my document, you will see this often changes for a new section. If we come into the pages panel and look carefully, we can see that as I scroll down, there will be these little triangles above various pages. These triangles represent sections, and if I double click on one of them, we will see some properties with the section marker name I have placed in previously. What this means is that whatever page comes after this section, the section marker will show the section marker details. As you see in my pages panel, I have a lot of pages and a lot of these sections. So after each section, each page will have a different section marker applied. This is really awesome when you are managing a large document like this where you have lots of sections which you want to label and not do it manually on every page. In the parent page, I have one page section marker, and each section marker on the document will change depending on how you section your document in the pages panel. This is a brief overview of how parent pages work in in design. So let's now have a go at practicing how you can use parent pages in in design. So to demonstrate parent pages, I recommend opening up this document. This document can be found in the download folder that comes with this class. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we will be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two, practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. We scroll down to the second page, we can see a variety of worksheets we are going to be using over the next few episodes. For this video, we are going to be looking at the parent page worksheet. So with the selection tool, I'll click on the parent page Worksheet thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the Worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own tab. This time, I'll click on the Practice Document thumbnail. I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail and Up pop our Practice document. Now, for this document, I'm using the font Base Nu. If you have not already downloaded all the fonts for this course, this is a free font that you can acquire online. To get this font, I would recommend you check out the course font page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that are used in this class and where to get them. Simply click on the Base NU link, and this will take you straight to where you can download it. Simply close the document, install the font, open it back up again, and you should be able to follow along just fine. This is a booklet document for a design expo. It's not as complex as the document I just demonstrated, but nonetheless, the principles are the same. Now, unlike the previous document that was set up using facing pages where there was a front cover at the top and the back cover at the bottom, in this instance, the document is not set up using facing pages. Here we are missing that single page leading at the top. Here I have the cover and back page set as a spread at the top. Personally, when working on publications, I like to manage my cover and back page together at the top like this so I can see the seamless spread and then manage the internal pages below. So now if we come to page seven and eight in the document, we can see the bottom right, I have a page number. On the bottom right, I have a page number with an element that explains the subtitle of the document that I have placed in earlier and this little logo icon in the top right. Now, if we scroll through the rest of the document, we can see that this does not appear. So in this instance, I want to apply these elements to the rest of the document without having to paste them onto each page individually. And if we look up in the pages panel, right now, we have the default parent page A in the parent page Row. So let's see how we can do this. Now, when you create a document from scratch, you will always start with parent A. In this instance, we can see a double page spread. And if we look below, we can see A is applied to every page by looking at the top of the page thumbnails. Also, when you create a document from scratch, the first parent A will be applied to all pages by default unless you change them. To begin, I'm going to click on the left default parent page, press and hold shift, and click on the second to select them both. Right click and select parent options. Upon click, you will get a pop up. So in here, we can change these labels. For example, in here, we can change the prefix to one, and I'll name the page spread and click Okay. Now, if you look down on the page thumbnails, above, we can see the number one because we just changed the prefix. So now I'm going to come back to page seven and eight. Press and hold Shift and click on the page number in the bottom left, the page number in the bottom right, the bit of text next to this, and the top logo icon graphic. With the more selected, I'll press Command X on Mac or Control X on PC to cut. Then in the pages panel up in the parent pages, I'll double click on the parent page spread. Next, I'm going to look over in the Layers panel and make sure I'm about to paste on the type layer. In this instance, the type layer is on top. Then we can press Command plus Shift plus Alt plus V on Mac or Control plus Shift plus Alt plus V on PC to paste in place. And now we have the visual elements on the page. Notice that on page one and two, the page numbers both say one. This is because these are actually special characters for page numbers and currently state one because the page prefix is set to one. For example, if I click to select both pound pages in the panel, right click and click Pound Options and set the prefix back to A, you will see the pages are now set to A in the pages panel. Also, now on the page thumbnail, we can see these are back to labeled A. In in design, if you come up to type and scroll down to insert special characters, you can come over to markers and insert current page. This is a useful feature you can apply to pair and pages, which will adapt to each page it is applied to in your document. So before we continue, there is one other thing we can do here. So down here next to the number, I have some texture, which I want to represent the section in the booklet. Right now, I have some text in here, but now we're going to do something different. So I'll come down to the text, click and drag over the text to select it. Come up to type down to Insert special character, across to marker, across and click on Section Marker. Upon click, we will see the text will change to section, and that completes the elements in the parent page spread. Now, if we come and double click onto a page, we will now see that our elements now appear on every page, and we can see that the number is also correct for each page. Nice. Hang on, what about the section? Right now, this is set to blank because there is no section set. So to set a section, simply come into the pages panel, click on a page to start. Here I'll click on page five, right click and click on numbering and section Options. Upon click Apple Popper Menu, in the content marker, I'll simply type in exploring creative possibilities. I leave all the other settings as they are and click Okay. And now we can see a little triangle over page five. And if we look at the document in the footer, we will now see that exploring creative possibilities is now present on every page after that section. Nice. However, I don't want this section to be applied to every other page of the document. Next, I'll come to page seven in the Pages panel, and just like before, I'll right click and click on numbering and section Options. The menu will appear. This time in the content marker, I'll type in networking and collaboration. I'll leave all the other settings as they are and click Okay. And now we can see another little triangle over page seven. And if we look at the document in the footer, we will now see networking and collaboration present instead. So keep in mind when you apply a section, it will apply to every page thereafter. If you want to apply a different section after one section, you will need to add a new one. Now, I don't want these visual elements to be on the cover and back page. So in the pages panel, I'll click page one, press and hold Shift and click page two to select them both. I can right click select apply parent pages, click the dropdown and select No. In the pages panel, we can see that there is no parent page label on these pages. Easy. So that's how you can edit the parent page and apply them to your document. Now, there are a few other little tricks you should be aware of when using parent pages. For example, if we come and select page five and six in the Pages panel, we can right click and select override all parent page items. Now if we're coming to the pages, we can now click and select those elements which can now be edited or removed. Keep in mind that any changes will only occur on these pages alone. All elements will still remain in the parent page. That's one way of overriding parent page elements. Another way is to select the element themselves individually. So this time, if we come to page seven and eight, if we only want to remove the top logo from this page, if we press and hold Command plus Shift on Mac or Control plus Shift on PC and then click the item on the page, upon click, you will select the item, and we can press Delete to remove it. Again, it will still remain in the parent page, but it will now be gone from this page alone. Next, we could come down to the bottom. Again, we can press and hold Command plus Shift on Mac or Control plus Shift on PC, and then click the bottom right item. And this will select the type frame where we could, for example, come and change the color of the text. Keep in mind that when you apply a parent page, you can actually override the item if you so choose. And there could be some instances where you may want to do that. Now, if you change your mind and you want to return back to the original parent page, simply remove the changed items on the page. Come to the pages in the pages panel, right, click on the page, click on Apply parent page, set it to none. Then click Okay. Then right click again on the page, right click on Apply parent page, select the parent page, click Okay, and that will refresh the page. Easy. So that's parent pages, and one of the most important things you will need to know when working with pages in in design. If you're watching this video and using in design for the first time, I would recommend having a play around with parent pages. Open this document and have a go at applying the parent pages as demonstrated. Once you get your head around this, you will be perfectly set up to continue. So now we have a solid foundation of knowledge working with pages, which is pretty fundamental when working with in design. It's now time to take the next step. Over the past few episodes, I have showcased a variety of documents to show how in design works, but how do we go about setting up such documents? Well, in the next video, we are going to look at a variety of common documents you may want to create using in design and how you can go about setting them up. So see you in the next video. 17. Setting up Common Documents In Adobe InDesign: Every great design begins with a perfect setup, and in Adobe in design, you can create anything from sunning posters to intricate multi page layouts, setting the stage for creativity to thrive. Earlier in the course, we looked at the vast range of document types that can be set up in in design. Now we've just learned about pages and how to manage them, it's time to take the first step and start creating documents. So let's jump in, get hands on and look at how we can set up a variety of common document types you can make in in design. So in in design, there are lots of different types of documents you can set up, which will largely depend on the type of publication you want to create. When creating a document in in design, it will fall within one of the following key categories, single sided, double sided, multiple slides, or multiple spreads. Working in in design can be very simple or it can be very complicated. Here I have a bunch of different document types open, and as you can see, I have a number of tabs across the top of my work area. We're about to look at a few common publication documents one may create using in design and look at how we can set them up. Now, you can follow along with this video by opening the sample documents in the worksheet available in the Download folder. The sample docs can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. The download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, tack into folder two practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. In the worksheet doc, I'll come down with a selection tool, I'll select the setting up common documents thumbnail I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own document. So over on the right, we have a bunch of sample document links in each of the four main categories. This time, I'll click on the first sample document thumbnail. I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and up we'll pop the sample document. So I'll come back to the worksheet, and I'll do this on every other sample document until they are all open along the top in different tabs. Now, for all these documents, I'm using a variety of fonts. If you have not already downloaded all the fonts for this course, all the fonts are free and can be acquired online. To view the documents as intended, I would recommend you check out the course fonts page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that are used in this course and where to get them. With all the fonts installed, you can open the documents and see them as intended. So the first common document to be created in design is probably the most simple to prepare. And this will be a document for a single page. Here, I have a document for a poster design, and if I zoom out here, we can see just one page. Now, setting up a document like this is easy. To create a new document, you can either come up to file, select New or you can use the keyboard shortcut Command plus N on Mac or Control plus N on PC. Upon click, we will be greeted with the new document window. From here, you have a few choices. If we look along the top, we can see saved print web and mobile. This document is for print, so I'll click on the Print tab and click on View all presets. From the selection, I'll click A three and then come and look carefully at the options to the right. First, I'll set the units to millimeters. I'll keep the orientation set to portrait. In this instance, I do not want facing pages, so I'll be sure to keep this unchecked. I'll leave the pages set to one. Now, down in the margin, I can set this to whatever I prefer. In this instance, I'll just type in 20 for the top. And with the link turned on, it will set this to all four parameters. Down in the bleed and slug, I can set this to three, as some printers require bleed. Now, if we look at the bottom of this panel, we can also see a little checkbox for preview. If we click this, we will see the document preview behind our new document window. If I move this across, we can see how the document is looking with our margin, page size, and bleed. Now, this can be useful if you want to preview your document before you create. I'll click to Create, and now we will see our new document with one page. If we press W on the keyboard, we can toggle on and off the guides and we can see the bleed around the outside and the margin space inside. Easy. Next, I have another single page document, but this time, instead of using a preset, we have a custom page size of a print product label. So I'll press Command plus N on Mac or Control plus N on PC. Upon clicking, we will be greeted with the new document window. So this time, I want to create a custom size. So this time, I'll go straight to the panel on the right. First, I'll set the units to millimeters. For Width, I'll type in 187, for height, I'll type in 76. In this instance, I do not want facing pages, so I'll be sure to check this off. I'll set the page to one. Down in the margin in this instance, I'll just type in 50 for the top, and it will set this to all four parameters. Down in the Bleed and Slug, I can set this to three Mil, as some printers require bleed. Again, if we want, we can click Preview to get a look at the document. I'll click Create, and upon click, we will see our new document with one custom page. And if you press W on the keyboard, we can toggle on and off preview mode. And here we can see the guides and we can see the bleed around the outside and the margin space inside. Next, I have another simple document one may create using in design. But this time, instead of a document for a single side print, we have two pages for a double side print. Here I have a document for a business card design, and if I zoom out here, we can see two pages both in the work area and in the pages panel. And in this instance, the pages are side by side. Again, setting up a document like this is easy. I'll press Command plus N on Mac or Control plus N on PC. Upon clicking, we will be greeted with the new document window. Again, this document is for print, but this time, it's with a custom size. So on this occasion, I won't be clicking any of the presets, but rather focusing on the panel on the right. I'll set the units to millimeters. For width, I'll type in 85. For height, I'll type in 55. I'll make sure to set the orientation to landscape. This instance, I do not want facing pages, so I'll be sure to uncheck the tick in that box. I'll type in two pages. Now, down in the margin, I can set this to whatever I prefer. In this instance, I'll just type in five for the top, and it will set this to all parameters. Down in the bleeding slug, I can set this to three Mil, as some printers require bleed. Again, if we want, we can click the preview to get a look at the document. I'll click Create, and upon clicking, we will see our new document with two pages. And if we press W, we can toggle between normal and preview mode where we can see the guides, the bleed lines around the outside, and the margin space inside. When you create a document like this with two pages, by default, the pages will be set on top of each other. Now, there may be instances where you want to pull up a page next to another. For example, in a business card dock to see the front and back next to each other at a glance. This can be done quite simply. With the pages panel visible, I'll click in the top right corner to open the menu, and from here, come down and click on Allow document pages to shuffle to uncheck the option. I can now click on page two in the Pages panel and drag it up next to the first page. As you do this, you will see a line that appears next to the page. On release, the page will snap next to it. Next, I'll click on the page tool in the pages panel. I'll click on the second page and just drag it to the right. And upon release, we will now create space between these two pages, and now we have one page on the left and one page on the right next to each other. In a document like this, we could create the front of the business card on the left and the back of the business card on the right. Easy. So next, I have another document one may create using in design. If I zoom out here, we can see that the pages are set into two spreads. If we click in the pages panel, we can see that this document consists of four individual pages set into two page spreads. This is a type of leaflet bifold document that will be printed in landscape across a single A four page and folded down the middle to outline two separate pages on each side. In design, you can set up a document where you can position pages right up against each other so you can work on each spread seamlessly, where you can set grids and so on for each page and then export a spread where the crop marks will clearly outline where to fold. So I'll press Command plus N on Mac or Control plus NO PC. Upon clicking, we'll be greeted with the new document window. So ultimately, this document will need to be A four, but I will have to set up two pages to make up that full page. So on print, I'll click to view all presets. I'll select A five, which is half the size of A four. Be sure to keep the orientation set to portrait. I do not want facing pages, so I'll uncheck the box, and I'm going to set the pages to two. And down in the margin, I can set this to whatever I prefer. In this instance, I'll just type in ten for the top, and it will set this to all four parameters. Down in the bleeding slug, I can set this to three mills as some printers require bleed and then click Create. Upon clicking, we will see our new document with two pages set on top of each other. If we press W on the keyboard, we can toggle between normal and preview mode where we can see the bleed line around the outside and the margin space inside. Next, with the pages panel visible, I'll click on the top right corner and open the menu. From here, I'll click down and click on Allow Document pages to shuffle to uncheck the option. I can now click on page two and the pages panel and drag it up and next to the first page. And as you do this, you will see a line that appears next to the page. Upon release, the page will snap to it, and now you will have created a spread to approximately the size of a landscape A four page. That creates the first side of the leaflet. To get the other side, I can click on page one in the page panel, press and hold Shift and click on page two to select multiple. Then I can right click on the selected page and simply click Duplicate spread. And if I zoom out, I now have two page spreads. And if I press W to toggle between normal and preview mode, here we can see the bleed go seamlessly around the outside of the spreads, and I can see the margins on each page. Easy. Now, it's important to mention that this technique can also be used when creating other documents with more than just one fold. For example, here's another document set up exactly the same way, but instead of two page spreads, here we have 23 page spreads. This is a trifold pamphlet and would also be printed on an A four landscape page, but folded twice instead of once, like in the example we just saw. In a document like this, instead of creating two separate pages and placing them together, you would create three separate pages and place them together. And if we look at another document, here is another example, but with five pages, that creates a concertina. Keep in mind, in in design, if you're creating leaflets, fliers, or pamphlets with more than one fold, you can create separate pages and place them together. So another common document to be created in in design is for an onscreen presentation. If I zoom out here, we can see that individual pages are simply stacked on top of each other. In this instance, my document has been set up in slides like a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. Now, this type of document would be good if you want to create a document for a screen presentation, pitch deck, brand guidelines deck, or a wide screen eBook. The page dimensions here are 16 by nine, which matches common monitor displays. I'll press Command plus N on Mac or Control plus NO PC. This time, I want to set up a digital document and with a custom size. So on this occasion, I wouldn't be clicking any of the presets, but rather focusing on the panel on the right. First, I'll set the units to pixels. For wits, I'll type in 1920, for height, I'll type in 1080, and I'll make sure to set the orientation to landscape. In this instance, I do not want facing pages, so I'll uncheck the box, and I'm going to set the pages to five. In the margins, in this instance, I'll type in 50 for top, and it will set this to all four parameters. Now, as this is not a print document, I won't need any bleed or slug, so I'll set this to zero and then click Create. Upon click, we will see our new document with four pages. If we zoom out, we can see our new pages on top of each other ready for content. And if we press W on the keyboard, we can toggle between normal and preview mode, and we can see the margin space inside. One last thing to mention, as this is a document for digital, it will help to come up to edit down to transparency blend space and set this to RGB. If this is set to CMK, then when you bring in some vibrant images, they may look desaturated. But if you set this to RGB, then all the colors will remain vibrant. Now, it's important to mention that this technique can also be used for print documents. Not every print document will be folded. For example, a calendar. A document such as this may include multiple single pages that might be bound from the top. Creating a document with multiple slides would allow for pages to be printed back to back and then bound at the top to create a document that could be turned over. Now, other documents you can set up can include multiple slides and slides positioned seamlessly next to each other. If I zoom out here, we can see a row of four separate slides and two rows of four slides sitting seamlessly together. So this is similar to the document we saw earlier where we set up the Print leaflet. Here we can use the same technique for social media posts and a digital carousel post. However, this time, instead of exporting as spreads, we can export separate JPEG files for each page, which we can use to upload to social media platforms to use as a carousel post. So I'll press Command N on Mac or Control N on PC. I'll set up my document just like we did previously. We'll set our units to pixels. For width, I'll type in 1080, for height, I'll type in 1080. I'll uncheck facing pages. I'll add four pages. Down in the margin, I'll just type in 50 for the top, and this will set this to all four parameters. I wouldn't need any bleed or slug, so I'll set this to zero and click Create. On click, we will see our new square document contains four pages on top of each other. So with the Pages panel visible, I'll click in the top right corner to open the menu. I'll click down and click on Allow Document pages to shuffle to uncheck the option. I'll click on page two in the Pages panel and drag it up and next to the first page. And as you do this, you will see a line appear next to the page. On release, the page will snap next to it, and now you will have created a spread. Now, in this instance, I do not want the page to be sitting right next to it, so I'll come and grab the page tool, click and drag the second page and pull to the right to put some space between. I'll do this technique for page three and four. I'll drag the pages up and use the page panel to put some space between it until I have four posts in one row with space between them like so. So here I have four pages where I can treat these as separate posts. But if I want to create a carousel post, at the bottom of the Pages panel, I can click Plus to add a new page, and this will set the new page below my four pages above. I'll click Plus to add a new page. I'll click on the new page in the Pages Panel and drag it up and next to page five. And this time, I want to keep the spread. Next, I'll click on my fifth page, press and hold Shift and click on page six, right click and duplicate the spread. Then I'll come and click on page seven and eight and click and drag to snap next to page six, and now we have four seamless pages together. This now creates a carousel canvas in which I can put my visual elements across seamlessly. And if I want to create space to create another carousel, I can click on page five while holding Shift, I can click on the last page, right click and duplicate the spread. And now I have four separate pages at the top for individual posts and two seamless spreads below for two carousel posts. Nice. So the next document example I have is a relatively large print document. If I zoom out here, we can see that at the top, the document leads with one cover page and continues with spread. If we look at the pages panel, we can see there are multiple spreads in this document. And at the bottom of the document, we can see another single page for the back cover. So I'll press Command N on MAC or control Nn PC. Upon click, we will be greeted with the new document window. For this document, we're going for A four. So on print, I'll click to view or presets and select A four. I'll be sure to keep the orientation set to portrait. This time, I want to turn on facing pages, so I'll be sure to check the box. For pages, I'll set this to eight. Down in the margin, I'll set this to whatever I prefer. In this instance, I'll just type in 20 for the top, and it will set this to all four parameters. Down in the bleed and slug, I can set this to three mills as some printers require bleed, and then click Create. Upon click, we will see our new document with eight pages. If we zoom out, we can see that we have the cover and back page at the top and bottom, and in between, we have the spread. If we press W on the keyboard to toggle between normal and preview mode, we can see the bleed line around the outside and margin space inside. That's how you can set up a document using facing pages to set up spreads easily. Remember that facing pages are best used with documents like magazines, books, and reports that contain a lot of information. So the next common document to be created in in design is a booklet for print. If I zoom out here, we can see that the pages are set into six spreads. The page dimension for this is again a four, and this time, you may notice something a little different from the previous document. Even though this is a document for print with multiple spreads, I do not have facing pages with a cover page at the start and a back cover at the end. For this document, I have the cover and back page at the top of the document in a seamless spread. Now, this can be done for a few reasons. Can be easier to compose your cover and back page together if you intend to have content running seamlessly across them, so it can be easier to have them next to each other. Also, having them together at the top can give you a clear odor where you can see how it will be printed. A lot of printers are happy to receive documents like this with a cover and back page set to the same spread. Again, setting up a document like this is easy. So I'll either come up to File New or use the keyboard shortcut Command plus NO MAC or Control plus NOPC. We'll be greeted with the new document window. Again, this document is for print, and this time is a standard print size. I'll click on the print tab and click on VwOPresets. I'll click A four, and then come and look carefully at the options to the right. I'll set the units to millimeters. In this instance, I do not want facing pages, so I'll uncheck the box. Going to start with about four pages to make some initial spreads, so I'll type four in pages. I'll be sure to keep the orientation set to portrait. Down in the margin, I'll just type in 20 for the top, and it will set this to all four parameters. Down in the bleeding slug, I can set this to three as some printers require bleed and click Create. Upon click, we will see our document with four pages. Looking back at our booklet document, things seem different. In our booklet document, we see spreads, but in my new document, they are single pages. So to manage the pages and set them up how I'd like, I will need to come to the pages panel. When using facing pages, it will create the spreads automatically. But without it, we will need to do this ourselves. With the pages panel visible, I'll click on the top right corner to open the menu, and from here, I'll come down and click on Allow document pages to shuffle to uncheck the option. Now I can click on page two in the Pages panel and drag it up and next to the first page. As you do this, you will see a line that appears next to the page. Upon release, the page will snap next to it, and now you will have created a spread. Do this once again. I'll grab page four, drag it up next to page three, and release. And if I zoom out, I now have two double page spreads, and if I press W on the keyboard, we can toggle between normal and preview mode, and we can see the bleed that goes seamlessly around the outside of the spread, and I can see the margin space inside each spread. And if I want to add more spreads to this document, I can come into the pages panel, click on the left page, press and hold Shift, and click on the right page, right click, duplicate spread, and here we can easily add more spreads to our booklet. Easy. So that's how you can set up a variety of common document types in in design. You can either choose from a preset or typing the values yourself for custom page sizes. You can set up single pages. You can place pages next to each other. You can create multiple slides, and you can set up double page spreads where you can either use facing pages or set up spreads without facing pages. In Design is a very flexible program, which can cater to any sort of modern publication for print or digital. So once we've set up a new document, we're going to want to start bringing in our visual elements. In in design, frames are the fundamental foundation that contains all the visual elements in a document. So in the next video, we're going to move on to the next step and look at how to work with frames in in design. So I'll see you in the next video. 18. Layers In Adobe InDesign: So whether you're working on a complex layout or just trying to keep your elements in check, in in design, layers are crucial to maintain a clean workflow. Earlier in the course, I introduced you to the layers panel. But in this video, we are going to go deeper, where I will encourage you to get hands on and this time, have a go and follow along with me. In this video, we are going to cover some crucial topics you will need to know when working with layers. So let's jump in and see how layers work. Now, when working with layers, it all revolves around the layers panel. If you cannot see your layers panel, you can come up to Window and click layers. So when working in design, every single visual element in your work area will be set on a layer. As I scroll through this pamphlet document, we can see that there are a variety of visual elements we have on the page. When working in in design, things can get complex pretty quickly. So to streamline your workflow, it can help to pay attention to and manage your layers. Now, if we look over in the layers panel, we can see that for this document, I have multiple layers. Type through to base. Here I use these layers as a way to manage my visual elements. On the base layer, I keep all the elements set in the background. As I toggle off the visibility of the base layer by clicking the eye symbol in the layers panel next to the name, we can see those elements disappear. Same with the images layer. Any images in my document are placed in the images layer, and as I toggle the visibility off, we can see them disappear. And now we are only left with the type elements in the document. All text in my document is placed on the type layer at the top. Type is normally the most legible item in a composition and will almost always be on top of everything else. So here I have placed the type layer at the top. So in in design, layers work a little differently from say Photoshop, where every single item is on its own layer. In design, layers work more like layer groups. If I come and click the drop down next to the name, I can scroll down where we can see all the parts that make up each layer and where they stack on top of each other. So each layer consists of parts. In the layers panel, you can also change the hierarchy of the layers. By simply clicking on a layer and dragging it up or down, you can snap it above or below another layer. So the good thing about setting layers up in this way is that you can easily lock a layer and its contents. Let's say I'm working on the type and I don't want to select any other element on the page by mistake, I can click the Lock square next to the other layer names in the Layers panel, and now I'll only be able to click on elements in the type layer without accidentally selecting any other objects on other layers. This is a simple way to keep everything organized and improve workflow, especially if you have a lot going on in your compositions. Now, it's also important to remember your layers when working with parent pages. So here is a more complicated document consisting of multiple spreads. If I come into the pages panel and click into the parent pages, we can see that there are some items in here. When adding elements to your parent pages, make sure to place them in the correct layer so they are visible when applied to your pages in the right hierarchy. In this document, for example, we have type images and base as individual layers. Any type placed on the parent page should be placed on the type layer. So when applied to the document, it will appear on top of any images or objects on the layers below. So back into the first document, as I click through multiple frames in the comp, I can also see that some have different bounding box colors. This will represent which layer the visual element resides on. And if we press W on the keyboard to enter into normal mode, we will see all the bounding boxes and their colors. If I click on the text frame, we can see these are green, and that is because they are on the type layer in the layers panel, which we can see is labeled green. Now, if I come and click on an image in the background, we can see this is red, matching the image layer in the layers panel. So in design, the frames can also let you know which layer they are set to. This can help you keep everything on the right layer and keep you on top of your layer structure and organization. Now, you can also customize this. If you come to the layers panel and click on a layer, then right click and select layer options, up will pop a menu, and in here, you can click the drop down and change the color of the layer. Easy. Now, in in design, there are lots of ways you can interact with the objects in layers in order to get control of your composition. So let's jump into a document, get hands on and look at how we can manage layers. To demonstrate layers, I recommend opening up this practice document I have prepared, especially for this exercise. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two, Practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. And if we scroll to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we are going to look at the Layers worksheet. I'll select the Working with Layers thumbnail. Now, I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own document. So in this worksheet, you can see what we are going to cover, and below, we have some documents we will be referring to during this video. Begin, I'll click on the Practice Document thumbnail. I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail and up we pop our practice document. So here is a document that contains four collage compositions. If we look in the Layers panel, we can see just one layer called layer one. Now, when creating a document by default, you will always start with layer one. So what I have done here is create a bunch of collage compositions, but I have not managed them in layers. In this instance, there are a lot of objects in the work area. Having multiple objects on one layer can make working with a document difficult. So now I want to manage my layers to make the document easier to work with. So the first thing I'll do is simply name the current layer and I'll call this images. Then I'll come down to the bottom right and hit the add new layer button, and I'll name this type and make sure it's set to the top. I'll create a new layer, name this base, and this time click and drag it to the bottom. Now, to select our objects, we can use the selection tool. Now, in this instance, I want to select the background circle image and place this on the base layer. But as I put my mouse cursor over the background and click, we can see that there are lots of visual objects and frames on top. Right now, it's quite difficult to select the background directly because other objects are in the way. This is a common issue that can occur in design when you have lots of objects on the page. So a really useful tip here, if we press and hold Command on Mac or Control on PC and press and click, as we click, we will start to select through objects immediately below the mouse cursor. If we click once, we'll select the layer on top. Click again, we'll select the layer behind that, and if we keep clicking, we will eventually get to the object that we want. With its selected, I'll press Command X on MAC or Control X on PC to cut. I'll click on the base layer, come up to edit and click on Paste in Place, and this will paste the background on the new base layer. So I'll zoom out and just do that again real quick for the other document elements in each collage composition. I'll press and hold command on Mac or Control on PC and start to click, click through my object layers, cut and paste them onto the base layer until they are all on their own layer. I know if I toggle the visibility of my base layer, we can see that these objects are now sitting nicely in their own layer at the bottom. Next with the selection tool, I'll click on the first type object, press and hold Shift and select the rest of them across each page. I'll press Command plus X on Mac or Control plus X on PC to cut. I'll click on the type layer. Come up to edit and click on Paste in Place. This will paste the type frames on the new type layer. So just like that, I was able to quickly organize my very busy composition into something a little more organized. And as I toggle the visibility of each layer, we can see they are all residing on the right layers. Now as we move our mouse cursor over the object frames, we will now see different colors, which correspond to the layers in which they now reside. And if we press W on the keyboard to enter into normal mode, we will see all the bounding boxes and their colors. Now, if, for example, I wanted to group all the elements on the left, an easy way to do this would be to toggle off the visibility of the text and base layer, and now it's really easy to click and drag over all the elements. With the mold selected, I can simply right click and select group or press Command plus G on MAC or Control plus G on PC to group them. Upon click, I can now click on the group and move this around. If I want to maintain the group but move one item individually, I can double click into the group, select the item, move it around, click off, and that will still maintain the group. So now I have successfully grouped these objects. I'll toggle back on the visibility of the base layer and the type layer. So now I'll click on the group, right click and select group, and this will split them back into their individual objects. Now, up to this point, we have talked about how layers are structured in the layers panel. If we click the drop down on the images layer, we can see that layers can include lots of elements in their own layer hierarchy. So it will help to think of layers in the layers panel like layer groups. Another thing to keep in mind when working with layers is their object arrangement. As you add new objects to your composition, they are quickly going to build up and there will be times when you will want to manage their hierarchy. If I click the circle visual element, for example, right now, this object is on the same layer as the image object below, but currently it's set on top of that object in the layer object hierarchy. So now, for example, I want to push this behind the hand image. I can do this by first selecting it. Then right clicking, come down to arrange and send to back. Now, let's say I want to take these dots here and bring them to the front. Again, I can select, right click, come to arrange and this time, click to bring to front. This is an easy way to arrange your object in your compositions. However, if you have a lot of visual elements, like I do sending them to the back or bringing them straight to the front can be quite clunky. You might want to finnest the hierarchy in a more refined way. To do this, you can use the keyboard shortcuts. So this time, I'll click the hand image and press and hold Command on Mac or Control on PC, then either press open square bracket or closed square bracket. As you press this, you can bring your image forward or backwards in steps. Can be good if you don't want to send an image directly to the back, but just move it back or forward a few steps in a composition. Now, we also have the ability to lock individual layers. For example, I'll click on this image here. I can either right click and select Lock or press Command L on MAC or Control L on PC. Upon locking an image, you will see a little lock symbol. Now, to unlock the object, you can either press and hold Command on Mac or Control on PC and click on the lock icon, and this will release, or you can come into the layers panel. Click the dropdown on the layer it resides on. Scroll down and you will see the lock here. If you click this, you will unlock that object on the layer. Now, in in design, you can also use the Layers panel to target a layer. If you have a busy document with lots of content and you lose track of an item, we can come into the Lays panel. I'll hit the dropdown on the images layer and toggle down to a specific object on the layer. For example, I'll right click on this layer here called Jessica Parsons, and then if I click Select and find item, it will take me directly to that object. So this can be really useful if you want to search for a particular object in a layer. Now, another aspect of layers we should keep in mind is vector groups. Now, if we come to the first page and select the square texture here, if we double click, we will see that these are individual squares making up this object. Sometimes you may use a pattern or texture that you may have created, say, in Illustrator, and pasted it directly into in design. For example, this square composition was originally created in Illustrator, to which I copied and pasted the entire thing into in design. Upon pasting into in design, it pasted in as a single object, but it does, in fact, contain individual vectors. With it selected, if we come into the layers panel and hit the drop down on the image layer and scroll down, on the right, we can find it by looking for the solid color square. And if I click the drop down here, we can see the objects that this contains. In in design, when you paste in objects, they could exist as layer groups within a layer group. Now, if I right click, I could ungroup all of these, but for now, I want to keep them in this grid composition. Now, there is one last thing I want to discuss, and that's layer options. If we come over to a layer in the panel, we can right click on the layer and select layer options. Click, we will see a menu that appears, and from here, we can rename the layer, change the color of the layer labels, and toggle options to show the layer, lock the layer, print layer, suppress text wrap when layer is hidden, show guides or lock guides. Now, one of these options that is of particular interest is the print layer option. So if we come back to the worksheet and this time open the sample letterhead document, with the selection tool, I'll click on the sample document thumbnail. I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail and app will pop our practice document. Now, the print layer option controls whether a layer's content is included in print or export files. For example, here I have a document for a letterhead. To create the letterhead, I have some filler texture so I can gauge how the elements will be placed around it. If I press W on the Keeve or to toggle between normal and preview mode, in preview mode, we won't be able to see the text. And look over in the as panel, we will see this layer here called demo text. And if we look closely, we can see that the layer name is in Italics. If we right click on this layer and click on layer options, we will see that the print layer checkbox is unchecked. This means that the layer will not print or export. Keep in mind that by default layers are set to print. By unchecking the print layer box we'll exclude that layer from the final output. This is useful for visual elements you may not want to print, such as guides, notes or interactive content like men. Giving you flexibility to manage visible but non printable elements during the design process. When you export a document like this, anything on this layer will not be present. So those are the key principles you will need to know when working with layers in in design. Quite a lot to take in, right? But one of the most important things to know in order to navigate and manage your compositions with ease. So now we are all clued up on how to use layers. It's now time to move on to the next subject. See you in the next video. 19. Type In Adobe InDesign: Typography is the heart of every great design, and in Adobe in design, it becomes your most powerful tool to communicate, captivate, and inspire. Working with type is one of the most important things you will need to know when working in in design. Type is a crucial element in any design, and in design offers the most powerful tools to help you manage and style it effectively. In design is all about harnessing type and managing type to make your text look amazing, whether it's for a magazine, a brochure or a small business card. So in this video, we're going to look at all the ways in which in design can help you create and format type. And there is a lot of things to know. So get comfortable and let's jump into Indesign and check it out. So, type in in design, this is going to be a big one. So here I have a few document examples showcasing some of the wonderful ways you can format type. Here is an example of a booklet where the type can be creative with flair with font pairings. And here is an example of a text heavy document where the type needs to be more practical and systematic. So two different approaches there. When working in design, you can get really creative with your type, or if you're working on larger documents like reports, you can get into the nitty gritty and format and manage large chunks of information. At this point in the course, it will help to be aware of all the wonderful ways you can use type for any design approach. So let's get hands on with Type and look at how we can manage and format it. To do this, let's jump into a worksheet. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we will be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two Practice Files and open the practice worksheets in design file. And if we scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we are going to look at the type worksheet. So with the selection tool, I'll select the working with Type thumbnail. Now, I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own document. In this practice session, you learn all the crucial ways you can format type in in design, giving you the insight and skills to build professional and visually appealing compositions. Here in this worksheet, you can see what we are going to cover. We are going to start simple for those of you who may be new to in design, and then we are going to go all the way up to some of the more advanced type features. So let's scroll down to the second spread, and here we can see a number of type features. So at a glance here, you can see a lot of formats that can be applied to type, and these are the following things we are going to look at in this video. So let's scroll onto the next spread and have a go and see all the ways we can work with type in in design. Now, if you have the worksheet open, if you press W on the keyboard, you can toggle between normal and preview mode. For this session, I'd recommend you proceed in preview mode. This will just ensure that we don't see all the guides in the background so we can focus on the type. So when working with Type and in design, there are two key panels you want to pay close attention to the Character panel and the Control panel. If you cannot see these panels, you can come up to Window and click on Control or into Type and select character. I like to keep my Control panel at the top of my screen and my character panel in the bottom right. To begin, we are going to start off with a simple text frame. To create a text frame, you can do one of two things. You can come over to the tools panel and select one of the frames or shape tools. In this instance, I'll select the rectangle tool and I'll click to draw out a frame. Now, with a frame in your work area, you can simply click the type tool, then click on the empty frame, and that will then become a type frame with the type prompt ready to enter in your type. I'll press Escape to deselect the text frame and delete that. Another way is to simply select the type tool, then come and drag to create a frame and upon release, it will become a type frame with the type prompt ready to enter in your text. Here I'll just place in type here. Now, by default, it will set my type to Minion Pro at size 12 points. Keep in mind, this is just my settings. You may have something different here. So once we have added type into the frame, we can select it. Now, when working with typing in design, you can keep an eye on two panels, the control panel and the character panel. Now, they both do the same. However, your control panel can be set to the top where you can see other formatting features. So first, I'll click on the top dropdown to browse the fonts I have installed, or I'll just type in Aerial into the box to show the list of fonts available, and I'll select Aerial regular. Now if I come to the character panel, we can see the font is now changed as well, and we have other options to format the type. So with the type selected, this time in the character panel, we can change the font size by either clicking the up and down buttons or by typing in a value. So I'll just type in 50. Keep in mind, this can also be done up in the Control panel. Now, once you have some type selected, if you want to deselect, you can simply press Escape on the keyboard and you will shift to the selection tool. Now, if we press W on the keyboard, we can toggle between normal and preview mode, and we can see the frame outline we just created. Okay, so that is as simple as it gets when creating some type. Let's now look at some types of formatting. So once you have a type frame, it can be really easy to duplicate. With the selection tool, I'll click on the type frame to select it, press and hold Alt and simply click and drag below, and upon release, we will duplicate the frame. So once you have a type frame, you can edit the type in two ways. You can click on the frame with the selection tool and then double click into the frame to select the type. I'll press escape to deselect, or without I frame selected, you can press T on the keyboard for the type tool, and simply click into the frame once and click and drag to select your type. So looking in the Control panel, next to the font name, there are a bunch of options we have here. If we click the first one, we can simply set the type to all caps. Here, we can underline the and we can put a stroke through the type, and I'll press Command Z on Mac or Control Z on PC to undo that. Now, if I just type in 19th of May, I'll select the type and click to toggle off all caps. I'll select the T HH, and we can apply a superscript. If I type in CO two, we can select the two and add a subscript. Now, I'll just go back and enter in Type here. With it all selected, there is another option you have here called small caps. So I'll click back on the Small Caps button to go back to my plain type. With it selected, back up in the Control panel, we can click the drop down below for font name, and this will display any additional fonts in the family. Keep in mind, we can also do this in the character panel. So in the character panel, I'll click the drop down below the font name, and in this case, I'll click on bold. Now, a really useful feature in Indesign to keep in mind is change case. If you accidentally type into in design in all caps or someone gives you some text that happens to be in all caps or even title case, changing it to sentence case can be really easy. So next, I'll press Caps Lock and type in Type here. With the type selected, come up to type, scroll down to change case. And from here, you can select what you want. In this instance, I'll hit sentence case and boom, really good for saving you some time. So with the type selected, changing the color is as easy as coming down to the bottom of the tools panel, making sure the fill color is selected, then picking a color from the swatches panel or double clicking on the fill color and select a color from the RGB color space view. I'll press escape to deselect, I'll press T and click into to select the type. And this time, I can apply a gradient from a swatch I made earlier. With it selected, we can click on the gradient tool, then click and drag over the type to choose the direction the gradient goes in. Easy. With the type selected, I can click on the fill color and just come back and add a solid black. Another formatting option you have is called skew. Now, this is a strange one, but nonetheless, one we should cover. I'll select the type. Come up and hit the all caps button, and over to the right, we can see an icon, slightly tilted, this is called skew, false Italic. By toggling this up, I'll go for a value of ten. We can add a slant to the type to apply a false italic effect. With the type selected, I'll click in the skew value and set this back to zero. Next to skew, we have one for horizontal scale. By toggling this, you can add artificial width to your type. I'll push mine up to 110%. On this occasion, I might have to press Escape and use the selection tool to just pull out the width of my text frame to fit the text inside. I'll set this back to 100 and likewise, with vertical scale, by toggling this, you can add artificial height to your text. I'll push mine up to 120%, then click into the value and set this back to 100% and press escape to deselect the type. Now, when working in in design with type, you will often find that your frames can be all shapes and sizes. And when you have a few on your page, it can start to get crowded. Now there is a really useful tip to keep in mind to keep you on top of your frames. So with the selection tool, I'll click the bottom right anchor point of my type frame and just drag it down and across like so. Right now, I have a large type frame with just a small amount of text inside. Now, you can either click and drag the handle in or simply double click on the bottom right anchor point of the frame, and the frame will collapse to fit the content inside. So should you find yourself wanting to quickly reduce the frame to fit your type, remember, double click the bottom right anchor point. So right now, I have some type in my frame here with a particular format applied. Another cool feature to save you time is the ability to clone the formatting from one piece of type to another. So let's just say, with a type tool, I quickly make another type frame below. And in this, I'll just place in test type. And as I type this in, we can see that it has the default font applied again. Now, you may find yourself in instances like this where you have type frames with some text inside, and you might want to quickly apply a particular format to the type that exists in another frame. So a quick way to do this is if we double click into the frame and select all the type, if we then come over to the tools menu, we can click the Eyedropper tool. With this selected, if we carefully come over to some text that we want to copy the format, if we click on the type with the eyedropper, the format will be copied and applied to our new type. Easy. A useful trick to keep in mind to save you some time there. So that's a bunch of quick formatting you can apply to your type. Now, when you have type in a frame, you can then look to align it in the frame. I'll make sure to click to enter into my type frame and place the cursor at the start. When you have the cursor at the ready, you can come up to the Control panel and click a series of alignment tools. First, we will look at the horizontal align tools. Here I can click the aligned center. I can click to align to the right or back again to the left. So I'll click to align to the center, and I'll press escape to deselect. With a selection tool, if we simply select the frame back up to the control panel, we can see some further align tools. This time we will look at the vertical align tools. Here we can click to align center in the frame vertically, and we can click to align to the bottom of the frame. So top, middle, and bottom. For now, I'll click the aligned center of the frame with a text frame selected, press and hold Alt and simply click and drag below to duplicate. I'll press T and click into the frame and select the type. I'll come up to hit all caps. I'll change the font to bold and set the size to 25 points. So if you want to add space between all your letters, we can tweak the tracking. The type selected, we can either come into the Control panel or come into the character panel and either click up or down on the tracking tool, or I'll come into the value box and type in 200 and press Enter. Another quick tip is to use the keyboard shortcut. With the type selected, if we press and hold Alt on the keyboard, we can press left and right, and this will toggle the tracking in and out. So I'll press and hold Alt and press left until my tracking is set back to zero. Now, if we want to edit the space between individual letters, then here we will want to change the kerning. This time, click precisely where you want to edit the kerning. In this case, I'll click and place the cursor after the letter T. Then up into the Control panel or into the character panel, we can either click up and down on the kerning tool or I'll come into the measure box and type in 200 and press Enter. Another quick tip is to use the keyboard shortcut. With the cursor in the right place, if we press and hold Alt on the keyboard, we can press left and right, and this will toggle the kerning in and out. So I'll press and hold Alt and press left until my kerning is back to zero, and I'll press Escape to deselect the text. With this selection tool, I'll click on the type frame to select it. Press and hold Alt and simply click and drag below to duplicate. I'll press T and click into the frame and select all the type. I'll press Command C on Mac or Control C on PC to copy. I'll press right to set my cursor at the end and press Enter to add a hard return, and I'll press Command V on MAC or Control V on PC to paste. I'll select the bottom row of text, change the font to regular and type in for leading. I'll press Command A on Mac or Control A on PC to select all. And with all the types selected, I can come up into the Control panel or into the character panel, and this time, either click up and down on the leading tool or I'll come into the value box and type in 40 and press Enter. Another quick tip is to use the keyboard shortcut. With the type selected, we can press and hold Alt on the keyboard, where we can press up and down, and this will toggle the leading. So I'll press and hold Alt and press up and down until my leading is set to 34. I'll press Escape to deselect. With the selection tool, I'll click on the type frame above, Press and hold Alt and simply click and drag below to duplicate. I'll press T and click into the frame and select the type. And now I'll type in h2o. I'll select the type and change the font to size 40. I'll click to select the number two. Then I'll come up into the Control panel, and this time, click down on the baseline tool until the value is set to minus ten. So this is a little like the subscript we did earlier, but this gives you much more control. Here you can change how much the baseline shift is applied, and you can also change the font size of the character as well. When applying subscript, this will transform the type into a very small type format, which we cannot change. However, here you can toggle the font size to whatever we like. So those are a lot of formatting options you can apply to type in in design, all of the standard stuff you really want to be aware of. So now let's look at some of the more dynamic features in in design. First, we'll start by looking at some diagonal type. Now, it's not very common for one to do diagonal type in in design, but in the unique instance where you'd like to try and use it, there is an easy way to do it in in design. First, we need to create a type frame. So I'll come over to the type frame with a type aligned center in the frame, and with the selection tool, I'll click the frame and press and hold Alt and drag across to quickly make a duplicate. Now, with my text frame in place, if we come over to the tools menu and click and hold on the scale tool, we will see a tool called Share the share tool allows you to slant or skew an object such as text, images, or shapes along a specific axis. This tool can be used to create a distorted or angled effect, giving your design a dynamic three dimensional look. This tool will allow you to manipulate the type frame to add an angle to it. Now, when using this tool you will also need to pay close attention to the reference point on the far left of the Control panel. Here you can see some squares, and this basically represents the reference point of the frame. In this instance, I'm going to click the middle and with the share tool selected, I'll come over to my type frame, press and hold shift, and on the right side, I'll just click and drag up like so. As I do this, we will add a new diagonal dimension to the frame. And as you can see, the type is now at a slight angle inside the type frame. Now, one of the cool things about this is if we put our mouse on the left or right, middle anchor point, we can click and drag, and we can see that the type frame will extend at the same angle. Nice. So another cool feature is type along a path. To do this is pretty easy. So first, we need to have a path in order to apply our text. So I'll come over to the tools menu and quickly grab the pen tool. I'll come over into my worksheet and click once on the first point, then click on the next point, once again on the other, and then finally on the last one, just to quickly draw a line. Into the tools menu, I'll make sure the stroke is selected, and I'll set this to black. Back over to my pen tool. I'll click and hold and grab the convert direction point tool. Then I'll just click and drag on my points like so to add some curves to the line while holding shift. So once you have a path in design, applying type to it is pretty straightforward. Back over to the tools menu this time, I'll click and hold on the Type tool and select the type on a Path tool. With the tool selected, if we come back over to the path and move the mouse cursor over the stroke until I see a plus icon, then upon click, we will now see the tool prompt at the start of the path ready to type. So I'll add in Type along a path. Double click to select the type and start applying some type formatting. Now, if we press escape to deselect the type with the selection tool, if we click back on our stroke, we will see some small details here which will allow us to tweak the type on the stroke. First off, on the far left, we can see a large line. If we carefully put our mouse cursor over this, we will see a little icon under the mouse cursor change, and we can see this little arrow where we can click and drag, and this will alter where the type begins on the line. Another detail to look out for is if we look around halfway along the stroke, we will see this little blue line. If we put our mouse cursor over this, again, we will see another small icon where we can click and drag this down, which will set the type above or below the stroke. Now, there are even more options we can consider when applying type to a stroke. If we come up to type and scroll down to type on a path, we can come across and click on options. Upon click, a menu will appear, and we can see here there's quite a few options we can consider. The first one is effect. If we click on the drop down, we can see there are a number of options we can apply. If I scroll through these from rainbow down to gravity, we can see the effect that these are having on the type. The next option is actually quite an important one, which is the align option. If we click the drop down, we can toggle how the type is aligned to the stroke, which can be quite helpful here. We can go from ascender to baseline, and as I click through these, we can see the effect that is having. And I'll just click Cancel. And lastly, with the type along a curve selected, if we come over to the tools menu and make sure the stroke color is selected, we can simply set this to transparent, and now the type is sitting on a curve without the line below. Easy. Now another cool feature is type along a vertical path. Now, this can be done similar to type along a curved stroke. First, we'll need a stroke in order to apply the type. So I'll come over to the tools menu, click the stroke tool, and I'll click on my first point and click and drag down to the second point and set my stroke to a size of 0.5. I'll come back to the tools menu, click Type along a path, and click once, and I'll place in Type here. Right now, you can see the default setting applied to the type. I'll set the font to aerial regular, click the all caps button, come up to type down to type on a path, and click on type option. The menu appears for the effect, we can choose stair step. For the aligned setting, we can choose center, and for the two path setting, set this to top and click Okay. Now we will see the type is aligned vertically down the center of the stroke. Now, if we want to fill this along the stroke, we can come up to the Control panel and hit the justify all line type button and increase the tracking. If we come over to the tools menu and make sure the stroke color is selected, we can simply set this to transparent, and now the type is sitting on a vertical stroke path without a line below. So next comes type along a circle. Again, this can be done similar to type along a curve stroke, though, first, we need a circle stroke in order to apply the type. So I'll come over to the tools menu, click on the circle shape tool, I'll click on the first point, click and drag down to the bottom right point, release to draw my circle and set the stroke size to no 0.5. Back into the tools menu, again, I'll select the type on a path tool. Come over to the circle. Now, as you place your mouse cursor over the stroke, you will see a plus icon under the mouse pointer. Now, wherever you click on the circle is where you will start the text prompt. I'll carefully click right at the top of the circle and add in type around a circle. I'll set the font to 30, set the font to aerial regular, and set the tracking to 300. Now, if we press escape to deselect the type with the selection tool, if we click back on our circle, we will see some small details here, which will allow us to tweak the type on the stroke just like we saw earlier. Again, we can see a large line at the start of the type, but also at the end. If we carefully put our mouse cursor over these, we will see a little icon under the mouse cursor change, and we can see this little arrow pointing either left or right, which we can click and drag, and this will alter where the type begins and ends on the circle stroke. Another little detail to look out for is the line on the stroke that you can click and drag to change the alignment of the type along the stroke. If we look around halfway along the stroke, we can see this little blue line. Again, if we come up to type, scroll down to path on a type, we can come across and click on some options and again, toggle the properties here. So those are the key type along a path options you can use in in design. Now, another really cool feature in in design that you don't see very often is responsive type frames. Now, as a seasoned user of in design, frames can sometimes be clumsy and can be a pain to keep on top of to maintain a neat workflow. One feature in design has that can help is responsive type frames. Let's take a quick look at how this works. So back up to the previous spread, I have some examples here. Now, if I click into this frame, select all and start to type some text, you will see that the frame extends with the type. If I remove the type, it also contracts. This can be great to create type frames with applied styles like strokes, colors, and margins. And if you add and change the type, it will respond. This can be massively helpful and save you a huge amount of time and help with your styling. So let's look at how we can set up a responsive type frame. First, I'll come over to the tools menu and we can do one of two things. We can either click on the Type tool or the frame tool. I'll just come and grab a frame tool and come into the canvas and just click and drag to draw a frame. I'll press T to activate the Type tool, then click once into the frame, then I'll carefully add type inside a frame. For the sake of this tutorial, I'll select all the text, change the font to aerial bold, change the font size to 15 points, and press Escape to deselect the type. Once you have a frame with some type, we can tweak the settings to create the responsive feature. To do this is easy. With the selection tool and the type frame selected, simply right click on the frame and come to text frame options. Upon click, the text frame option menu will appear. In here, there will be a number of options we can customize. On the left, we will see options general through two footnotes. The first option general will allow us to change a number of settings. The first setting we want to focus on is the inset spacing. This will add a small margin inside the frame. So to begin, I'll come down and click on the preview icon in the bottom left. Then I'll set the top to three mill, press tab, and move to the next value. Now, due to the link icon being applied, this will apply 3 millimeters to all the values. And now in the type frame, we can see an inset space applied. Okay, so now the responsive part. Next, we're going to click on the auto size option on the left. Then we can click on the drop down for auto sizing and choose a number of options. For this, we are going to click height and width. Now, upon clicking this, you may notice that the text inside the frame collapses. What we need to do here is come and click the minimum height and no line breaks constraint options. Here we'll keep the minimum height set to zero. And with the no line breaks ticked, we will now see that the frame in the dock is now filled nicely. And if we click Okay and double click into the type frame, we can now change the text, and we will see that this will be responsive. Now it's just a case of applying some stars to this frame. I'll press escape to deselect the type. With the selection tool, I'll click the frame, come over to the stroke options and set the stroke and fill color, and that will apply some simple effects to the frame. With the frame selected, if I press and hold alt and click and drag down, I can quickly duplicate the text frame, apply some new effects, and now we've got two type frames on top that are responsive. However, notice on this occasion, the text is aligned center. So with the selection tool, I'll click both frames, right click and click on text frame options. Back on auto size. This time, pay close attention to the squares. Here I'll click on the middle left point. Click Okay. Align my frames to the left, and now as I add more text, the frames will be aligned to the left. Nice. The last technique we are going to look at is setting type to outlines. To set type to outlines is pretty simple. First, you will need to have a frame with some type inside. And for the sake of this tutorial, I have prepared this frame earlier. With this selection tool, if we click on a type frame with type inside, we can come up to type and click on Make Outlines. Upon click, we will convert the type into frames. If we press A to activate the Direct Selection tool and place our mouse cursor over the area, we will see the anchor points that make up the new frames, which you can now click and drag to modify if you wish. Though keep in mind, once type is set to outlines, it can no longer be edited. So that's all the key insights you need to know about formatting type in in design. Now we are all clued up on how to use type, it's now time to move on to the next step. When working with type in in design, one of the most crucial elements to consider is the font you choose for your text. So in the next video, we're going to explore fonts and see the features in design offers, allowing you to make the most of your type choices for powerful professional designs. See you in the next video. 20. Fonts In Adobe InDesign: When working with type in in design, one of the most crucial elements to consider is the font you choose for your text. Adobe in design offers a wide range of features to help you select and work with fonts effortlessly, including seamless integration with Adobe fonts, advanced font previews, and simple tools for switching between styles and weights. Fonts aren't just about text. They're a core part of a design and play a huge role in making your designs perfect. In the last video, we focused heavily on text formatting. So in this video, we're taking the next step to look at the features in design offers to work with fonts. So let's explore fonts and in design and see how to make the most of your type choices for powerful professional designs. So to get hands on with fonts in in design, let's jump into this worksheet. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two, practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. If we scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we are going to look at the fonts worksheet. So with the selection tool, I'll select the Working with Fonts thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own document. So here in this worksheet, you can see what we are going to cover. And below, we have a sample document which we will be referring back to shortly. And if we come to the second spread, we can see what we are going to be focusing on in this video. So the first thing to keep in mind when working with fonts in in design is missing fonts. One of the most common instances that will occur when opening documents, especially from other people, is to get the message that a font is missing. If you open a document and you do not have the fonts installed, the first thing you will be greeted with is a missing font alert. From this alert, you can do one of two things. You can attempt to replace the font or you can just skip. For now, if you're following along and you see this message, just hit the skip button. When working with a document in in design with a missing font in normal mode, you will see the text highlighted in pink. As I scroll through this document, here you can see some issues I'm having where I don't have the font installed. For this document and throughout this course, we're going to be using a range of fonts. If you have not already downloaded all the fonts for this course, these are free fonts that you can acquire online. To get these fonts, I would recommend you check out the course fonts page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that we are going to be using in this course and where to get them. Simply click the links, and these will take you straight to where you can download them. If you ever see this message, the first thing you're going to need to do is install the fonts. So before continuing on with this episode, be sure to get the fonts and install them. Simply close this document, install the fonts, open it back up again, and you should be able to follow along just fine. And now I have the fonts installed, and there is no more issues in this document. So when working with fonts and in Design, there are two key panels you want to pay close attention to the character panel and the control panel. If you cannot see these panels, you can come up to Window and click on Control or inter type and select character. I like to keep my Control panel at the top of my screen and my character panel in the bottom right. So an important feature to keep in mind when working with fonts in Indesign is your default font. So if I just create a new document real quick and create a simple text block and enter in some type, I'll add in Hello world. In this instance, my default font is set to Minion Pro at a size of 12. Now, this may be different for you, but whatever the case, if you want to change the default font that is set when you create a new document, simply close all your documents, then come up to type, across to font, then choose your preferred font. You can also set the size here. Now, the next time you create a document and add a text frame, you will see your new font applied. Easy. The next thing to keep in mind when working with fonts is previewing. In Adobe and design, the font preview feature allows you to see how different fonts will work in your text before making a selection, helping you make quick and informed font choices. So in the worksheet with a type tool, let's click to select the first text sample. Then if we come up to the Control panel or into the control panel and click on the font dropdown menu, as you hover over each font name, a live preview will automatically update in your selected text, allowing you to see how each option will appear in real time. Notice, at the top of the font choice, you have several options here. From the far left, you can click to filter Fonts by Characteristic, which can help you narrow down your search. Notice, as you check these, your font choices will change in the selection bar. Next to this, you have the favorites. From here, you can select any font you may have highlighted as your favorite previously. Next to this, you have recently added. This can be good to go to to help locate a font you have recently installed and used. Next to this, you have activated fonts. Here is a list of all the Adobe fonts you have installed. Next to this, you can click a drop down to select what preview text is displayed, and on the far right, you can click to change the size of the preview. The preview feature is particularly useful when designing, as it allows you to experiment with various font styles, weights, and looks without needing to apply each one individually. This can speed up the creative process, enabling you to quickly try different fonts until you find the best match for your designs tone aesthetic. Previewing fonts, you can ensure that your choice aligns with the overall feel of your layout, whether you're aiming for readability, elegance or impact. Another quick tip, as well as scrolling through the list, you can also type directly into the font, search bar to filter fonts by name, which can help speed up your process. So next, we have font families. Now, a font family is a group of related typefaces that share a consistent design but vary in weight, style, or width, such as regular, bold, italic or light. In design, font families allow you to create cohesive and versatile typographic style by using different variations within the same family, which helps maintain consistency across your design. If we come and select the text in the typold frame, we have seven lines of text. If we select the middle, come to the control panel or into the character panel and click on the drop down menu under the font name, we will see any available fonts in the family. Here we can see extra thin all the way through to black. Here, you may use bowl for headlines, regular for body text, and italic for emphasis within the same font family. This flexibility makes font families ideal for developing a clear visual hierarchy, guiding readers through your layout with subtle but effective differences in style that still feel unified and professional. So when using fonts, be sure to check out the families dropdown. Now, another useful feature to keep in mind is find and replace font. If you have a document with a missing font or you just want to change it, you can come up to type, scroll down to find replace font. Upon click Apple Pop a menu, which will tell you how many fonts are in your document with a list of them below. Here you can select a font from the top box and choose a font below from the menu to replace. For example, down in this text frame, I have some text set to the font Base New bold. Here I'll select on Base new bold in the list above. Down below, I'll click the dropdown and look for the font called made Tommy Soft. Choose medium from this font style, then click Change A, click done, and that will change the font. Easy. So next comes a feature that is huge in Adobe in design, and that is Adobe fonts. Adobe fonts is a vast library of high quality license fonts that are available to Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers. With Adobe fonts, you can browse, activate and use thousands of fonts directly within design and other applications like Illustrator and Photoshop. In in design, Adobe fonts integrates seamlessly, allowing you to activate fonts instantly without needing to download or install them manually. Once a font is activated in Adobe fonts, it becomes immediately available across all creative cloud applications. So you can use it in Indesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and more without needing to instantly install manually. This integration simplifies font management and makes it easy to maintain consistency across projects, especially in collaborative settings. You share an in design file, anyone with a creative cloud subscription can automatically sync the fonts, ensuring your design displays exactly as intended, regardless of who opens the file. Also, if you use multiple computers, you can sync one font on one computer and open up a document and use it on another. So working with Adobe fonts in a document is easy, and there are two ways you can go about selecting and applying Adobe fonts. The first option is to work with Adobe fonts directly in an in design document. So let's come and select this piece of text on the second page. Then come up to the font selection in either the control panel or the character panel. On the drop down, you will see an option here, find more. If you click this, a new list will appear, and this represents Adobe fonts. Here, we can scroll down the list and preview Adobe fonts in real time. Remember, you can also use the filters here across the top, where you can filter by style and also view the adobe fonts you already have installed. Now, as you scroll down and hover your mouse over a font, you will see icons on the left. We have an icon to show similar fonts, an icon to add favorites, and an icon to activate. The icon to activate is a cloud, and if you already have a font installed, you will have a tick present. For this example, I'm going to go with a font I don't have installed. So I'll click on a deli and click to activate. If done correctly, you will see an icon of piercing activating, and after a few minutes, the font will be installed, and I can now start working with it with no problem. Here you can come into the font selection, type the name. You'll be able to find it, work with it, and select any other font in the family. Nice. So the second way to work with Adobe fonts is to find and install them directly from the Adobe website. Now, if we come and select some type, again, we can come up to the font dropdown, click on Find More. And as we scroll down, instead of clicking the activate button on the right, if we hove the mouse over the font name, we can see an information symbol. By clicking this, the web browser will open and show us the font on the Adobe website. As well as searching for fonts inside in design, you can also search for fonts on the Adobe website. Personally, I prefer exploring Adobe fonts this way, as it's a little more visual where you can navigate and preview the fonts more easily. If you click on Browse All in the menu, you'll come to the homepage. Here, you'll be able to select through a bunch of fonts, changing the criteria on the left. On the website, you can also choose a font directly. I'll come up to the top search field and type in the font name. I'll type Buffo. And when you click on the search result, it will take you directly to the font page. Here is where you can look at the complete font family at a glance and observe the characteristics and styles of the font. You like the font, you can then come up to the top right and click the button to add family. By clicking this, the font will then become available in your Adobe apps. And after a few more minutes, the font will download and install. Back into Indesign, I can select the text, come up to the Control panel or into the character panel, type in the name and use the font with no problems. Nice. So those are two ways you can work with Adobe fonts in Indesign when creating a document, either in Indesign or on the website. A key feature of using Adobe fonts is that it makes sharing and collaborating a document easy and seamless. When you use Adobe fonts, if you send an in design file to someone else and they have an Adobe account, they won't need to hunt down missing fonts. If one opens a document in in design, Adobe fonts will quickly sink any missing fonts they don't have activated, provided they also have a creative cloud subscription. This feature is especially valuable for collaborative or team projects, ensuring that documents retain consistent font styles without the risk of missing fonts disrupting your layout. This adobe font integration reduces issues with compatibility, making it a powerful tool for design teams and project sharing. So if we come up to the top spread, below, I have a sample document. If you click the Document thumbnail, either come to the Links panel and click Edit original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, up we'll pop the sample document. So if you're watching this video, you have an Adobe account and you do not have the fonts installed, you will see a message up here indicating the Adobe fonts contained. From here, you can either replace the font, skip or activate it. By hitting the activate button, you will attempt to sink the fonts, and after a few minutes, the fonts should be available to use. Now, you may also be greeted with a message to auto activate fonts. You can either skip or like me, set this to enable automatically. So moving on to some more features in in design, another feature you should keep in mind is the find similar fonts feature. This feature helps you locate fonts that resemble the one you're currently using or considering. This feature is especially useful when you want to explore variations of a specific style or need an alternative font with a similar look. So let's select some example text in the bottom type frame on the second page. With it selected, come up to the Control panel or into the character panel, click the drop down for the font name, and over on the far right, we'll see these three icons. Time, let's click the first icon, which is to find similar fonts. Upon click, in design we'll display a list of fonts from Adobe fonts and any installed fonts that share similar characteristics like weight, style, or proportion. You can then scroll through and preview these options directly in your design, making it easy to try out alternatives without disrupting your workflow. This feature is particularly useful for refining font choices and finding complimentary stars, saving you time when creating typography for a cohesive design. While we're on the topic of finding similar fonts, another cool feature that you should be aware of is finding a font from an image. Now, this is not a feature directly done in in design, but while we're on the topic of Adobe fonts, there is another feature you can use. So if we come up to the top spread, below, I have an image sample here. If you click the document thumbnail, come to the Links panel. Here we can right click and Reveal in Finder. So here I have a screenshot of a font sample that I have found that I would like to find a font similar. Back to the Adobe font website, up in the search criteria, you have an image icon. Here we can click and drag the image from the finder into the search field, and Adobe will recognize this as an image and attempt to scan this image to recommend some similar fonts. By clicking through the steps, you will be greeted with some results that you can install and use inside your in design document. Nice. Now, another feature to keep in mind is pre flight. As demonstrated at the start of this video, a common issue that can occur when using in design documents is missing fonts. When working in design and working with typography, it would really help to keep an eye on the pre flight status bar. This status bar can help manage fonts by alerting you to missing, unlicensed or unlinked fonts, which is crucial before finalizing a design for print or sharing. At the bottom of the interface, here you will see the pre flight status. If a font is missing, you will see an error. If we double click this, the preflight panel will open. And here you can drop down and see the issues that are occurring. In this instance, I can see that some of my fonts are missing. So remember to keep an eye on the pre flight status, as this can give you a good oversight of your document to make sure that you're not missing any fonts. So the last feature to keep in mind is packaging. Earlier in this video, we learned about the benefit of using Adobe fonts and how designers using Adobe fonts can easily share documents and synchronize fonts. But what about local fonts? If you're using a font that is installed locally on your computer and you need to share that font with another designer for consistency, in in design, you can package a document that can contain not only all the linked image elements, but also fonts. For example, if we come up to file and click Package, if we click on fonts on the left, we will see the fonts included in the document. If we proceed to package the document in the browser window, below, we will have the option to click to copy and include the font. Upon export, if we navigate to the packaged folder, inside, we will see a folder with the fonts. This will make it easy for another designer to acquire the document, the links, and install the fonts so they too can use the document adequately. So those are all the key features you need to know when working with fonts in in design. Quite a lot to take in, but one of the most important things to know in order to starle your text with ease. So now we're all cleared up on how to use fonts. It's now time to move on to the next subject, so I'll see you in the next video. 21. Paragraphs In Adobe InDesign : One of the most essential skills to master in in design is working with paragraphs. In design is built to make your text look incredible. And paragraphs are where the real magic happens to bring your content to life to guide your readers through your design. In this video, we're diving into the powerful tools in design offers for managing and formatting paragraphs. We will be exploring everything from alignment and spacing to advanced textles to give your layout a professional edge. We're about to dive into a collection of tips that will take your design skills to the next level. So get comfortable and let's jump into in design and check out paragraphs. So here I have a few document examples showcasing some of the dynamic ways you can format paragraphs. Here is a magazine spread where paragraphs can be a bit more creative with flair with font pairings, and here is an example of a text heavy document where the type needs to be more practical and systematic. At this point, it will help to be aware of all the ways you can use your type for any design approach. In the previous video, we looked at how to work and format type. Moving on to paragraph text, this becomes a little bit more complex, where instead of working with individual pieces of type, we now start to work with larger chunks of type. So let's get hands on and look at how we can manage and format paragraphs. And to do this, let's jump into this worksheet. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we will be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two, practice files, and open the practice worksheets in design file. If we scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we are going to look at the paragraphs worksheet. So with the selection tool, I'll select the Working with Paragraph thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the Worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open in its own document. In this practice session, you learn all the crucial ways you can format paragraphs in in design. Giving you the insight and skills to build professional and visually appealing compositions. Here in this worksheet, you can see what we are going to cover. We're going to start simple for those of you who may be new to in design, and we are going to go all the way up to some of the more advanced features. So let's scroll down to the second spread, and here we can see a number of paragraph features. At a glance here, you can see a lot of formats that can be applied to paragraphs, and these are the following things we are going to look at in this video. So let's now come to the second spread and have a go and see all the ways we can work with type in in design. So when working with paragraphs in in design, there are two key panels you want to pay close attention to the paragraph panel and the Control panel. If you cannot see these panels, you can come up to Window and click on Control or into type and click on Paragraph. Now, they both do the same. However, your control panel can be set to the top where you can see other formatting features. I like to keep my Control panel at the top of my screen and my paragraph panel in the bottom right. To begin, we are going to start off with a simple text frame. So to create a text frame, you can do one of two things. You can come over to the Tools panel and select one of the frames or shape tools. In this instance, I'll select the rectangle tool and I'll click to draw out a frame. Now, with a frame in your work area, you can simply click the Type tool, then click on the empty frame, and that will then become a type frame with a type prompt ready to enter in your type. So I'll just delete that. Another way is to come to the tools menu, and this time, click on the Type tool back into the Canvas area, click and drag to draw out a frame, and upon release, that will then become a type frame with the type prompt ready to enter in your type. Once you have a text frame, next you're going to want to work with some type. Now, you can either start typing to add text into the frame or you can copy and paste some text that you might have from another source and paste into the frame. Or if you don't have any text, but you just want to start working with some type, you can simply add some placeholder type. To do this is simple. With the text prompt in the frame ready to go, simply right click and select fill with placeholder text, and upon click, the frame will be filled with Lurium Epsom. Now, a key thing to keep in mind here right at the start is hyphenation. Now, hyphenation refers to the automatic breaking of words at the end of a line to improve text flow and create more balanced paragraphs. When a word is too long to fit at the end of a line, in design can insert a hyphen and move part of the word to the next line as we can see here. Now, you may or may not want this. Personally, I don't like to use hyphenation in my paragraphs, so to turn this off is pretty straightforward. Do this, we can either come down to the paragraph panel where we can see hyphen it with a tick in the box. To turn it off, we can click this or we can come up to the Control panel on the far left. We can click down on the paragraph icon, and towards the middle here, we can see, again, hyphen it with a ti. If I click this off, we can turn off hyphenation. So if I click this on and off, we can see in the text frame where hyphenation is activated and deactivated. When we use the automatic fill feature, this can be pretty random. For the sake of this tutorial, I'm going to want to get two clean paragraphs. So what I'm going to do here is click into my block of paragraph text and remove any random line breaks to get a solid block of text. Then about halfway through my paragraph, I'm just going to add a period. And press Enter once to add a hard return. My aim here is to have a block of text with just one clean line break in the middle like so. So first, I'll click into the type frame and select all the type. Up in the Control panel, I'll click on the top drop down to browse the fonts I have installed, or I'll just type in Aerial into the box to show the list of fonts available, and I'll select Aerial regular and change the font to size ten. With it selected, I can also change the color. So over in the swatches, I'll just play a blue color. Now, once you have a block of type selected in your frame, if you want to quickly deselect it, we can press escape on the keyboard, and then we will jump into the selection tool and the frame will be selected. So with the paragraph of text selected, we can come up to the Control panel and click a series of alignment options. First, we will look at the horizontal alignment tools. Here we can click to Align center. I can click to line to the right or back again to the left, and that's how easy it is to align your paragraph text inside a frame horizontally. So I'll press escape to deselect the frame and with the text frame selected, back up in the Control panel, we can see some further align tools. This time, we will look at the vertical align tools. Here we can click to Align center in the frame vertically, and we can click to align to the bottom of the frame. So top, middle, and bottom. For now, I'll click to a line to the middle of the frame. So that is how to create a simple type frame and add and format some paragraph text. You have set up a frame with some paragraph text, duplicating is really easy. With the selection tool, we can click on the text frame, click and drag down while holding Alt on the keyboard, and upon release, that will duplicate the type frame. To enter back into the type frame with the selection tool, we can double click, and that will place us into the frame where we can place the cursor and select all or parts of the type. Now, another common feature is justifying so I'll select all the type in the frame, come up to the Control panel and click a series of options to justify the type. Here, I can click to Justify to the left. I can click to Justify to the center or click to justify all lines. To override this, I can click back on the align left type button, and that will remove the justification feature. And I'll press Escape to deselect. Now, another common feature is the drop cap. Now, drop caps are often used at the beginning of chapters, articles or sections to create stylish attention grabbing introductions. To apply a drop cap, simply click into the paragraph of text you wish the drop cap to be applied to. Then down in the paragraph panel, we can set a value of the drop cap setting. Here, I'll set this to three, and the drop cap will span three lines. Easy. So I'll press Escape to deselect the text, and with the selection tool active, we can click on the text frame, click and drag down while holding Alt on the keyboard, and upon release, that will duplicate another type frame. To enter back into a type frame, with the selection tool, we can double click and that will place us into the frame where we can place the cursor and select all or parts of the type. For now, I'll click into the top paragraph and set the drop cap back to zero. So the next feature we're going to look at here is paragraph spacing. Now, a common mistake that beginners can make design is to use the Enter button to add a hard return to attempt to create space between paragraphs. Example, if I come into my text frame, place my mouse cursor at the end of the first paragraph, if I press Enter, I can add a hard return to force the line break to create a paragraph space in between. Now, when working with paragraphs in in design, this should be avoided. The best way to create space between your paragraphs is to use paragraph spacing, and to do this is simple. I'll just come back into my paragraph text and press the delete button to remove that forced paragraph space, and with all my text selected, I'll come down into the paragraph panel, and if we look carefully, we will see an option called paragraph spacing. I'll push this up to three mils and now we will see the space applied to the paragraph text. I'll press Escape to deselect the paragraph and come to the bottom of my bounding box, and I'm going to click the middle anchor point, and I'm just going to drag down to extend the size. What I want to do here is add more type into the frame. I'll click my mouse cursor at the end of the paragraph text, right click and select fill with placeholder text, and this will fill the frame with more text. Now, if the automatic text is filled and includes paragraphs, you will see the spacing has been applied. However, what I'll do here is just click back into my text and remove some of the paragraph lines to create three paragraphs of type like so. So this brings us to another important feature to keep in mind, and this is hidden characters. Hidden characters in in design are non printable symbols that represent formatting elements in your text, such as spaces, paragraph breaks, tabs, and line breaks. These characters are essential for understanding the structure and flow of your text, but are invisible by default when working in a document. So I'll press Escape to deselect the paragraph. Then I'll press W to enter into normal mode, and here we can see all the bounding boxes and the columns in the background. If I come up to type, scroll down and hit Show hidden characters. In normal mode, you will be able to see at the end of your paragraphs these special icons representing paragraph breaks. If I put my mouse cursor again here and press Enter to add a hard return, we will see another paragraph. As I said earlier, you want to avoid creating space between your paragraphs with hard returns. Viewing hidden characters helps you identify and troubleshoot formatting issues, especially when working with complex layouts, ensuring that your text flows correctly. These characters won't appear in your final output but are invaluable for design precision. I'll just press delete to remove that forced paragraph break space, and this brings us to an important aspect to keep in mind in design, and that is the difference between a hard return and a soft return. A hard return inserts a visible line break, and a soft return inserts a line break without starting a new paragraph. In most word processors, a hard return is created by pressing Enter on your keyboard, and a soft return is created by pressing Shift plus Enter on your keyboard. Example, if I come into one of the paragraphs and press Enter to add a hard return, we will see the paragraph brick icon and the space between the type. Now, if I press delete to go back up and remove that, this time, I'll press Shift plus Enter to add a soft return. As I do this, you will notice that text will create a line brick without the space. And in this instance, we will also notice a different character icon at the end. Hard returns are used to create new paragraphs and soft returns are used to add line bricks, which can be useful to tweak the text ragging and how text is composed within the frame. Working with hard breaks and soft brakes is something you will be doing a lot as you work with paragraph type in design. So at this early stage, it will be good to be aware of it, so keep this in mind. So another feature to be aware of is overset type. With the selection tool active, if I click on the bottom middle anchor point of the frame, bounding box and drag up, in the bottom right of the bounding box, you will see a little red square. This red square represents overset type, which basically means that the type frame is not big enough to show all the content inside the frame. This is something you are going to want to keep an eye on when working with type frames and paragraphs. A quick tip here, if you ever see a type frame with this icon inside that represents overset, with the selection tool, if you double click on the bottom middle bounding box anchor, the frame will snap to the content inside. So another feature to be aware of is auto sizing. Up to this point, we have created very basic type frames where we can add the type and adjust the text frame manually. Having a standard text frame like this, it is very common to incur overset type as more text is added. Now there is one feature which you can use to automatically set the frame to the contents inside. So again, I'll come to the frame and just move up where we can see the overset type. This time, I'll right click and come to text frame options. Upon click, a menu will appear. Over on the left, we will see an option called auto size. If I click this, we can see a drop down with a range of auto sizing options. In this case, I'll hit the preview button. I'll click to select height only, and below, I'll click the option to align from the top. Notice now that the frame will expand to fill the contents, and I'll click Okay. Now, if I click the bottom middle anchor point and attempt to drag it up or down, upon release, it will snap the frame to the text. So I'll double click into the type frame, place the cursor at the end of the last paragraph, right click and click on fill with placeholder type. Upon click, you will see a lot of type has just been added. What I can do here is come in and remove some of the text, and as I do this, you will see the frame will snap to respond to the contents inside. And I'll just remove some of the text to come back to our three paragraphs like so. Another feature to be aware of is inset spacing. So right now, if we look closely, the text is right up against the left and the top of the frame. Now, there may be instances where you want to create a buffer or margin around the text inside the frame. To do this is quite simple. If you have your mouse cursor in your frame, be sure to press Escape to deselect the frame and activate the selection tool. With the frame selected, again, right click and come to text frame options. In general, we will see halfway down an option called inset spacing. So with the preview square checked, we can click to add some top, left, bottom, or right spacing. If the lock icon is activated in the middle, then if you apply a unit to the top left, the same will be applied to the rest. And if you unlock the icon, you can set custom values for the top, left, right, or bottom. This instance, I'll just keep the lock icon set and add a five mill to the top, which will apply a five mil to the rest. I'll click Okay, and now I have created some space around my text. Now, we just looked at how to create space around the type. But there is another feature to add space called indentation, which is slightly different. For example, if I come and double click into my type frame and place my mouse cursor into the second paragraph, if I come down into the paragraph panel, here we will be able to add some indent to the left. In this instance, I'll add five, and we can also add five to the right. So indentation is useful to apply to specific paragraphs of text. For example, if I place my mouse cursor into the first paragraph of text, back down in the paragraph panel, this time I'll add a value to the first line left indent, and I'll set this to five. So here I have not only added space around the type, but also added indentation to specific paragraphs. Next, I'll click into the text, select all and set the font size to eight up in the Control panel. Now, there may be instances where you want to increase the space between the words in your paragraph. Doing this is really simple by adjusting the value for tracking. So I'll press Escape to deselect the paragraph frame to activate the selection tool. With the frame selected, I can come down into the character panel and simply click to add the value for tracking. And in this instance, I'll set this to 50. Now, as well as increasing the space between the letters, you may also wish to increase the space between the lines. This can be done by adjusting the paragraph leading. The frame selected, again, we can come down into the character panel and simply click to Addy value for leading. In this instance, I'll set this to 15. Notice, as we adjust the leading, the text frame will also adjust because we have the auto size applied. Now, a useful feature to keep in mind, if you're looking to balance your leading, simply click the dropdown and click Auto. If I do this, in design will apply the default leading to the text to balance it. Up until now, we have been looking at one simple text frame and how we can format paragraph type within it. When working in in design, compositions can be a lot more complicated. It's common to work with multiple type frames in one document where type will run across many type frames. This is called type threading. If you come back to the first spread in the worksheet, and I'll press W to toggle into normal mode, here we can see two boxes. If I click on the first box and look closely between these two boxes, we can see a blue line connecting them both together. If I click on the second box and move this around, we will see the line remain. Now, if you cannot see this line, you can come up to view, come down to extras and show text. Reads. So this line basically indicates that these boxes are connected and that the type will thread from the first box through to the second. If I drag my text frame down, we will see the text disappear from the second frame. This is because the first frame is now large enough to contain all the text. If I then reduce the size of the frame again, we will see the text continue on into the next frame to fill it. Keep in mind, this is something that is very common in in design, and you will need to get to grips with this one as you'll be doing it quite often in your layouts. Let's have a go at this. So be sure to deselect the type frame by pressing Escape. With this selection tool this time, click and drag on our first text frame while holding Alt and release at the bottom of the worksheet. And before I start working with this text frame, I'll make sure that up in the Control panel, the text is aligned to the top in the frame. I'll press W to enter into normal mode, and with the selection tool, I'll adjust the bounding box to scale the frame to fit within one column. Like so. I'll double click into the frame box, select all and set the font to eight. I'll place my mouse cursor at the end of the paragraph text, right click and select fill with placeholder text to add more text to my frame. This is a common scenario you may find yourself in in in design where you have a type frame full of text, and you may want to divide it across another text frame. So the next step you want to take is to create a new frame in which to thread the text across. Now, this can be done one of two ways. When you have a frame selected, if you look carefully at the bottom right, you will see a little square box. If we click on this, we will see the mouse cursor. If I now simply click and drag to draw a new frame next to the first one, upon release, we will see a line connect from the first frame to the next. Now with the selection tool, if we grab our first frame and click and drag up to reduce the size, we will now see the type continue through into the next frame. So I'll quickly press undo a few times to go back and remove the second frame. Another way is to come over to the tools menu into the frame tool, click the rectangle frame tool, come and just click and drag another frame. With the new frame created, I'll click back onto my first frame with the selection tool, click back onto the little box in the bottom right corner. This time, instead of clicking and dragging a new frame, we can simply click on our new empty frame, and you will see the line connect from the first frame to the next. So you can either click the square and draw a new frame or draw a separate frame and connect them. Easy. Okay, so what I'm going to do next is click on the first frame, drag down a little. I'll place my mouse cursor at the end of the paragraph text. I'll right click and select fill placeholder with text and add more text to my frame. And now we have two frames full of type. Then I'll click and drag my first frame down even more. And now we have a situation where we have two frames where there appears to be more text in one frame than the other. Now this is also another common situation that can occur in in design, and one solution to balance two columns can be to simply click on the left column, click and drag it up or down to try and force the text from one column to the next. Now, this is one technique that can be done, but it can be a little fiddly. So there is one feature you can use to make this process a little easier. So what I do here is come into my paragraph text, click and place my mouse cursor at the start of this paragraph. I can come up to type down to Insert break character and click Column Break. Upon click, every bit of text after that will now be forced across into the next frame. Now, no matter how much I click and drag the bottom of the first frame up and down, the text will still start in the next column after that column break. And if we press W and Zoom right in here, we'll see a special hidden character pointing down which represents the column break. That is one of the simplest ways to manage text across columns. Now, the only drawback to this is that it can be very manual, and it would require a lot of focus to keep on top of. So if we come back to the first spread in the worksheet, here we can see a single text frame with two columns inside. Now, there is another feature you can consider to make working with columns a lot easier. Now I'm going to come back down into our worksheet, click on the second column and simply press Delete to remove it. Then I'll click and drag the frame right to expand the frame like so. I'll double click into the text, place my mouse cursor at the end of the paragraph, and press backspace to remove the column break to bring the text back up. So with the text frame selected, we can right click come to text frame options, and in general, we will see the options for columns. Currently, this is set to one, but if I push this up to two, we will see two columns are now applied in our single text frame. And below this, we can toggle the gutter space. And if we push this up and down, we can adjust that space accordingly. For now, I'll click Okay. Now we can also toggle this up in the Control panel. Towards the middle, we can see this option here for columns. Currently, this is set to two, but if I push this up to three, we will see three columns now applied in our single text frame, and I'll put this back to two. So if I pull the type frame down, we can see that some columns are now longer than others. Now, we could try and grab the bottom of the text frame and drag up to try and force the balance in, but there's actually a much easier way of doing this. If we look back up in the Control panel to the right of the column number, there is a little button here called balance columns. If we click this, in design will do its best to balance the columns. And if we click the button below this to unbalance the columns, this will turn it off. For now, I'll click back on the column balancing button. This can also be done by right clicking on a frame, going back into text frame options, and clicking the balance column box under columns. So while we're on the topic of applying columns to single text frames, this brings us to another really important feature when working with paragraphs. Another common thing for beginners in in design is to create separate text frames to control the spacing between headers and paragraphs. Ing back at the first spread, on the right here, in the first example, beginners can often create separate text frames in order to tweak the space manually. However, there is a way to manage headers and columns in a much simpler way in one frame like this one below. Here we can see a single text frame containing one header, one paragraph, and two paragraphs going across two columns all in one frame. And if we click and drag this text frame, it all works beautifully together, as opposed to the first frame above that would otherwise need to be managed separately. Now I'm going to come back down into our worksheet, click on the text frame and press Alt and click and drag into the next page to duplicate. So with the selection tool, if we click on the frame, we can see up in the Control panel that this text frame is set to three columns. Next, I'll click down to set across two columns. So I'll click into the first paragraph. Now back up in the Control panel next to columns, we can see this option here, which is called span columns. Right now, this is set to none. If I click to drop down and set this to two, upon click, that first paragraph will now span across two columns, and below two columns will remain. So I'll place my mouse cursor at the very start of the text. I'll press Enter once to add a hard return to create a new paragraph break. I'll press the up arrow to go back to the top and simply type in Title goes here. I'll select this, change the font to bold and set the font to 20. I'll select the paragraph below and set the font to 14, and now we have a single frame with our title, sub paragraph and our columns below. The only thing left to do is now adjust the spacing between the columns. And this can be done quite simply using paragraph spacing. I'll click to place my mouse cursor into the title, and down in the paragraph panel, I'll click the drop down and set this to eight. Then I'll click to place my mouse cursor into the sub paragraph below, and down in the paragraph panel, I'll set this to eight mils, and we will set a space equal to the title above. And if this pushes my text where I get a little red box on my frame, I'll simply press a scape to deselect the type and double click on the bottom middle anchor to expand the frame to fit the contents. So that's how easy and straightforward it can be to manage titles, subparagraphs, and columns of text within one frame. And it doesn't necessarily have to stop there. We can add further modifications to the text. For example, if we click into the text and select in the first paragraph, we can add an indent to the left down in the paragraph panel to control the width of the first paragraph. Next, we can select the bottom two columns into the paragraph panel, add a right indent of five, press escape, right click, select text frame options, set right indent space into ten mils, reduce the Gata space, and that is how you can easily toggle your column spacing within one frame. Next, we're going to look at how to set paragraph type diagonally. Now, it's not very common for one to do diagonal type in Idsign, but in the unique instance where you'd like to try and use it, there is an easy way to do it in in design. So I'll come back into our worksheet, click on the text frame we created earlier with three columns, press Alt and click and drag into the next page to duplicate. Up in the Control panel, I'll set the column to two, and with my text frame, I'll come over to the tools menu, click and hold on the scale tool, and we will see a tool called She. The Sha tool allows you to slant or skew an object such as text, images, or shapes along a specific axis. This tool can be used to create a distorted or angled effect, giving your design a dynamic three dimensional look. This tool will allow you to manipulate the type frame to add an angle to it. Now, when using this tool, you'll also need to pay close attention to the reference point on the far left of the control panel. Here you can see some squares, and this basically represents the reference point for the frame. In this instance, I'm going to click the middle square, and with the share tool selected, I'll come over to my type frame, press and hold shift on the right side. I'll just click and drag up like so. As I do this, we will add a new diagonal dimension to the frame, and as you can see, the type is now at a slight angle inside the type frame. One of the cool things about this is if we put our mouse on the left or right, middle anchor point, we can click and drag and we can see that the type frame will extend at the same angle. So next we're going to look at how you can align your text to a baseline grid. In Adobe in design, aligning paragraphs to a baseline grid is a technique used to create consistent line spacing across a multi column or multi page layout. The baseline grid acts as an invisible guide, ensuring that all lines of text aligned horizontally across the page, regardless of different text boxes or columns. Designers often align to the baseline grid in professional layouts such as magazines, books, and reports to create a uniform and visually structured layout that feels balanced and organized. So I'll come to the first page, and with the selection tool, I'll click on my text frame with the paragraphs in one column. And while holding Shift, I'll click and drag over my second spread. I'll press W to enter into normal mode, and on the keyboard, I'll press Command plus Alt plus colon on Mac or Control plus Alt plus colon on PC. And this will toggle on the baseline. So if I come up to in design preferences and down to grid, right now, I have the baseline grid set to ten points. With the text frames selected, if we come into the paragraph panel, we can see in the bottom right there are two buttons. On the far right, there's a button, and if I click this, it'll align the text to the baseline grid. So regardless of what leading is set in the control panel or character panel, if you have this button turned on, it will align to the baseline grid. And if you want to turn this off, simply click the button to the left. So the last thing we're going to look at is how to highlight text. If we look back up at the first spread, we can see that in this example, we have a paragraph of text which appears to be highlighted in the background. Now, this is a neat trick that you might want to do to add some additional formatting. And to do this is quite simple. So down in my worksheet, let's draw out a small text frame, right click and fill with some placeholder text. I'll change the font to aerial, set the font to nine. I'll select all and make sure to turn off hyphenation. Then up in the Control panel, I'll come and click to line my text. In the character panel, I'll click on the top right menu and click on line Options. Here I can push the weight up, change the offset settings, change the color and tint, click Okay, push up the leading, and that's an easy way to add some formatting to your paragraphs to add some highlights. So that is all the key insights you need to know about formatting and working with paragraphs in in design to get you started. Working with paragraphs is one of the most important things you can master in in design in order to create professional layouts with ease. So now we are all clued up on how to use paragraphs. It's now time to move on to the next subject. So see you in the next video. 22. Character & Paragraph Styles In Adobe InDesign: One of the most powerful features in Adobe in design is character and paragraph styles. If you want to ensure consistency and efficiency throughout your design, then you need to harness the power of styles. Styles can completely transform the way you format text, saving you tons of time and making your designs look polished and professional. Whether it's a simple flyer or a multiple page document, mastering styles is key to keeping everything consistent and streamlined. So in this video, we're going to explore why they are so important and how you can start using them to level up your in design projects. So let's get into it. So here I am with a document open in design, and this is a great example to showcase character and paragraph styles. Before we get hands on, let's start off by talking about what they are, the difference between character and paragraph styles, how they work, and why we should use them. To follow along, I recommend you open this sample document here. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. Download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we will be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. If we scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this document, we're going to look at the character and paragraph styles worksheet. So with the selection tool, I'll select the character and Paragraph Styles thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own doc. This worksheet, you can see what we are going to cover. Below, I'll click on the first sample document thumbnail. I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail and up we'll pop our sample document. Now for this document, I'm using the font HK grotesque. If you have not already downloaded all the fonts for the course, this is a free font that you can acquire online. To get this font, I would recommend you check out the course fonts page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that are used in this class and where to get them. Simply click on the HK grotesque and this will take you straight to where you can download it. Simply close this document, install the font, open it back up again, and you should be able to follow along just fine. So this is a booklet style document with multiple spreads. Documents like these typically include lots of content with lots of formatting. So the use of character and paragraph styles is crucial in a document like this. Now when working with character and paragraph styles, in in design, it all revolves around their respective panels. In in design, character and paragraph styles are treated separately, and they have their own panel. Right now, I have my character and paragraph styles aligned to the right, which I can click on the icon to expand in and out. If you can't see your character or Paragraph Styles panel, you can come up to Window, scroll down to styles, and click on paragraph or character styles, and they will appear. Going to pull out my character and Paragraph Styles panel from the workspace so you can clearly see them. Now, if we look in the character panel and the paragraph panel, we can see we have several folders inside, and in each one of these folders, we have a bunch of stars. Now, each one of these is a particular style determining a particular format in the document here. So let's start with the most basic question. What is a star? Put simply a star is a saved set of formatting options. You apply formatting to your visual elements, you can save the format, which makes it easy to apply to other repetitive visual elements at the click of a button. Throughout a document, there may be multiple repetitive elements assigned to a particular style, and if you update the style, all elements assigned to that style will be updated. In in design, you can have a style for many elements such as characters, paragraphs, objects, and tables. When working in in design, especially on larger documents, manual formatting can create inconsistencies. Using styles ensures consistency throughout a document, especially for long projects. Styles save time by allowing you to apply complex formatting with just a click rather than manually adjusting visual elements each time. For example, this document contains many different types of repetitive text elements. One is the paragraph text. If we wanted to change the font and size of the paragraph text on every page, that would take a long time to do manually. However, if all the paragraph text in this document is assigned to a single style, then all we would need to do is change that one style and all the text would change instantly. So then the next big question, what's the difference between a character and a paragraph style? Well, it's important to keep in mind that a paragraph style will apply formatting to a block of text, and a character style will apply formatting to individual text within a block of text. It's good to think of paragraph and character styles as two main layers. Typically, the paragraph style will be the foundation, the first layer of formatting that will be applied to any text determining the main format characteristic. And then a character style can be applied as a layer on top to parts of text to define additional superficial formatting. So a paragraph style will define what's happening to a block of text. For example, alignment, leading, justification, hyphenation, tracking, and indent. A paragraph style will also define what's happening before and after a block of text. For example, paragraph spacing, space before, space after and rules. On this page, you can see we have lots of text formatting, paragraph text, quotes and names. If I select some of the paragraph text, we can see in the Paragraph Styles panel which style is determining the format. If I select the subhead, we can see the style that determines that format. And if I click on a quote, we can see the style that determines that. All of this text is the sort of text element that a paragraph style will be applied to. Now, a character style will define what's happening to individual characters or words inside a block of text, for example, font, size, color, and weight. On this page, you can see that the last paragraph of text is in light green. Now, this isn't defined by a paragraph style. This is actually defined by a character style. The paragraph style will define the main formatting of this text. In this instance, the dark green text, and the character style will define the color on top of that. For example, if we select this body of text, we can see that we have both a paragraph style and a character style applied. If I come up into the character styles and click on none, it will go back to the dark green, defined by the paragraph style. And if we come and click back on the green character style, it will change the color back to the light green. Easy. So one paragraph style to define it all and then one character style to edit parts of it. What you will come to realize is that most texts will be defined by paragraph styles. Remember, it's normally paragraph styles, the first layer, the foundation that will define all of the text, and then character styles, the next layer will be used to add the details. So now you have a rough idea of what character and paragraph styles are. Let's get hands on. So back to the worksheet, Doc, this time, scroll down to the second page. On the left is a piece of formatted type that is all created using character and paragraph styles, and on the right is the same block of type without any styles. What we're going to do here is look at how we can format the text on the right to match the example on the left using stars. Now, check this out real quick. I'll delete my example text in the middle here. With this selection tool, I'm going to select the text on the left, drag it to the right while holding Alt and Shift to make a quick duplicate in a straight line across. I'll click into the type and select all. Then I'm going to come into the character and paragraph panel and click none for character style and basic for paragraph in the paragraph panel, and boom. We have some basic texture. So take away the styles from this text and we have nothing. So again, this is an example of how powerful styles are. So let's look at how we can add styles to this text. So to begin, make sure you're in normal mode. Here we can press W on the keyboard to toggle from preview to normal mode. What we want to see here is all the columns in the background. Also, we're going to come up to type, scroll down and click on show hidden characters. And now, if we look closely, we can see the paragraph return symbol on both the left example and the right example. We touched on these in the previous video. These characters are essential for understanding the structure and flow of your text, but are invisible by default when working in a document. In normal mode, you will be able to see at the end of your paragraphs these special icons representing paragraph breaks. So with the selection tool, if we double click into the text frame on the right and just select the head currently, we can see that in the Paragraph Styles panel, it is assigned to basic. The first step to creating a paragraph style is to first format some initial text attributes. I'll set the font to aerial bold with a font size of 20. I'll also come into the paragraph panel and set the space after to ten mils. And once we have settled on our initial format, with the text selected, we can come over into the Paragraph Styles panel, hit the top right menu, and hit new Paragraph Style. On click, a menu box will appear. Now there are lots of options we can tweak here, but for now, if we click on basic character formats, on the right, we can see the format settings that are currently applied to this selected text. For now, I'm not going to change anything. I'm just going to leave the format setting to what I currently have applied. I'll give the style a name. I'll call this header. I'll be sure when creating a style to click back on general, below, I'll click the box to apply Style to selection. Click Okay. And upon click, we will now see a new paragraph style appear in the paragraph style panel called header, and it will be applied to the selected text. Nice. So that's how easy it could be to create a poagraph style. So with the selection tool, again, if we double click into the text frame and select the rest of the text, I'll come up to the control panel and set the Fontu aerial regular, set the size to 11. I'll click on the paragraph icon below, come over to hyphenation and toggle this off. And in the Powagraph panel, I'll set the space between paragraphs to three mils. Once we have settled on our initial format, with the text selected, we can come over into the Paragraph Styles panel, hit the top right menu and hit new Paragraph Style. Upon click, a menu box will appear. For now, I'm not going to change anything. I'm just going to leave the format settings to what I currently have applied. I'll give this style a name. I'll call this paragraph one, click the box to apply style to the selection, click Okay, and now we can see the new paragraph style in the paragraph panel with it applied to the text. So once you have a style, it's really easy to apply them to other text in your document. On the next page, I can double click into the text frame to select the header, come into the Paragraph Styles panel, click the header style, and it will apply the style. I can also select the block of text below, come into the Paragraph Styles panel, click the Paragraph Style, and it will apply the star. Easy. Now, what makes styles so magical is that if you change the format of your styles at any time, editing them is easy. So I'll be sure to press escape on the keyboard to deselect any text and click off my text frame to make sure I have nothing selected. I'll come into the paragraph style panel, double click on the header style, on click, Apple Pop a menu again. Here we can click on the left options to tweak the formatting. Now, one important thing to keep in mind when you're editing styles is to be sure to click on the preview button in the bottom left. As you edit your styles, you will see the changes being applied to your document in real time. Which really helps to preview your style before you commit. So I'll click on basic character formats. I'll change the font to made Tommy soft. I'll set the font to bold. I'll change the size to 22, click on the case dropdown, select all caps. We'll see the font change to the document, and I'll click Okay. Easy. Now, as you start to format your type, there will be multiple styles you want to create. Now, you can create new styles, as I just showed, or you can duplicate styles. This can help if you only want to change the formatting slightly. So if we come over to the Paragraph Styles panel, right click on paragraph one, we have an option here to duplicate. I'll click this up will pop a menu box again. Here I can rename the style, and I'll call this lead paragraph. I'll change the font size to 18. I'll change the font. In this instance, I'll change it to HK grotesque, set it to black. I'll click on indent and spacing, set the space after to ten mils. Click Okay. And in the paragraph style panel, we will see on New star. Now, if I select the first paragraph of type, I'll click the new style, and it will be applied. Easy. Next, I'll come back into the Paragraph Style panel and right click on our Paragraph one style again, click Duplicate, rename the style to Drop Cap. I'll click on Drop Caps and Nested Styles, set the line to three. Click Okay. Come and select all the second paragraph into the Paragraph Styles panel. I'll click the new style, and now we can see the second paragraph has a drop cap. Now, when working with Styles, you'll need to be careful. For example, if we come and select the first word in the header, come up and change the font size to 30. In the Paragraph Styles panel, we will now see a little plus icon next to the style. In in design, this is referred to as a style override. Now, this is something you may want to do when working in in design, and you can leave it like this, but it could also be a mistake. If this is a mistake, then clearing the override is easy. With the type selected, we can come back to the Paragraph Styles panel, right click on the paragraph style and hit Apply Header one clear override. This will then refresh the text and apply the character style back. And now in the paragraph style panel, we will no longer see the little plus icon next to it. Now, there may be, however, instances where you'll want to edit or change a style. If we look closely at our top paragraph, we will see something that is not right. Right now, we are missing the paragraph brick below this paragraph. The reason for this is because earlier when we set a three millimeter paragraph space to our paragraph style, that only applied to paragraphs with the same style. Because we now have a new style here, this is not working. So here I'll come and select the first paragraph with the drop cap. Down in the paragraph panel, I'll hit a space after to three mills. If we come into the Paragraph Styles panel, again, we can see the plus icon indicating an override. This time, right click on the paragraph style, and instead of selecting apply and clear overrides, we can select redefine style. Upon click, this will update the style, and we will see no more plus icon on the style. So when working in in design, it's very easy to create paragraph styles. But as you work with your document, you're going to find yourself making lots of changes to your styles as you craft your document. This is normal, and this is how you can keep on top of your styles and edit them on the fly. So before we move on, let's add a more dynamic paragraph style to this block of text. On the left, we can see this interesting text format that's happening down here. This is typically called a pull out quote. Now, these are often found in magazines, and they often have all sorts of different styling. In this instance, we can see that we have a stroke above and below. Now, this is actually done with a paragraph style and not an actual stroke line. So I'll come and select the pull out quote from my text. I'll change the fonta aerial bold italic, set the size to 12, set the leading to 18, and set the color to green. In this instance, I'll come into the paragraph panel, and I'll set the indent for the left ten mills, and I'll set an indent to the right to 15 mils. I'll come into the Paragraph Styles panel, hit the top right menu, click New Style, and I'll name this pull out quote. Now before we do anything else, there's one important thing you need to be aware of. When you attempt to create a new style from the selected text of another style, you might have an option down in general, for base on, it'll have the previous star here. On this occasion, I do not want to base this style on any other style. So I'll click the dropdown and set this to no paragraph style. Next, I'm going to come to a setting on the left called Paragraph Rules. And here we can click the dropdown under paragraph rules. We can choose from rules above or below. To start, I'll click on Rule above. I'll click the checkbox to turn the rule on. I'll set the weight to one point. I'll set the width to column. And since this is above, I want to create some space above this so I'll put the offset to ten mils. Hit the drop down for rule below. I'll take the checkbox to turn the rule on, set the weight to one point, set the width to column, set the offset to ten mils. I'll come back to general, make sure there's a tick in the apply style to selection, and click Okay. And now we can see a line above and below. But right now, those lines are crossing into the paragraph above and below. So with the text still selected, I'll come into the paragraph panel and add space above to ten mils and the space below to 12 miles. Come back into the paragraph styles panel, right click, hit Redefined style that's our pull quote. But right now there seems to be more space below the pull quote than the space above. So I'll press escape to deselect the type, make sure that no text or frames are selected. I'll come back up to the pull out paragraph style, double click on it, come into the rules, and change the offset to the rule below to seven mils instead of ten, and click Okay. So up to this point, we have been largely using paragraph styles. As mentioned earlier, most of the texts you will work with in in design, you'll be applying paragraph styles, but there will be plenty of instances where you'll want to work with character styles. If we look back on the text on the left, we can see that we have some additional formatting going on here. Some text has color applied. It's bold and some is underlined. So I'll come into my text and just select the header, and I'll set the color to Magenta. Now, if we look in the Paragraph Styles panel, we can see the plus icon, which means we've just overridden that style. Now, because we're only changing the character and not the paragraph for this, we can create a character style. Up in the character style panel, click the top right menu down to new character. I'll call this Magenta. I'll make sure the apply style to selection is ticked. Click Okay, and we will see the override has gone from the paragraph style, and now we have a new character style. If, for example, I come into the character style and click none to deactivate the character style, it will go back to black. And the same thing can happen below with the paragraph text. I'll simply select the paragraph, click on the Magenta character style, and it will change to Magenta and not affect the paragraph style. But in this instance, I don't want the paragraph set to Magenta. I want it set to orange. So I'll come over to the character styles panel, right click on my Magenta style, click on duplicate. I'll name this one orange. Come down to color, make sure the fill color is selected, change the color to orange, click Okay, deselect my text. And now we have a new character style created for our first paragraph set in orange. Easy, right? So next, I'll come into my text and just select a piece I want to change. I'll set the Fonte HK grotesque, set it to bold, and change the color to magenta again. Again, we're only changing the character and not the paragraph. So for this, we can create a character style. Up in the character style panel, click the top right menu down to new character style. I'll call this highlight one. I'll make sure the apply style to selection is ticked. Click Okay. And I can click around other parts of my text, select and apply the highlight effect. Easy. And one more time, I'll click into my text and just select a piece I want to change. I'll set the font to Aerial italics. This time, hit the underline button. Up in the character style panel, click the top right menu down to New character style. I'll call this highlight two. I'll make sure the apply style to selection is ticked. Click Okay. And again, I can select more type and easily apply the new style. So that is an overview of how you can create paragraph and character styles and use them together on your text. Now, those of you watching may ask yourself, do I need to apply character and paragraph styles to every single piece of text in a document? Depending on your document type, you don't have to apply paragraph and character styles to everything. Remember, the reason to use styles is for repetitive elements to retain consistency. Keep in mind, you do not need a style for everything. There will be occasions where you won't always need to apply a style. For example, on individual elements that are repetitive, if we scroll to the top of the worksheet, here we can see another example document on the right. This is a pamphlet map for a Zoo. With this selection tool, I'll select the document thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the document thumbnail, and the document will open in its own tab. If we look in this document, we can see there are a lot of repetitive elements, and there are also a lot of individual elements, such as on the cover here, we have two pieces of text that don't appear anywhere else in the document. We have some text on the back and on the top that doesn't appear anywhere else on the document. We have text on the inside that doesn't appear anywhere else on the document. So in this unique instance, these are not repetitive elements, so I have not assigned these to any stars. I would simply set this text up once and just leave it there. However, the other elements in the document, such as the text in the tables and the repetitive text on the back, I would almost certainly create paragraph styles for these. So if I did want to change the text formatting, changing the paragraph style would change them all, and I wouldn't have to manually change these individually. So back to the worksheet, now we have created some styles. Another feature that's really useful is to find and change. For example, I just created a style to highlight some words in my paragraph. Let's say, for example, we want to highlight every instance of the word paragraph styles in this document. Well, if we come up to edit, scroll down to find change or press the shortcut Command plus F on Mac or Control plus F on PC, the search criteria, we can type in Paragraph Styles. Now, down below, we can see an option for change format. If we click on this, a menu will pop up where we can choose a style option for either a character style or a Paragraph Style. In this instance, I'll hit the drop down on the character style and choose highlight one. Click Okay, and then click on change. Upon click, it will tell me how many instances have been applied. And if we click Okay again, we will now see that the highlight character style will be applied to all the instances of paragraph styles in the document. Nice. This can save you a lot of time if you want to apply a specific style to a specific sequence of words. So now you can see how things can start to build up quickly. This is just a very basic piece of texture, and already we have multiple styles. Another key aspect to keep in mind is style groups and hierarchy. If I quickly jump back into the first demo doc I showed earlier, in the character and Paragraph Styles panel, we can see they are all organized into folders and ordered by hierarchy. Typically, the larger the document, the more formatting will be required. In just one document, you might have multiple headings, titles, paragraphs, and quote styles. So considering naming conventions in your hierarchy can help you keep on top of them. It helps to use terms like heading, title, paragraphs, highlights, quote, caption, footer, and so on. And the best way to stay organized a styles is to use folders. Working with character and paragraph styles, they can fall into the same categories. As well as naming your styles, you can be consistent with your folder names, too, where you'll place all your styles, such as headers and titles, paragraphs, tables, highlights, quotes, folio and navigation, and footers to name a few. Now, there's no right or wrong way of naming your folders or stars. It's completely up to you, whichever way you feel best to organize yourself. Though organizing folders in a clear hierarchy can really help you streamline how you use styles in in design. Especially when you start to create multiple stars. Looking back at my demo document, you can see exactly how I have approached my naming conventions and how I have organized my folders here. Here, I've named them according to what they are and also with a note to remind me of the context. And to do this is really easy. So back into the worksheet, in your Styles panel, simply click the folder icon in the bottom of the panel, name your folder, and then you can simply drag in your stars. Create a folder in the Paragraph Styles panel. I'll call this headers and titles and drag in my head of style. I'll create another folder, call this paragraph and drag in my paragraph styles. I'll create another folder. I'll call this quote and place in my pull out quote style into the character styles panel. I'll create a folder. I'll call this color, and I'll drag in my color styles. I'll create another folder, call this highlights, and I'll drag in my highlight styles. Once I've created all my folders and placed all my styles into them, I'll then drag my folders around and place them into a neat hierarchy like so. Now, to wrap up this video, there's one last point to note, which is really important, and that is importing and reusing styles. Now, the point of character in paragraph styles is to help you format your text and help you save time. And this doesn't have to be applied to just one document. This can be across multiple documents. For example, if you're working with a particular brand and you're creating lots of different types of documents in in design, you're going to want to use the same styles for consistency. Working in design with styles is so easy that when you create some styles in one document, transferring them over to another document is super easy, and it really couldn't be more simple. As easy as creating a new document and copying and pasting text from one document into another. So I'll create a new document, and it can be any type of document. With our blank canvas, we can come into our previous document with the selection tool. I'll just select my text frame with all these styles applied. Into my new document, I'll paste. And upon pasting, we will see that the text looks exactly the same as it did in the previous document. And now, if we look in our character and paragraph styles, we'll see that we have all the folders and the styles in the panels exactly like our previous document. Awesome. And if you have an Adobe account, it gets even easier. Using CC libraries allows you to save character and paragraph styles into libraries. For example, if I come to my CC libraries panel and create a new library, I'll call this demo Doc. If we select certain parts of our text, we can come into the CC libraries and click the plus icon at the bottom. From here, we can add a character Paragraph Style. As we add them, we will populate our styles in this CC library, much like we would in the character and Paragraph Style. Once you have a CC library setup like this, it'll make it so much easier for you to use in future across other apps and also share with other colleagues. You can hit the plus icon and share this with work colleagues and people who can then use the same styles in their documents. So creating paragraph styles is not just good for yourself, but it can also be good when working with a larger team, all in the name of consistency. So that is all the key insight you need to know about character and paragraph styles in Adobe in design to get you started. Honestly, when you start to master character and paragraph styles, working in in design is going to be a breeze. So now we are all cleared up on how to use and apply styles to our text. It's now time to move on to the next subject. So I'll see you in the next video. 23. Links & Images In Adobe InDesign : When it comes to creating dynamic and visually engaging designs, understanding how to work with images in in design is essential, allowing you to seamlessly integrate visuals that enhance and elevate your layouts. This is where your layout starts to come to life, and learning how to manage and place image elements is key. So in this video, we're going to explore how to seamlessly integrate images and assets into your in design projects. So get ready to take your designs to the next level. So when working in in design, one of the main things you will have to work with is images. After all, it's images that bring your documents to life and complement typography. What you will soon come to learn is that there are many ways of working with images in in design to get the effect you want. Now, when working with images in in design, it all revolves around this one panel here, The Links panel. Earlier in the course, I introduced you to the Links panel. But in this video, we are going to go deeper, where I will encourage you this time to get hands on with images and follow along with. If you cannot see your Links panel, you can come up to Window and click Links. Currently, I have my Links panel set into my workspace on the right next to my layers panel. So let's get hands on with images. And to do this, let's jump into this worksheet I have prepared earlier. This document can be found in the Download folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two Practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. If we scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we're going to look at the Working with Images worksheet. So with the selection tool, I'll select the Working with Images thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the Worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own document. In this practice session, you learn all the crucial ways you can work with and manage images in in design. Here in this worksheet, you can see what we're going to cover. We're going to start simple for those of you who may be new to in design, and we're going to go all the way up to some of the more advanced features. So let's roll down to the second spread, and here we can see a number of frames with images inside. Let's now have a go and see all the ways we can work with images in in design. So looking at the first page of the worksheet, we can see a lot of images. Right now, out of the gate, before we go any further, it's important to remember that there are three types of images in in design, linked images, embedded images and vector images. Looking at the top here, we have two images. On the left is a linked image, and on the right is an embedded image. Now, upon first glance, they both look the same, but they are indeed very different. Linked images are individual files that exist and have been created outside of in design and will be stored somewhere on the computer in a folder and not in the in design file itself. When using linked images, they will only ever be representative. Most images that will ever appear in a in design composition will be linked images. With the selection tool, if we click on this image over in the Links panel, we will see an image link represented in the panel. Having images as links will mean that the images can be edited independently in other software, which allows for maximum flexibility when working with and editing visual assets. Also, using image links will keep the in design file size relatively low, as images are only displayed visually in a composition layout. It's only when we export the document later that images can manifest into a solid, tangible layout in the form of a PDF or JPEG. It's also important to mention that image links do exist separately. So if an in design file becomes corrupted, then nothing inside the document will be lost in terms of images. Now, embedded images are images that have been pasted directly into in design and will reside inside the in design document. For example, if an image is pasted directly into the document with the selection tool, we can click on the image, and over in the Links panel, we will see no link. In this instance, the file will be contained in the document and thus add to the overall file size. Now, when working with images in in design, I would strongly advise you against ever pasting and embedding images into in design. This is not the best approach to working with images in in design, which we'll be getting into later in this video. So the last image type that will be used in in design is vector graphics. When working with documents, there will be many occasions where you will use vector graphics to create your compositions, either as structural elements or decorative elements. Vectorgraphics in in design work very similar to vector graphics in Adobe Illustrator. What you will come to learn is that working with vector graphics can be very flexible. If you use Illustrator to create logos, symbols, icons, textures or artwork, it can be very easy to paste directly from Illustrator into in design. When vector graphics are pasted into Indesign, they will work just like they do in Illustrator. If you use the direct selection tool, you can click on the anchor points that make up a vector graphic and you can edit them the same way you would in Illustrator. So if I press W on the keyboard, we can enter into normal or preview mode. In normal mode, we can see the frames that the images are placed into. In in design, images are always placed in frame containers. Before we place an image, we must always have a frame first to place an image into. Okay, so one tip to bear in mind, if we come to the top menu and come to view and scroll down to display performance, we can choose from three options. We have fast, typical or high quality display. This feature is here to help optimize the performance of in design. Example, if you had a document with hundreds of images inside, this can really slow down how in design works if you look at them all in high quality. By choosing a different display option can help optimize the performance of in design. If I select fast display, all the images will change to gray placement boxes. The typical view will represent the images, but in low quality, high quality will show you the actual quality of the images. When I'm setting up documents and working with my initial compositions, I like to use typical display. It's only when I start to finalize documents and want to see a more accurate result, do I then start to view high quality images. But of course, this is up to you. So with all that said, let's place our first image. So let's come to the second spread in the worksheet, and to begin, come over to the menu, click and hold the frame tool and select the rectangle frame. To start, I want to make sure I am viewing my composition in normal mode so I can see my guides and the outlines of my object frames. I can do this by pressing W on the keyboard. Now I'll be able to see all my frame outlines. So with the frame tool active, I'll come over to my worksheet, click and drag and draw a simple rectangle shape. Now, it's important to keep in mind that when working with images and in design, you will be working with two things, the frame and the content inside the frame. Get the effect you want visually, you will first need to work with a frame, which is essentially the window of the image, and it's the frame that will determine what part of the image you can see. As well as the frame, you will also need to work with the image inside the frame, which you can edit and reposition to control what part of the image is shown in the frame window. So with my frame ready, I can now place my image inside the frame. To do this, I first need to select the frame. I can do this by pressing V on the keyboard to activate my selection tool and click on the frame. Now with the frame selected, I can do one of two things. I can come up to file, scroll down to place, or I could use the shortcut key. For this, I'm going to use the shortcut key, Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC to place an image. I'm going to navigate to the download folder, into the second folder practice files, into the assets folder, into the images folder, into the JPEG folder, click on the landscape image, click Okay, and it will appear in my document, like so. Now, depending on how big this image is, when you place in an image into your frame, it will either be too small or too big for the frame. For example, in my case, I can see the image is much bigger than the frame it was placed into. As you can see, I can only see part of it. So now I need to change the image size in order to get a better placement. But first, it would be good to explain the dynamics of images and frame boxes. By now, we have learned that for an image to be in a composition, it first needs to be in a frame. And we can edit frames by using the selection tool. By pressing V on the keyboard, I can select the frame and move it around and change the size. Now, keep in mind this does not affect the image contained within the frame. If you want to modify the image inside the frame, we first need to select this inside the frame. To do this, we need to do one of two things. With the selection tool, I can click the frame once, then double click, and this will then select the image inside the frame. And I know this as now I can see a red outline. This is the outline of the image inside the frame. So that's the first way. Another way is by using the Direct Selection tool. So I'll click off the frame with the selection tool to deselect. If I select the Direct Selection tool from the menu or simply press A on the keyboard, with the tool active, I can now move my mouse cursor over my frame, and I will see the red outline of the image within the frame. I click once, I will immediately select the image within the frame. So now I have the image selected, I can click and drag the image around inside the frame to reposition the image. Notice how the frame stays in the same position, but only the image moves inside. If I want to make the image smaller, I could put my mouse cursor over one of the anchors on the edge and drag in like so. But if I want to scale the image down, I need to hold down shift on the keyboard and pull it in, like so, and that will scale it down nicely. So I'm going to undo this and show you some more options you can keep in mind. Now it's back to the way it was when I first placed it into my document with the selection tool. If we select the frame, then right click, we will see an option for fitting. In here, we can see a variety of options we can choose in order to fit the content inside the frame. Here we can select options ranging from fill the frame proportionally, content aware fit, fit frame to content, fit content to frame, center content. And if we want to clear the fitting options, we can click Clear Fitting Options. Now we also have an option below for frame fitting options. So if I click on clear fitting options to reset my frame, if we click on frame fitting options, Apple Pop a menu, and from here, we can specify even more options such as how to align the image inside the frame, the amount of crop we want to add, we can choose more options from the drop down, and we can also click on AutoFit. For now, I'll just cancel that. Now, keep in mind, you can also access the frame fitting options from the Control panel. With the frame selected, if we come up to the top, we can see them here. So this time, I'll hit the button up in the Control panel to fit content proportionally, and this will make it easier to see the image as a whole. Then double click into the frame to select the image and change the size. So that's the first image in my composition. Now, at this point, I want to draw your attention to the Links panel. Upon placing this image, I can now see I have a new entry in my Links panel. Here we can see the file name, the file extension, what page it's on, the DPI, what color profile, and the image size. Every time you add a new image to your document, it will be represented here in the Links panel. So that's one of the most basic ways of placing an image into in design by first creating a frame and then placing an image into it. However, there is another technique you can consider to place an image into in design, and that is by placing an image directly into in design. Like earlier, I can do one of two things. I can come to file and select place or just simply use the keyboard shortcut. So I'll press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC. And again, I'm going to navigate to the downward folder, into the second folder, practice files, into the Assets folder, into the Images folder, into the JPEG folder, click on the retro texture image and click Okay. Once you press Okay, you will then notice your mouse cursor will change to this icon. This is in design asking you where you would like to place your image. Now, if I click and drag, I will begin to draw a frame. Upon release, the frame will appear and the image will be contained within. And if I take a look in the Links panel, I can now see there is a new item here. So once an image is placed inside a frame, editing the frame is easy. If we select the frame with the selection tool, we can expand and contract the size of the frame to reveal more or less of the image inside. And if you want to edit the shape of the frame, we can come up to the pen tool, click the Add anchor point tool, click on the frame stroke to add a frame and use the direct selection to click and drag the anchor point to change the shape of the frame. Another way to edit the frame and image together is to consider scaling. To do this, you need to first select your frame again by pressing to activate the selection tool. And with the frame selected, you can do one of two things. You can come to the menu and select the scale tool or press S on the keyboard for the shortcut. So I'll press S on the keyboard and the mouse cursor will change to this crosshair. Now before we attempt to scale the image frame, it's really important that you look up in the top left corner of the control panel at the reference point. This is a diagram representing where the reference point is for the frame. For example, I'll click in the middle, and if I place my mouse cursor on the left or right of the image, click and drag in, I can change the width of the frame and it will scale into the middle. Notice now how the image changes inside the frame as well. I'll quickly undo this by pressing Command Z on Mac or Control Z on PC. This time, if I press my mouse cursor above the frame, click and drive down, the same applies. I can change the height of the frame. But next, if I place my mouse cursor around one of the corners, I'm going to go for the bottom right and click and drag in, I can make the image smaller, like so. Now if I press and hold shift on the keyboard, I can decrease the image size or increase the image size, but this time to scale. So I'll scale the image down nicely like so. Now, as well as placing one image, you can also place in multiple images at a time. So below in the worksheet, there are some frames I prepared earlier using the rectangle frame tool. Once you have multiple frames in your document, simply press Command D on Mac or Control D on PC, navigate to the downward folder, into the second folder practice files, into the assets folder, into the images folder, into the JPEG folder, and in the multiple folder, we can select multiple images. When we press Okay, the mouse cursor will change, and you will see a number representing how many images can be placed. What we can do here is click once into each frame, and as you click, one image will be placed into a frame at a time. Now, in this instance, the images are larger than the frames. With the selection tool, we can select all the frames. And if we press Command plus Alt plus Shift plus E on Mac or Control plus Alt plus Shift plus E on PC, we can fit the content proportionally inside the frames. Nice. That's one way of placing multiple images if you want to put them into frames. Another way is just to import them directly into Indesign. This time, I'll press Command plus D on MAC or Control plus D on PC, navigate back to the image folder, select the same images, click Okay, and just like before, we will see the number represented on the mouse cursor representing how many images we can import. This time, instead of dropping them into frames, I'll just click and drag once, and it'll drop an image. Click and Drag again to drop another and another until all images are imported. Now, another important thing to keep in mind regarding images in in design is that you can import many different types of files. If we look in the download folder, in the assets folder, we will see that there are many folders in here ranging from JPEG to PSD to even in design. On the first page of the worksheet, we can see three boxes. One is for PSD, one is for Illustrator, and one is for Indesign. So on the worksheet page, I'll press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC, navigate to the download folder, into the second folder practice files, into the asset folder, into the Images folder, into the PSD folder, I'll click on Badge face, and this will appear in Indesign. Remember, if the content is too big for the frame, we can press Command plus Alt plus Shift plus E on Mac or Control plus Shift plus E on PC to fit the content proportionally inside the frame. Next, I'll press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC. This time, I'll navigate to the Illustrator folder and place in parrot face and press Command plus Alt plus shift plus E on Mac, or Control plus Alt plus shift plus E on PC to fit the content. Lastly, I'll press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC. This time, I'll navigate to the in design folder and place in Owl face and press Command plus Alt plus shift plus E on Mac or Control plus Alt plus shift plus E on PC to fit the content. And if we look over in the Links panel, we will now see our new links with the file extensions. Now, remember that image links in in design are only representative. Once image links are placed into in design, it can be very easy to edit the image in its respective program. So let's start with the PSD image. Once the image is in in design, if we come over to the Links panel and look at the bottom of the panel, there'll be a little icon in the bottom right corner called Edit original. If we click this, the image will then open up in Photoshop, and in Photoshop, we will see the file with its layers and its composition as created in Photoshop. Into Indesign again this time, let's look at the Illustrator file. Now, this time, instead of coming over to the Layers panel and clicking on the Edit original button, we can use the keyboard shortcut. With the selection tool, I'll first select the frame of the image that I want to edit. And if we press and hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the image, it will open in its native app. For example, I'll press and hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the Illustrator asset, and upon clicking, the file will open in Illustrator. Back into Indesign, again, this time, let's look at the in design frame. I press and hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the image, and this time it will open a new tab in Indesign and show the file. So the benefit of using linked images in a in design composition means that such images can be edited and changed very easily without affecting anything in the document. For example, if I come to the PSD file, press and hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the image, it'll open in Photoshop. Now into the layers panel, I can come down and add an adjustment layer, and here I'll add a black and white adjustment layer. I'll close and save the file. And back in in design, you'll see the file will update immediately. The exact is the same for any other file types. I'll press and hold Alt and double click on the Illustrator file, and in Illustrator, I'll change the color of the vector, close and save, and back into Idsign the file will update. Easy. So another important asset to consider is transparent images. In in design, using transparent images like PNGs, Illustrator files, or Photoshop files with transparent backgrounds opens up a world of creative possibilities. Transparent images allow you to layer visuals seamlessly over backgrounds, text, or other design elements without the need for masking or editing edges. If we select the frame with the parrot face, we can drag this up and over the image above. Right now, this has a transparent background because this is vector artwork that has been created in Illustrator that does not have a solid background. If we grab the budge face image frame and drag this up, we can see that right now, this is not a transparent image. However, if we click the Edit original button in the Links panel, open the image in Photoshop. In the layers panel, we can toggle off the background layer, and we can now see the background is transparent. If we close and save, back in in design, we can now see the image has a transparent background. So using transparent images in design can really add some dynamics to your layouts. So an important feature to keep in mind when working in design is transparency blending space. If we come up to Ed, it scroll down to transparency blending space. Right now, this is set to RGB. If we click this and set it to CMYK, we will see the images become desaturated. When working with images in in design, especially when you start working with transparent images and blending modes, if you want to see your images as intended, be sure to set your transparency blending mode to RGB. Now, one really important feature to pay close attention to when working with images is the link status warnings in the Links panel. If we look in the Links panel at the tabs at the top, one will be a warning icon. Now we understand image links exist outside of in design on the computer in a folder. When images are brought in, they are linked to that location. When links are working fine in a document, there will be nothing to see here. However, if an image link is deleted, moved to a different folder, or the file is renamed, then this will break the link in Indesign. If this happens, we will see an icon here indicating that the link is missing. For example, if I come into the download folder, into the second folder practice files, into the assets folder, into the images folder, into the JPEG folder, here I'll change the name of the image currently labeled landscape where I'll add a few Xs on the end of the file name. Back in Design, we will now see a warning sign next to the image. Now, this is indicating that the image link is broken and is no longer linked adequately in the document. Another symbol to look out for is this yellow icon. This icon doesn't represent a deleted link, but represents a file that has been modified. For example, if I come into the download folder into the second folder practice files, into the Assets folder, into the Images folder, into the PSD folder and open the budge face file, I'll toggle the visibility of the black and white adjustment layer on, then close and save the file. Now, because we didn't prompt in design to edit the original image, the image will still remain as it was when we placed it inside. However, in the Links panel, there will be a warning sign. To rectify this, we can simply click the link in the Links panel and then click the update button, and this will update the image. So the status warning symbols you really need to look out for are the broken link symbol and the modified symbol. So right now, we have an image link that is broken in this file. When you see an image link that is broken, one way to fix it is to simply relink the image. In the Links panel, we can first click the file with the missing link, right click and select relink. If we navigate back to the download folder to the file that I have just renamed and click Okay, the file will now relink. Keep in mind that sometimes if images are broken or even if you just want to change an image for a different image, we can simply relink an image. Another really important feature to keep in mind when working with images in in design are import options. Now, let's say, for example, we want to import a certain page from another in design Illustrator or PDF asset. To do this, we will need to use Import options. So on the next page at the top, we can see four empty square frames next to each other I have prepared earlier. I'll click the first frame and press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC to place an image into the download folder, into the third folder, document samples into folder three, multiple slides into the social media folder, and here I'll select the Aquaralm social media post file. Now before pressing open, I'll be sure to hit the checkbox down here which says, Show Import options. With this check, I'll press Open and upon click a manual open. From here, we can see that this document contains a total of 16 pages. From here, we can scroll through and select which page we want to import, and here I'll choose page five and click Open. I I Design, we will see that page placed into the frame. Remember, once that page appears, it now becomes an image asset. I'll do the same again for the next frame, but this time Import page six. Then again, for the third frame, Import page seven, again for the fourth frame, Import page eight, and now we have imported pages from one document into this document. With this selection tool, if we click either frame and press Alt and double click, we will open the document in another tab. And here we can see the whole document. And if we were to make any changes to any of the pages, close and save it will update in my worksheet document. So the same is true for any other format we might want to bring into in design. This time, I'll bring in an illustrated document. So I'll select the frame below and press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC, into the second folder, practice files, into the assets folder, into the Images folder, into the AI folder and select planets. With the showimport options checked, when we click Okay, it will ask what Rbard of that illustrated doc I want to bring in. I'll choose page one, click Okay, and that will appear in my worksheet. Now, we're not going to stop there. With my space image positioned in the frame, I'll press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC, into the assets folder, into the Images folder, into the AI folder, and again select planets with the Showimport options checked. When we click Okay, this time, I'll bring in Artboard two, and click and drag to place down the image. I'll press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC, into the assets folder, into the Images folder, into the AI folder, and again select planets. With the Show Import options checked, I'll click Okay, and this time, I'll bring in artboard three and click and drag to place another image. And you can see where I'm going with this. Here, I can keep placing an image and use the very same document to create a simple composition of images from the same illustrated document. If we click on the link in the Links panel and hit the Edit original, this is actually a simple illustrated document with multiple assets on each page. Using layer options, you can import multiple assets from one document into Indesign. So keep in mind, if you ever want to bring in assets from documents with multiple pages or artboards, be sure to click on the Show Import Options. Now, another important feature to consider when importing images into a document is layer options. As well as importing specific pages from a document, we can also import specific layers. For example, with the next frame selected, a press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC to place an into the second folder, practice files, into the assets folder, into the images folder, into the PSD folder, and select the hot air balloons doc. With the show Import options checked, when we click Okay, we can see the layers tab where we can toggle on and off the layers to choose a specific layer. In this instance, I'll go with the clouds layer. Click Okay, and that will appear in my worksheet. With my Clouds image positioned in the frame, I'll press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC. In the assets folder, into the images folder, into the PSD folder, and again, select the hot air balloons dock. With the showimport options checked, when we click Okay, this time I'll bring in a different layer, and I'll choose balloon one and make sure the Clouds layer is unselected and click and drag to place down the image. I'll press Command D on MAC or Control D on PC. Into the PSD folder, I'll select the hot air balloons doc again. And with the show import options checked, I'll click Okay, and this time, I'll choose balloon two and make sure the clouds layer is unchecked, click and drag to place down the image. And again, you can see where I'm going with this. Here I can keep placing an image and using the very same document to create a simple composition from the same Photoshop document. If we click on the Link in the Links panel and hit the edit original, we can see that this is actually a simple Photoshop document with multiple layers. Using layer options, you can import multiple layers from one document into in design. Now in in design, we have multiple image frames with the same image asset, but they now all look different because we have activated a different layer in each. Nice. Now when working in in design, there may be occasions where you might be working on multiple documents with multiple pages and where you'll have lots of images. Managing large documents with lots of images can be tricky, and it can be hard to locate specific images. However, there is one useful feature that can help you. So the Links panel is used to manage every image that we have in the document, and this can stack up pretty quickly when adding lots of images. If we place our mouse cursor over the image link and right click, we will see an option go to link. If we click this, Indesign will take us straight to the page where the image is. So this can be really useful to locate specific images within a document fast. Another useful feature that I design offers is the ability to reveal an image on your computer. Now, there may be times when you'll be working on a document and there may be an image you want to share or just locate. Again, if we come to the Links panel, if we place our mouse cursor over an image link and right click, we will also see an option Reveal in Finder. If we click this, a window should open, showing exactly where the image link resides on your computer. Can be really useful to help save time searching for assets on your computer. So the last feature to keep in mind when working with images in in design is the ability to paste images into linked frames. Looking back in the overview section, we can see two examples of this. The first is what appears to be separate frames which are not connected with images inside, and the second appears to be a word with an image inside. In the previous video, we looked at how we could work with frames to unite them, and we looked at how we could work with type and set it to outlines. What that does is turn editable text into shapes which can also work as frames. In this example, instead of these frames being individual boxes, where we import images into each frame separately, by setting type as outlines, we've created many individual frames in which it's possible to import an image into the entire frame group. So the first example has been made by creating some frames and binding them together, and this can be done quite simply. So down in our worksheet, I'll come to the tools menu and click on a hexagon frame. I'll click and drag in the worksheet to drop this down. I'll come back and select on a circle and drop this down next to it, and then come and grab a rectangle frame and drop one down next to that. So now I have three individual frames next to each other, and currently, these are all individuals, and right now we can see the X inside each of the frames. If I attempt to place an image into either one of these, the images will be placed into each one separately. Now with my selection tool, I can click and move these around. I can rotate and adjust the size to what I like. Once happy, I can select them all, and with the more selected, I can come over to the Pathfinder panel. If you cannot see your Pathfinder panel, you can come up to Window, scroll down and click on Pathfinder. From here, I'll just click the first button add and this will bind these frames together. You will see that the X inside each frame has now gone and now spans them all, representing that they are now connected. Now, if I wish to edit any of these shapes, I can use the Direct Selection tool to click on an anchor point and click and drag over a shape, and here I can change the position or the size. Sappi, I can press Command D on Mac or Control D on PC, into the assets folder, into the images folder, into the JPEG folder, and select the retro texture JPEG. And now we can see the images placed into the frames spanning across all of the frames as a group. Easy. And just like earlier, if we use the direct selection tool, we can click the image inside to see the image frame inside and simply click on the anchor point to change the position inside the frame, to scale up, rotate or reposition. And the same can be done to the type. Now, unlike creating individual frames and binding them together with the Pathfinder tool, when type is set to outlines, all the frames will be bound automatically. So if we select the text frame with the selection tool, come up to type down to create outlines. Upon click, I'll press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC, into the assets folder, into the images folder, into the JPEG folder, and select the green leaf texture JPEG file. And with the direct selection tool, we can click the image inside, scale up, rotate or reposition. Easy. So those are all the key principles you need to know when working with images in in design. Quite a lot to take in, right? But one of the most important things to know in order to manage your links with ease. If you're new to in design, I'd recommend having a play around with this worksheet and exploring the ways links can be used to get comfortable using Links in in design. So now we're all cleared up on how to use images in in design. It's time to move on to the next subject. So I'll see you in the next video. 24. Fill & Stroke Effects In Adobe InDesign: When it comes to enhancing your designs with boldness, precision and style, fill and stroke effects in in design are essential tools for creating impactful visuals. Fill and Stroke effects are your secret weapons for making text, shapes, and frames stand out. If you want to add bold strokes or vibrant fills, in this video, we'll explore how you can make your designs pop. So get comfy and let's have some fun with fill and stroke effects in in design. So when working in in design, there will be occasions where you will apply a lot of fill and stroke effects to your object. Here is a poster design where we can see a variety of fill and stroke effects applied, which can add a lot of dynamics to a composition. So let's now get hands on with fill and stroke effects and see how we can work with them. To do this, let's jump into a worksheet I have prepared earlier. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two Practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. If you scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we're going to look at the Working with Images worksheet. So with the selection tool, I'll select the fill and stroke effects thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail and the worksheet will open up in its own document. In this practice session, you'll learn all the crucial ways you can add fill and stroke effect. So let's scroll down to the second spread, and here we can see a number of fill and stroke features. And at a glance here, you can see a lot of effects that can be applied to frames. And these are the following things we're going to look at in this video. So let's now come to the second spread and see all the ways we can work with fill and stroke effects in in design. So when working with fill and stroke effect, there are a few key panels you will want to pay close attention to the stroke panel, the gradient panel, and the tools panel. So let's start off with a basic fill. So to begin, come over to the menu, click and hold on the frame tool and select the rectangle frame. I'll click and drag on my pointers here, and upon release, we will have our first rectangle frame. And by default, the frame will be set to transparent. Now, when working with fill and stroke effects and in design, like in most adobe programs, we will need to pay close attention to the bottom of the tools menu where we can see the fill and stroke color options. The top square represents the fill color and the square below represents the stroke. Right now, we can see that there is a red line going through the squares. This means that currently there is no fill or stroke color applied, and these are transparent. So to apply a basic fill is simple. With the frame selected over in the tools menu, make sure that the fill color is selected, and here we can do one of two things. We can either double click on the fill color and pick a color and click Okay. Or we can come over to the Swatches panel and select a color from there. Notice now in the tools menu that the left square has the color representing the color applied to the fill of the frame. So when we apply the swatch to fill the frame, we will see the color inside. Now, there is another feature you can consider, and that is color tint. Right now, the color is 100% in the frame. If we come to the Swatches panel, we will see this box at the top called tint, which is currently set to 100%. So with the selection tool, I'll click on my frame and drive to the right while holding Alt and Shift to duplicate the frame across in a straight line. And if we want to change to a lighter shade of color inside, we can simply click into the tint box here and toggle the percentage. If I type 50%, you will see that color change. So it's the same color, but now shows a lighter tint. To create a lighter tint, some may choose to apply a transparency effect, but in some instances, this might not be wise if the frame is on top of other objects. So the best way to get a lighter shade of a color is to use the tint. So that's how you could apply a simple solid color to a frame. As easy as it is to apply a solid color to a frame, we can also apply a gradient. Now, by default, when you have a new document, you might not have a gradient to hand in your swatches panel, but kicking it off is easy. So I'll press and hold alt and click and drag down to duplicate my frame to match my pointers. With our new frame selected, I'm going to come over and click on the gradient tool in the tools menu and then come and click and drag over my shape like so. Upon release, we will now apply a gradient. Now, since I already have a gradient in my swatches panel, it's going to apply that. However, if you were to create a new document and create a frame and add a gradient, by default, it would be black and white. Once we have a gradient applied to our frame, we can change the settings. To do this, we will need the gradient panel visible. If you cannot see your gradient panel, come up to window, scroll down to color, and click on gradient and Apple pop the menu. I have mine over here on the right, tucked nicely on my vertical panel bar. So with the selection tool, I'll click on my gradient square, press and hold Alt plus Shift and drag this to the right to make a quick duplicate. With a frame selected with a gradient applied and the gradient tool visible, we can see we can change a number of settings. First, if we come on the type dropdown, we can change the gradient from linear to radial. Also, we can click on reverse to reverse the colors in the gradient. Down below, we will see the two colors that currently make up the gradient. And if we want to change the gradient, we can simply come into the Swatches panel, click on a swatch, and drag it into the gradient spectrum. And as we do that, we will see the gradient change. Next, I'll drag in two new colors and click and drag on the previous colors and drag them down to remove them and move my new colors to the far left and right, and now we have a new gradient. In this instance, I'll go with a yellow and an orange gradient. Now, in the tools menu, if I right click on the fill square, we can click to add this to the swatches. Next, I'll click back onto my first gradient example. Then in the menu, I'll make sure the fill color is selected and I can click on my new gradient. Now, as well as applying the gradient, it has also applied the radial gradient effect. When adding the gradient to the Swatches panel, it also kept the settings of the gradient. So if I now want to change this back to a linear gradient, I'm going to have to come back to the gradient panel and simply click the drop down and select linear. And if I want to change the direction of the gradient, I can click the grading tool and tools menu and click and drag like so. Easy. So another fill effect to use is an image. For example, if we want to have an image background to create a pattern or texture, we can use an image to fill the frame with a pattern or texture image. To do this is very simple. However, first, we will need a frame to place an image inside. With the selection tool, I'll click on my frame at the top, press and hold Alt and Shift and click and drag down to make a quick duplicate of the frame and place it on my pointers. With the frame selected, either come up to file, place, or simply press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC on the keyboard. Upon click, you will bring up a browser window, so I'll navigate to the Download folder, into folder two, practice files, into the assets folder, into the Images folder, into the JPEG folder, and select the retro texture JPEG. Click open, and this will drop the image into the frame. Now, once an image is placed into a frame, there are a number of ways you can fill the image inside. If we press Command plus Alt plus shift plus E on Mac or Control plus Alt plus shift plus E on PC, we can fit the content proportionally inside the frame. This is a good start when bringing images into a frame because you can clearly see all the image inside the frame to begin with. Once we have the image set proportionately inside the frame, this is going to make it much easier to manage. Now we can see the anchor points around the image inside the frame. If I press A to activate the Direct Selection tool, we can now click on these anchor points to toggle the size of that image to control how much the image fills the frame. With the Direct Selection tool, I'll place my mouse cursor over the middle right anchor, I'll press and hold Alt plus Shift, and click and drag out, and we will scale the image up inside the frame. Next, I can just click with the Direct Selection tool and drag the image around inside the frame to move the image around inside, and I'll press Escape to deselect. With the selection tool, we can also click on the frame and move the anchor points around to expand or contract the size of the frame. As we do that, we will see the image remain in position in the frame. So we can do one of two things here. We can change the size of the frame and we can change the image size inside the frame. When working with an image in a frame, you will have to be careful how you manage the frame and how you manage the image inside to get the effect you want. Now before we move on, there is one useful technique you should keep in mind, and that is cloning fill effects from one frame to another. Now, as you create layouts in in design, you will often apply effects to frames, and as you create new frames, you may want to apply similar effects to those. To do this is really simple. So I'll come to the tools menu and click and hold on the frame, and this time, I'll select an ellipse frame. I'll come over and drag on my pointers to create an empty frame, and by default, this will set to a transparent. If, for example, I want to apply the same yellow and orange linear gradient to this circle from the square above, to do this, I can simply come into the tools menu, click on the Eyedropper tool and with the circle selected, I'll just click on the square, and upon click, that will apply the same fill effect to my circle. However, I will need to click on the gradient tool in the tools menu and come and click and drag to refine the direction of the gradient. This time, again, I'll click on the Eyedropper tool, come up to the top and click on my first fill effect, and that will apply the basic fill. I'll click on the Eyedropper tool again and this time, click on the radial gradient. Easy. Now, keep in mind this only works with color fill effects. If I use the eyedropper tool and click on the image, it won't place the image inside. This only works with fill color effects. So those are the main fill options in in design. We can use a basic color fill. We can apply a gradient fill or use an image. So let's now take a look at strokes in in design. When working with strokes, we will typically use them in one of two ways. One way will be to use strokes applied to simple lines, and another will be to use strokes applied to the outlines of frames. Looking back at the overview section, we can see that we have some samples here. We have some basic strokes and we have some stroke effects applied to frames. So let's start by looking at basic strokes. To begin, come over to the menu and click on the line tool. Then come and click on the pointer and drag while holding Shift to the next pointer to draw a straight line. Upon release, you will draw a line, but by default, there will be no stroke applied. Now, when working with stroke effect in indsign, remember to keep an eye on the bottom square in the tools menu under the fill color. Currently, we can see this is set to transparent due to the red line going through it. Also when working with strokes, we will need to have the stroke panel visible. If you cannot see your stroke panel, come up to window, scroll down and click on stroke. Now, if we look in the stroke panel, we can see that there are a lot of options we can toggle when working with strokes. To apply a basic stroke to our line with it selected, first come into the tools menu, make sure to click on the stroke square in the background so we can see that above the fill. And in the stroke panel, I can click on the weight option to set this to three points. Press V to activate the selection tool and click off to deselect. So that's how you can apply a basic stroke. Simply draw a line and set the weight. Now also keep in mind that just like with the basic fill, we can also apply a color to the stroke. This time, with the stroke selected at the bottom of the tools panel, we will need to pay close attention to the square beneath the fill color. If we click this, we will select the stroke color, which we can come into the Swatch panel and click to apply any color we like. Also, keep in mind, if you want to change the color to a lighter shade, we can come up to tint and change the percentage. Now, in in design, there's a whole variety of different types of strokes we can use. Once we have created one stroke, it's really easy to duplicate and start applying alternative stroke styles. So with the selection tool, I'll press Alt plus Shift and click and drag on my stroke to quickly duplicate the stroke down in a straight line. With my new stroke, in the stroke panel, if we come down halfway, we can click on the drop down for type and see a number of stroke types. As we click through these, we will see the various stroke effects on offer from lines, dots, dashes and wavy lines. So a lot of variety on offer initially. However, if you want to be more particular, there is an option to edit and save our own custom strokes. So with the selection tool, with the stroke selected, I'll press and hold Alt plus shift and drag down to make it quick duplicate. Now a very common stroke effect used is the dashed line. With the stroke selected, I'll come into the stroke panel, click down on Type and select dashed. Upon clicking the dash line, we will now see these boxes where we can type in some values to allow us to toggle the distance between the dashes on the stroke. So with the stroke size set to four, in the first box, I'll type in five for dash, click into the next box, and we will see the dashes decrease in size. Next, I'll type 35 in the gap box, click into the next box, and we will increase the space between the dashes, and now we have what looks like a dashed line with little squares. So that's how you can edit a dashed stroke effect. Let's say you want to save this stroke effect to make it easy to apply to other objects. If I come up to the top right of the stroke panel and click the menu box, we can click on Stroke Styles. Upon click, a menu will appear where we can see our current styles. If we come and click New, up we'll pop a new menu where we can define more settings. So to match my stroke, I'll set the length to one, set the pattern length to eight, and the weight to four. In the preview, I can see that I have what looks like a dashed line with little squares. Once I'm happy with the appearance, I'll name this stroke Little Square and click Okay. And now we can see our new stroke visible in the Styles category. So I'll click Okay, then come and click on my first basic stroke line, come into the stroke menu, click on the drop down, and now we can see our new stroke is present. If I select this, we will apply the new custom stroke to the line. Now, if this is not perfect, we can edit this. So back up to the stroke menu, click Stroke Styles and click Edit. Now we can see on the preview, and as we edit the stroke, we will see it updating in real time. Here, I'll push the pattern length of 13, click Okay, and now I have redefined my stroke. Easy. Now, when working with strokes, another feature to keep in mind is stroke caps. With the selection tool, I'll click on my first basic stroke, and while holding Alt plus Shift, I'll click and drag down to make a quick duplicate in a straight line. With it selected, I'll come into the stroke panel. I'll push the weight up to 25 and set the color to blue. So right now, we have this really thick stroke. If we come into the stroke panel and look at the top, you can see that just under weight, we have this option called cap. Now, by default, we will have the butt cap setting applied, but if we click the option next to this, we can apply the round cap. So keep in mind when using strokes, if you want to get a rounder edge instead of the harsher edge, you can click on the round cap. This can also work well on dashed lines. If we come up and select on a stroke set to a dashed line, if we click the round cap, we can see that we still have the dash line, but this time with rounded edges on each dash. Now, another useful effect we can apply to strokes is endpoints. This can be quite useful when creating diagrams or infographics. So I'll click on our first stroke, and while holding Alt plus Shift, I'll click and drag down to duplicate. Now, if you look in the stroke panel, you will see that towards the bottom, we have start and end points. We can do here is click on the drop down and select from one of the many endpoints. In this instance, I'll click on the start, drop down, and click on a circle. Now, if we want to swap this to the other side of the stroke, I can hit the swap button in the middle between start and end, and that will move it to the other side. I'll click on the drop down again on the left and this time select a circle solid. Now, keep in mind, as you change the stroke size, the proportion of the endpoints will change with it. For example, I'll set the stroke to five and we can see the endpoints change. However, if you want a small stroke but a larger endpoint, if you look carefully in the stroke panel, we can see under the endpoint we have these percentages. Here, I'll set the stroke size to one, set the scale of the start point to 300, and we can now see that the endpoint is larger than the proportion of the stroke size. So that's how we can apply basic stroke effects to lines, create custom strokes, and apply endpoints. Now, strokes can also work very dynamically on frames. So I'll come over to the tools menu, grab the rectangle tool, come across and click and drag on my pointers to create an empty square frame. Earlier, we learned how easy it is to apply a fill of fact. It's just as easy to apply a stroke effect. With our new frame selected, we can simply come over to the stroke panel, click on the drop down and add a stroke. In this instance, I'll add a solid stroke, set the width to ten, and set the color to black. Now, once you have a stroke applied to a frame, one feature to pay attention to is the stroke alignment. If we come to the stroke panel, we can see that we have three options we can consider here. By default, when you apply a stroke to a frame, it will be set to align the stroke to center. If we click the second option, we will align the stroke to the inside. With the selection tool, I'll click on my frame, press and hold Alt plus Shift and drag to the right. If we click back on the first option, we will align the stroke to the center. With the selection tool, I'll click on MFrame, press and hold Alt plus shift, and drag to the right again. And if we click the third option, we can align the stroke to the outside. So center, inside and outside. Now, once you have a stroke applied to a frame, another feature to consider is corner options. So with the first frame selected, if we come up to object, come down and click on corner Options up or pop a menu. Keep in mind, we can also access this from the properties panel. With the frame selected, if we come into the properties panel, we will also see the corner options visible in the appearance section. If we click the corner option to the right, the corner options menu will appear. So I'll click on the preview checkbox in the bottom left, and if we click on a drop down tab for the top left, we can see some options. For this, I'll click on bevel, and we will see the corners change on the stroke. Also, we can change the value of the bevel. For example, I'll change the value in each to ten, and that will drastically change the shape below, and I'll just change it back to five for now and click Okay. I'll select the neckt shape, come back up to object, click on corner options, and this time on the drop down, I'll set it to a rounded corner. Set the value to ten for each and click Okay. I'll select the last shape, back up to object, click on corner options, and this time on the drop down, I'll set it to inset. Set the value to four for each and click Okay. And that's how you can apply corner effects to your strokes. Now, one last little trick to keep in mind, with the selection tool, if we click on a frame, you will notice this little yellow square. If you click this once, you will then see four yellow squares appear in the corners. This is a toggle that we can click and drag, which we can customize the value of the corners, and in this case, we can make the rounded corners larger or smaller. So earlier, we looked at how easy it is to apply a gradient filled to a frame. Now, applying gradients to strokes can be just as easy. With the selection tool, I'll click on my frame with the rounded corners, press and hold alt and click and drag it down, and then expand it across like so to match my pointers. Next, I'll come over to the tools menu and make sure the stroke color is selected and then over in the swatches, I'll click on the gradient stroke we created earlier. Upon click, we will apply the gradient effect, but in this case, we will also apply a radial gradient. So back into the grading panel, I'll click the gradient type drop down, select linear, I'll set the stroke weight to five. I'll come back into the tools menu, click the gradient tool, and I can click and drag over my stroke area to redefine the angle of the gradient. And just like that, we have applied a gradient to the stroke. Easy. Now, before we move on, there is one useful technique you should keep in mind, and that is cloning stroke effect. Earlier, we learned how easy it is to clone fill effects from one frame to another. Well, this can be done just the same with stroke effect. So with the selection tool, I'll press and hold alt and shift and drag my new frame to the right to make a quick duplicate. Now, if, for example, I want to apply the same wave stroke applied to one of the strokes in the overview spread, I can come and paste it below. I'll click on my new frame, then come into the tools menu, click on the Eyedropper tool. Then it's just a case of clicking on the wavy stroke, and upon click, that will apply the same stroke effect to my frame. If I come and click on the eyedropper tool again and this time, click on the dashed stroke, it will apply that effect. If I come and click on the eyedropper tool again and this time, click on the black stroke with the bevel corners, it will apply that effect. So those are the key things to keep in mind when working with stroke effect in design. As you can see, there are a lot of settings you can alter and a lot of effects you can achieve. So now we know how fill effects work and how to work with strokes, we can start to bring it all together. Now another quick thing to keep in mind when working with strokes in in design is scaling. If we come and open the preferences menu in in design and come to general or on halfway, you will see the option for when scaling. If you want your strokes to scale when you scale your objects, you will need this checked. And if you don't, simply uncheck this box. By default, I believe this is automatically checked to scale. But if you find your strokes are not scaling with your objects, then check this option in the preferences. So on the last page of the worksheet, we have some common items one may apply fill and stroke effects to in in design. So let's look at applying some of the things we have just learned to some common items. So first, let's look at applying some stroke effects to some type. If we select the type frame with the selection tool, then double click to enter into and select the text. Currently, we can see it's set to black. We click on the tools panel at the bottom, if we click the swap fill and stroke, we can change the fill to a stroke effect. If we click on the stroke color, we can come up into the Swatches panel and apply a gradient we created earlier. If we click on the gradient panel, we can set this to a linear or radio. In this instance, I'll set it to a linear. Then come into the tools menu, click the grading tool and click and drag to change the direction of the gradient. And in the stroke panel, we can change the weight of the stroke, and I'll set this to two, press escape, and now we have the stroke effect with a gradient applied to the type. So below this, I have two empty circle frames ready to apply some effects to. With the selection tool, I'll click on the first circle frame. In the tools menu, I'll make sure the fill square is selected, and in the Swatches panel, I can add a yellow fill and add a tint of 20. Back in the tools menu, I'll click on the stroke, set this to a blue color, and in the stroke panel, I'll hit the drop down and choose a wavy stroke, set the stroke size to eight, and just like that, we can apply a solid color and a stroke effect. With this selection tool, I'll click the next circle frame. This time, I'll select the eyedropper tool and then choose the effect from the first object. In the tools menu, I'll make sure the fill square is selected. In the Swatches panel, I can add a sin and make sure the tint is still set to 20. Back in the tools menu, I'll click on the stroke, set this to a gradient color. In the stroke panel, I'll hit the drop down and choose a thick tick stroke, set the stroke size to 12, click into the gradient tool, click to change the direction. And just like that, we can clone the effect from one object and make quick changes. So to finish off, we're going to apply to effect. So below this, I have two empty square frames ready to apply some Effectsu. With the selection tool, I'll click on the first frame. I'll come up to object, down to corner options. This time, I'll make sure to click the lock to unlock. And for the top left and right, I'll set this to round corners with a value of 25 each. And click Okay. With the frame selected, I'll either come up to file place or simply press Command plus D on Mac or Control plus D on PC on the keyboard. I'll navigate to the downwaradFolder, into folder two, practice files. Into the assets folder, into the images folder, into the JPEG folder, into the multiple folders, and select Hummingbird one JPEG and click Open. Press Command plus Alt plus Shift plus E on Mac or Control plus Alt plus Shift plus E on PC. We can fit the content proportionally inside the frame and then scale to fit inside the frame with a direct selection tool. Selection tool, I'll click on the next frame. With the frame selected, either come up to file place or press Command plus D on MAC or Control plus D on PC. I'll navigate to the Download folder, into folder two, practice files, into the assets folder, into the Images folder, into the PSD folder, and select hot air balloons. Now, before I click Open, I'll make sure that Showimport options is checked below. I'll make sure that the clouds and balloons one layer is active and click Okay. Press Command plus Alt plus shift plus E on Mac or Control plus Alt plus shift plus Eon PC, and we can fit the content proportionally inside the frame. With the direct selection tool, I'll click on the image and scale to fit inside the frame. I'll come up to object down to corner options. I'll make sure to click the lock icon to lock it this time. For the top, I'll set this to bevel with a value of ten, and it will apply that to all the others. I'll click Okay, then into the stroke panel, add a thick thin stroke, set the weight to five, and set the alignment to outside, change the color to blue. And now we have two images in bespoke frames with bespoke stroke effects. So those are all the key principles you need to know when working with fill and stroke effects in design. If you're new to in design, I'd recommend having a play around with this worksheet and exploring the fill and stroke effects on offer to get comfortable using them in in design. So now we are all cleared up on how to use fill and stroke effects. It's now time to move on to the next step. So see you in the next video. 25. Frames In Adobe InDesign: Frames are the backbone of every layout created in Adobe in design, give in structure to your text, images, and ideas and transmit a blank canvas into a masterpiece. As soon as we set up a document in in design, the next step is to start bringing in our visual elements. In in design, frames are the fundamental structures that contain all the visual elements in a document. Frames are the essential building blocks that help you manage everything in your work area. And if you're new to in design, there is a lot to learn about them. So let's jump in and see how frames work in in design. So as I scroll through this booklet document and click around, we can see that most of the elements are set in frames. If I press W on the keyboard, I can toggle into normal mode where we can see the framework of the document with all the frame bounding boxes. In this instance, some frames have hard corners and some have round corners. So contain text, some contain images, and some simply include color. This is a simple paradigm that allows us to control all elements on the page and build structure to bring our layout to life. Now, as simple a topic as this may seem, there is a lot to know about frames to enable you to harness your creativity. So let's jump into a document, get hands on with in design, and start creating frames. To demonstrate frames, I recommend opening up this frames worksheet. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two, practice files, and open the practice worksheets in design file. If we scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we are going to look at the frames worksheet. With the selection tool, I'll select the Working with frames thumbnail. Now, I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own document. In this practice session, you'll learn how to create and manipulate different types of frames, giving you the skills to build professional and visually appealing layouts. So here in this worksheet, you can see what we are going to cover. Below, we have a sample document which we will be referring back to shortly, and if we come to the second spread, we can see what we are going to be focusing on in this video. So in Adobe in design, there are four main types of frames to be aware of unassigned frames, text frames, graphic frames, and vector frames. So the first is the unassigned frame. When you create a frame using the frame tool, by default, it starts as an unassigned frame. These are simply empty frames that hold no content inside. We press W on the keyboard, we can toggle into normal mode, and we can see the outline of the first frame. We can see the outline of the frame, but until something is put inside it, it is simply an empty vessel waiting to be assigned. So back up to the first spread with the selection tool, I'll click the thumbnail for the sample doc, and I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail. And the document will open up in its own tab. Now, for this document, I'm using the font Minl and Montserrat. If you have not already downloaded all the fonts for this course, this is a free font that you can acquire online. To get this font, I recommend you check out the course fonts page on the course PDF document. This is a list of all the fonts that are used in this class and where to get. Simply click on the Minl and Montserrat link, and this will take you straight to where you can download it. Simply close this document, install the font, open it back up again, and you should be able to follow along just fine. So next, we have the text frame. Text frames are specifically designed to hold and format text, allowing for easy manipulation of typography, flow and alignment. Here in this document, you can see there are a lot of text frames, some with large simple text, and some with more text heavy paragraphs. Next, we have graphic frames. These are frames that have a simple color fill or contain links, offering options for fitting, scaling and positioning within the layout. Here in this document, you can see there are a lot of image frames. On the front, we have a nice large image. On the back, we have a bunch of succulent images all in their individual frames positioned freely, and on the inside spread, we have more images positioned freely on the spread. Last, we have vector frames. Now, unlike the previous frames that are normally created using the frame tool, vector frames are created by either drawing using the pen tools or by pasting in shapes from apps like Illustrator. These frames are commonly used to create graphic shapes, icons or textures in a document. However, when a vector image is pasted into in design, in design recognizes the anchor points which enable them to behave just like frames, becoming a container which can contain text and image. My sample document on page three, up in the top left, I have a vector graphic that has been pasted in from Illustrator. Currently, the vector object is filled with color. But if selected with the direct selection tool, we can see the anchor points more on this later. Now, mastering the selection tool in in design is key to effectively control and manipulate frames within your layout. The selection tool, the black arrow, allows you to select frames. When you select a frame, you will see a bounding box which gives us the ability to take action. We can simply click and drag to move them around. We can click and drag on any of the handles, change the shape and size of a frame, or we can place our mouse over the end and click to rotate. The selection tool is ideal for working with the frame as a whole, whether it's a text frame, graphic frame or an assign frame. So what about the content inside frame? So in this document, you can see we have text frames, graphic frames, and unassigned frames. With the selection tool active, we can click frames. But if, for example, we click on a frame with type, if we double click on the frame, we can enter into that frame and select the content. This is useful for clicking into frames with text to edit. With content selected inside a frame, if you were to deselect the content inside, simply press escape to go back to the frame selection. And the same applies to images with the selection tool active, if we click on a frame with an image, if we double click into the frame, we will then see the bounding box of the image inside, which we can then click to move around and change the size inside or even rotate. This is one way to edit content in the frames. Another is to use the direct selection tool, the white arrow. Now, this lets you select and manipulate the contents of a frame directly. So instead of having to click once and then double click into the frame with your selection tool with the direct selection tool, you can just click inside it once. By understanding and utilizing these selection tools, you can gain precise control over both the frame and its contents, enabling you to create professional polished designs with ease. So as I click through this document, you may notice that some of the frames have different colors. When you have frames in your document, they will be colored, and this will represent which layer in which they reside. For example, here on page two and three, the text frames are green, and that is because they are on the type layer in the layers panel, which we can see is labeled green. And if I click on the image frames, we can see these are red, matching the image layer in the layers panel. So in in design, the frames can also let you know which layer they are set. This can help you keep everything on the layers you want and keep on top of your layer structure and organization. Also, on a lot of the frames, you will see some rounded corners. On page one and two of my document, you can see that some of my frames have corners and some don't. In design allows for a lot of flexibility, offering a range of corner options. Let's jump back into the worksheet and have a look at how we can start to work with frames. Now, if we again press W on the keyboard, we can toggle between preview and normal mode. In normal mode, we can see all the frames that are making up this worksheet, where we have lots of text, graphic, and unassigned frames. So let's come to the bottom spread in the worksheet. So to create the frame is simple. To do this, we can select the desired frame tool from the tools panel where if we click and hold on the frame tool, we can select from the rectangle frame tool, the ellipse frame tool or polygon frame tool. I'll click on the Rectangle tool, come into the work area and click and drag. Upon release, we will create an unassigned frame. Remember, unassigned frames are simple frames with no text or links inside them. Another thing you can keep in mind, instead of clicking and dragging to draw a custom frame with the frame tool active, if you click once, Apple pop a menu where you can add in exact values. I'll type in 25 for width and height, click Okay, and there is a frame to my exact measurements. So that is how simple it can be to create a frame. And we can do this again with the ellipse or polygon tool. Now, a really cool thing to keep in mind in in design is convert shape. So right now, we have a square and a circle frame, but what if we wanted a triangle? With our frame selected, we can come up to object, scroll down to convert shape, and from here we will have a selection. If I click on Triangle, we will convert the frame into a triangle shape. If I click this square, we can convert this to an ellipse. So if you have a frame and you want to replace it with a different shape, instead of having to draw a new frame, you can just convert shape. Easy. So as well as changing the shape of a frame, we can also edit the shape manually. If I press A to activate the direct selection tool and click on the triangle, we will see anchor points are now white. This means I can now click and drag on these anchor points to edit and move them around to edit the frame. If, for example, I come back up to object, convert shape, and turn it into a rectangle, I can click off and then click back on again and edit the corner points. That is how easy it can be to make simple changes to your frames, but it doesn't end there. We can make further edits to a frame by using the Pen tool. With the frame active, if we come over to the tools menu, click on hold on the Pen tool and select the plus icon, we can click and add additional anchor points to our frame outline. And if we press A to activate the direct selection tool, we can click on these points and drag them around. This can be great if you want to make custom shapes. So another thing to keep in mind when working with frames is the corner options. So I'll quickly draw out another frame below. And with the frame selected, you can come up to object, and if we click on corner options, up will pop a menu where you can customize your corner. From here, you can select a range of corner styles from the drop down. By unchecking the lock icon, you can add corner options to individual corners. So in this instance, I'll set the top right corner to round it with the value of ten. Also make sure to click the preview box so you can see your edits in real time. And for the bottom left corner, I'll also set the round corner to a value of ten and click Okay. So I'll press Command Z on Mac or Control Z on PC to undo that. Another feature to be aware of is this little yellow box on the frame. When you select a frame with the selection tool, you will see a yellow box. Click this once and you'll see four yellow boxes around the frame. Simply drag in the box and you can add a round corner. Click on hold Shift and drag and you can add round corners to just that one corner. So I'll duplicate my shape across by clicking and dragging while holding Alt. Come up to corner options, click the lock icon, select inverse round corners and set this to ten and click Okay, and that's how easy it is to customize your frame corners. Now, here is a trick to make a grid of multiple frames. So first, I'm going to come up to layout and click on margins and columns. In the menu, I'll be sure to hit five for gutter and click Okay, and you'll see why this is important in a second. Now if we click and hold the frame tool, we can select the rectangle tool. This time, as I click and drag to make a frame, if I press right on the keyboard, we will see more frames snap out. The more we press right, the more frames will occur. And if we want to dial that back in, we can press left. Also, if I press up, more frames will appear in rows. So just like that, we can click and drag, press left and up to create a grid of boxes like so. So I'll press left and up to get four columns and four rows. Upon release, we will now have a grid of unassigned frames which we can also click individually and move around if we want. Some of you may be wondering what is causing this gap in between all of these squares. Now, if you remember just a second ago, I came up to layout margins and columns and set this to five. It's the gutter space for the margins and columns that determines the space here. So with the selection tool, I'll select all these frames and just delete them. I'll come back up to layout and click on margins and columns. This time for Gutter, I'll type in zero. And with the selection tool, I'll click on drag to make a frame. I'll press right on the keyboard and up on the keyboard, and this time, we'll make another grid of squares, but this time with no gap between at all. So keep in mind, if you want to create a grid of frames, pay attention to the margin and column settings to define the space between. So another powerful feature to save you time is distribute. Now, check this out. So with the selection tool, I'll select over all the frames I just created and click and drag on the bottom right anchor point to pull them in to make them smaller. This time, I'll click and drag back again but this time while pressing and holding space bar. Upon release, we will see all the frames spread out and distribute space between them all. Again, we can click and drag in the frames as a whole to change the size, then click and drag out again while holding the space bar to distribute the space between them. This is a really handy feature to manage multiple frames and manage the space between them. So while we're on the topic of managing space between the frames, this naturally brings us to the gap tool. If we come up and click on the gap tool and move our mouse cursor down between the shapes, you will see in design prompt either the height or width of the gap. With the gap tool, you can do a number of things here. The first thing we can do is just simply click and drag left or right or up or down, which will change the actual space between the frames, which will affect the size of the left or right or top or bottom frame. Next thing you can do is hold down the Alt key. As you click and drag, you will be able to change the gap to the left and the right or top and bottom. Another one you can do is hold down Command on Mac or Control on PC, and as you drag in, you can reduce or extend the space between the frames. Here, you can reduce the size of the frames by zero by dragging in. So a really powerful tool there to help you save time. Now, another method to create multiple frames is to duplicate. With the frame selected, we can either copy and paste or I'll drag a new frame over to the next page in the worksheet or with the frame selected, press and hold alt and click and drag on a frame. This is a really fast way to duplicate a frame and its contents. So I'll duplicate my frame on the left until I have four randomly placed frames here on my worksheet page, and this leads to another one of the most useful features when working with frames, and this is lining frames. In Adobe in design, lining frames is crucial for creating clean, organized and professional layouts. With the selection tool, I'll just click on a bunch of the new frames to scatter them out randomly. Now we can either click and drag over them all to select multiple or simply click while holding Shift to select multiple. Then we can open the align panel or come up to the Control panel. The aligned options offer various alignment options such as align frames to the left, center, right, top, middle, or bottom. So here I'll simply click to align vertical center and then click to distribute Horizontal Center. And here we can align and distribute our frames quite precisely. If I move one of the frames up, then select them all and quickly press align top edge. The rest of the frames will follow. As well as creating frames using the frame tool, you can also create custom shaped frames using the pen tool by drawing the desired shape and closing the path. So if we come up, click and hold on the pen tool, come into the work area, click on the Canvas to create anchor points, we can click around until we get to the endpoint to close the path. And if we want, we can edit the shape easily. If we click and hold on the Pen tool to select the Add Anchor point tool, we can click back on the shape outline to add a new anchor point. Then press Escape to deselect, select the direct selection tool. And if we click on the line, we can see the anchor point turning to white squares, which we can click and drag to manipulate the outline. This custom shape can now function as a frame where you can place text, images, or other content inside. Easy. So another method to create custom shape frames is to paste vectors directly into in design. If we come back up to the top of the worksheet, here for sample two, we can see ah with the selection tool, I'll select the thumbnail for the sample two doc and I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail and the document will open in Illustrator. If you have a vector image or shape that you may have composed in Illustrator, we can simply select the vector image, come back into Indesign and paste, and in design will recognize the vector points and formats. So I'll place this down here on the worksheet. In this instance, I'll set the stroke to transparent. In the tools menu, we can see the outline. This can now act like a frame where we could place text, color, or a link. Now, another method to create custom shapes is the ability to join frames together. In in design, we have the Pathfinder tool, which is a powerful feature that allows you to combine multiple frames into complex shapes, enhancing your design capabilities. To join frames together, select the frame you want to merge using the selection tool. For example, let's take a circle, a square, and the vector shape. Here you can position them together and overlap them in parts. Then navigate to the Pathfinder panel. If you cannot see yours, come up to window into Object and layout and select Pathfinder. Here you'll find various options to combine, intersect, exclude, and subtract shapes. With all the frame selected, by clicking the Add button, you can merge the selected frames into a single unified frame, effectively combining them together. This is good if you want to place an image inside a frame that has a unique container. So the last thing to know is the ability to create a frame from type. Here at the bottom of the worksheet, I have a word in the text frame, and if I double click into the frame, we can see we can edit the texture. Now, if I press escape to deselect the text, with the text frame selected, come up to type, come down and click on Create Outline, and the text will be converted essentially into vector shapes. And with the Derek selection tool, we can see the anchor points. This can now work like a frame where we can change the color or even place an image inside. So there you have it frames in in design. Who'd have thought that something as simple as frames would require so much insight? Well, that's the power of in design, and that's the level of detail and customizability you can go to in in design. So now we are all cleared up on how to use frames. It's now time to move on to the next step. See you in the next video. 26. Object Effects In Adobe InDesign: When it comes to adding depth, creativity, and a professional touch to your designs, object effects in Adobe in design are essential. These effects allow you to manipulate how objects like text, images, and shapes interact with your layout, giving you control over everything from subtle highlights to dramatic shadows and glows. Object effects aren't just about aesthetics. They help guide the viewer's eye, create visual hierarchy, and add dimension to flat elements. These tools are crucial for building professional level designs that feel polished and dynamic. In this video, we'll explore how object effects work, the flexibility they offer. While mastering them will take your layout skills to the next level. So here I am with a document opening in design, and this is a quick overview of all the object effects you can work with in in design. To get hands on with object effects, let's jump into this worksheet I have prepared earlier. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. The download folder open, click into folder two, practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. If you scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we are going to look at the Object effect worksheet. So with the selection tool, I'll select the Object effects thumbnail. Now I'll either come over to the Links panel and click Edit original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open in its own tab. In this worksheet, you can see what we are going to cover. And on the second spread below, you can see I have outlined a variety of objects with various styles applied to get a quick overview. So when working with effects in in design, it all revolves around the effect panel. Applying effects to objects is a very common thing to do. So personally, I like to keep my effects panel accessible at all times. I keep mine on my panel strip here to the left of my visual panels. If you cannot see your effects panel, come up to window and down to effects. As we apply them to our objects, it's from this panel that we can view the effects and manage the effects. So a common effect that is used in in design is transparency. This is useful for layering elements, creating subtle overlays, or blending images with the background. To manage the opacity of an object, this is done in the effect panel. So if I come and click on the first object here, in the effect panel, we can see that this is currently set to 100% in the top right. If I click on the object next to this, we can currently see through it, and this has a transparency of 50%. If I click on the third shape, again, this has a transparency of 50%. If you want to toggle the transparency of an object, you can do this up in the effect panel. Next, we have blending modes which work just like they do in Photoshop. In in design, blending modes allow you to control how color and layers interact with each other by blending them together in different ways. Blending modes offer creative flexibility, helping you to achieve complex visual results without needing to create new graphics. If we look at these three examples here, I have the same image repeated three times. For the second example, I have a black and white effect applied. This is created by using a color object on top with a blending mode. If I select the object on top, in the effect panel, we can see that this has a blending mode of color applied. If I turn this back to normal, we can see that this is a simple frame filled with gray. By applying the color blending mode, I can make this image appear black and white. Now, if you're clever with these blending modes, you can build them up and use them to get very particular effects. In this third example, I have two objects on top of my image. And if I just drag these off, you can see that we have the original image below. To the first object, I have a magenta color applied, again with a blending mode of color. This turns the background image to this particular effect. Then using another layer on top of this, still magenta, but this time with a hard light blending applied, we can get a very distinct effect. Using blending modes like this can be very flexible. Once you've got them set up, you can simply change the colors in the frames to change your effects on the fly. So next we have all the general object effects that one can apply in in design. Object effects can add depth, dimension, and emphasis, making elements stand out or blend seamlessly into the overall composition. Whether you're designing for print or digital, mastering object effects gives you creative control to elevate your layouts and add sophisticated details. However, when applying effects, it's important to use them carefully. Too much can overwhelm the design while subtle use can add the perfect finishing touch. Down here, you can see I have a range of them at a quick glance. To apply effects to your object, you can do this in one of two ways. With an object selected, you could either right click, come down to effects and click on an effect here, or you can come up to the effect panel and click on the effects dropdown icon at the bottom of the panel and choose from one of the many effects on offer. This can also be good to reference what effect may be currently applied to an object. If you have an effect applied to an object like I do in this instance, you will see a tick next to the effect. By clicking on one of these, you will open the effects menu. The effect menu is where you can apply an effect and manage your effect properties. Right now, I currently have a drop shadow effect applied, and over on the right, we have all the values determining this effect. When you use the effect menu, be sure to click on the preview checkbox in the bottom. This will allow you to see any edits that you make to your effects in real time. In in design, you can apply multiple effects to a single object. Simply click on the side to activate more effect and toggle the values over on the right. Now, another quick thing to keep in mind when working with effects in in design is scaling. If we come and open the preferences menu in design and come to general, around halfway, you will see the option when scaling. If you want your effects to scale when you scale your object, you will need this checked, and if you don't, simply uncheck this box. By default, I believe this is automatically checked to scale. But if you find your effect are not scaling with your object, then check this option in the preferences. So another really useful effect to keep in mind when using indsign is feathering. This allows you to soften the edges of an object, creating a gradual fade between the object and its background. This is great for creating subtle transitions and blending objects into the layout without harsh edges. Feathering can add a polished professional look to your designs by creating smooth, seamless edges that help integrate elements more naturally into the overall composition. When using feathering in design, it will fall into three main approaches, basic feather, directional feather, and gradient feather. Basic feather allows you to just add a simple feather around the outside of your object. If I just click on this object here and come into the effect panel, you can see that applied to this object is a basic feather, and on the right, you can see the values that we can customize around the outside. The directional feather is similar to the basic feather. However, unlike the basic feather that just applies a consistent feather around the outside of an object, the directional feather allows you to customize where the feather comes from. The effects menu, you can customize it from the top, the bottom, or left or right, or a combination of each. You can also click to tweak the noise, the choke, the shape, and the angle. Now, the gradient feather offers additional flexibility. Here you can use the gradient feather tool in the tools menu where you can click and drag over an object and toggle the values far more organically. In the effects menu, you can customize the gradient stops and the type of gradient. Looking at the example below, feathering is commonly used when trying to create contrast between a background image and visual elements on top, such as icons and text. If you click on top, you can see there are object frames above with feather effects applied. In in design, it's common to use light or dark layers on top of an image in this way and feather them across to reveal parts of the image to allow space to place text. Now, when working with effects in in design, there are a couple of workflow tips you will want to keep in mind. Now, if you're working on documents for digital and you start working with transparency and blending modes, you may notice the color change. Example, if I come up to edit, scroll down to Transparency blend space and click on CMYK, you will see that everything will change quite drastically. When working in design, I like to keep my transparency blend space set to RGB. So when I'm working on my documents, I can see the colors accurately. Another quick tip to keep in mind, if you have effects applied to an object and you want to quickly remove them with your object selected, by coming up to the Effects panel, you can click this little square icon at the bottom, and this will now remove any effect applied. Another cool feature to save you time is the ability to clone an effect from one object to another. If I select all the general effects here, come down to the next spread and paste them, come back up and grab some of the feather effect, and again, paste them below. With our new shape selected, if we come over to the tools menu, we can click the Eyedropper tool with this selected. If we come over and start to click on the other object, we can apply the same effect to another object. By pressing I on the keyboard, we can activate the eyedropper tool and click and continue to click on other objects to clone the effect. A useful trick to keep in mind to save you some time. Another cool feature to keep in mind is applying effects to groups. Up to this point, we have been looking at effects applied to individual objects. However, if you have a number of objects grouped together, it's then easy to apply an effect like a directional blur or even add a blending mode. If we look at these objects placed on the last page, if we click on one of these, we can see that currently it's set to a group. If you double click on the group, you can click into and select the individual object making up the group. Again, with the group selected, if we press I to activate the eyedropper tool, we can click to select and apply effect to the entire group. Also, we can grab the gradient feather tool and click and drag to add and change the direction or come to the bottom of the effects panel and click to remove all effects. Notice here on this image, we also have multiple frames placed on top with blending modes applied to achieve a range of color effects below. Now, if we look at the bottom of the effects panel, we can see these two checkboxes, one for isolate blending and one for knockout group. So what do these do? Well, if we come to the bottom spread here, we can see some examples. Here we have images with the objects placed on top with different effects applied. So the first effect used is the isolate blending. So looking at the next page, at the top, we have the same object here, a blue circle stroke, and a red solid filled star. Let's say we take them and place them over the image below. Now, in this instance, I want to apply a blending mode to the red star object to blend with the blue object below, but not the image below, like we see on the left here. Now, using isolate blending only works on grouped objects. First, I'll to select both the circle and the star, right click and group them. Then if I double click into the group, select the red object, come up to blending mode and hit multiply. We can see that the red object is not only applying the blending mode to the blue object in the group, but also to the image in the background. With the group selected, if I press the isolate blending button, it will now only apply the blending mode within the group and not affect anything behind it. Nice. Now, if we look at the knockout example, we can see something different happening. This time, if I click and drag the object group down while holding all to duplicate, I'll click to turn off the isolate blending, and we will see the red star apply the blending mode to the blue circle and the image in the background. If we come and hit knockout group, upon click, we will now see the blending still applies to the background image, but now clips out the blue circle creating a different blending effect on the object group. So another cool feature to keep in mind when using in design. So those are all the key principles you need to know when working with effect in in design. If you're new to in design, I'd recommend having a play around with this worksheet and explore the many effects on offer to get comfortable using them in in design. So now we are all clued up on how to use effect, we can move on to the next subject. So I'll see you in the next video. 27. Essential Adobe InDesign Shortcuts: If there's one thing that can make your life in Adobe in design a lot easier, it's shortcuts. In design is packed with shortcuts designed to save you time, boost your speed, and streamline your workflow. By getting familiar with some essential shortcuts, you can really take control of your design process and work a whole lot more efficiently. This video, I'll be walking you through some of the most helpful shortcuts you can start using right away from navigating documents and editing text to managing layers and aligning objects, there's a shortcut for just about everything in in design. And the best part, you don't need to memorize them all at once. To help you get the most out of these shortcuts, I'm also including a handy PDF document with all the key shortcuts we'll cover. So you can reference it anytime and gradually work them into your workflow. So if you're ready to speed things up and take your in design skills to the next level, let's dive into some of the most useful shortcuts in design has to offer. Now, in any creative software, there are hundreds of shortcuts to know. But to get started, there are only a few we can keep in mind. To see all the shortcut keys, you can view the PDF documents I have prepared for this course. And you can also view the full shortcut list on the Adobe website. This video, I'm just going to give you a quick overview of some of the really helpful shortcuts you should know to get you started. So to make things easy, I'm going to break them down into some clear categories, and you can also open this document here where you can try them out in context. This document can be found in the downloadable folder that comes with this course. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we will be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the download folder open, click into folder two, practice files, and open the practice worksheets in design file. If we scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we are going to look at the keyboard shortcuts worksheet. With a selection tool, I'll select the keyboard shortcut thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, or the worksheet will open in its own document. In this worksheet, you can see what we are going to cover. Below, you have links to the keyboard shortcuts PDFs and also a link to a sample document to try out the shortcuts. The selection tool, I can select one of the shortcut sheet thumbnails. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Ed original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard, double click on the PDF thumbnail, and the shortcut PDF will open. Next with the selection tool, I'll select the sample document. Either come up to the Links panel and click Ed original or hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the sample doc will open up in its own document. So first up, we have shortcuts for common tools. Some crucial ones to know initially include V for the selection tool, which will enable you to select all objects in your work area. A, for the direct selection tool, which will enable you to click into frames to select the content inside, such as images to scale and move around or select frames to edit anchor points. T for the Type tool, which will enable you to easily click into frames with type inside to start editing, Escape to deselect, which will enable you to deselect any text you have selected, which will allow you to continue to navigate through your document and use other shortcuts without accidentally editing any selected text. F for the rectangle frame tool, which will enable you to quickly draw a rectangle frame, Z for the Zoom tool, which will enable you to click and drag to zoom in and out. If you press and hold Alt, you can scroll in and out. And if you have the GP performance set on, you can click and drag to scroll in and out smoothly. Last, we have X to toggle fill and stroke, which will enable you to switch between fill and stroke in the tools menu. Next, we have shortcuts for document viewing. So crucial ones to know initially include W for view modes, which will enable you to switch between normal mode and preview mode, Shift plus W for presentation mode, which will enable you to enter into presentation mode, escape to exit out of presentation mode, command or control and plus or minus to zoom in and out will enable you to zoom in and out of your document incrementally. Command or Control plus zero to fit page in window will enable you to fit your page to your Canvas area. Command or Control plus Alt plus zero to fit spread in Window will enable you to fit your spread to your Canvas area. Pressing space bar for the hand tool will enable you to pan through your document with ease. Shift plus page up or down, to go to the next or previous page will enable you to cycle through your document page quickly and tab to remove tabs, which will enable you to temporarily remove the tabs on your screen to get a clear view of your Canvas area. Next, we have shortcuts for common document management. Some crucial ones to no initially include Command or Control plus N will enable you to quickly create a new document. Command or Control plus O will enable you to quickly open a document. Command or Control plus S will enable you to save a document. Command or Control plus Shift plus S will enable you to save a new document as a new file. Command or Control plus will enable you to undo the last action. Command or Control plus Shift plus C will enable you to redo the last done action. Command or Control plus W will enable you to close the document. Command or Control plus E to export to PDF will enable you to quickly export your document, and Command or Control plus P to print will enable you to quickly print a page or your entire document. Next, we have shortcuts for selection and movement. So crucial ones to know initially include Shift plus click on Objects will enable you to select multiple objects. Alt plus click and drag on an object will enable you to make a quick duplicate. Command or Control plus G to group, which will enable you to group multiple selected objects. Command or Control plus Shift plus G to group will enable you to ungroup any objects grouped together. Alt Click layer to select all objects will enable you to select every object on a layer easily. Command or Control plus click to select overlapping objects will enable you to click and select an object that may be below another object in the work area. Command or Control plus Shift plus closed square bracket, bring to front will enable you to send a selected object to the front of the layer hierarchy. Command or Control plus Shift plus open square bracket, center back, will enable you to send a selected object to the back of your layer hierarchy. Command or Control plus closed square bracket, bring to front, will enable you to bring an object forward in steps in the layer hierarchy. Command or Control plus open square bracket, center back, will enable you to send an object back in steps in the layer hierarchy. Command or Control plus L to lock an object will enable you to lock an object in the work area or Command or Control plus click on a locked object icon will enable you to unlock an object in the work area. Next, we have shortcuts for text editing and formatting. Some crucial ones to know initially include command or control plus shift plus open angle bracket to decrease font size will enable you to decrease the font size of selected text. Command or Control plus Shift plus closed angle bracket to increase font size will enable you to increase the font size of selected text. Command or Control plus Shift plus R to align right, will enable you to align text to the right inside a frame. Command or control plus shift plus L to align left will enable you to align text to the left inside a frame. Command or Control plus Shift plus C to center align will enable you to align text to the center inside a frame. Alt plus up or down to increase leading will enable you to increase the leading with selected text, and Alt plus left or right to increase tracking will enable you to increase the tracking with text selected. So next, we have shortcuts for working with frames. So crucial ones to know initially include S for the scale tool, which will enable you to click and drag to scale a frame. S plus shift will enable you to click and drag to scale a frame, for the rotation tool will enable you to click and drag to rotate the frame. Command or Control plus D to place image will enable you to place an image with a frame selected. Command or Control plus Alt plus shift plus E to fit proportionally in frame, will enable you to fit the content proportionally inside a frame. Command or Control plus Alt plus Shift plus C to fill frame proportionally, will enable you to center the content inside a selected frame, and command or control plus Alt plus C to fit frame to content will enable you to change the size of the frame to fit the size of the content inside a selected frame. And lastly, we have shortcuts for guides, grids, and rulers. Some crucial ones to know initially include W for view modes, which will enable you to switch between normal mode and preview mode to see your guides. Command or Control plus R to show or hide rulers, will enable you to hide the ruler tabs around the work area. Command or Control plus colon to show hide guides will enable you to toggle on and off guides. Command or Control plus apostrophe to show hide grid will enable you to toggle on and off the base grid. Command or Control plus Shift plus colon, to lock unlock guides will enable you to lock and unlock guides, and command or control plus Alt plus apostrophe, to toggle baseline grid, which will enable you to toggle on and off the baseline grid. So there you have it. Over 50 crucial shortcuts across seven key shortcut categories that will help you navigate and design in design like a P. Remember, you don't need to memorize all of these right away. Start with a few essential ones and refer to the PDF guide I've provided as you go. So those are some of the key shortcuts to keep in mind to get you started. If you're new to in design, I'd recommend having a play around with this document and practice these shortcuts to get familiar. Once you're aware of these shortcuts, it's going to set you up to work a lot faster in in design. And there are so many more to know, so be sure to check out the shortcuts PDF to learn more. Now, when it comes to working in in design, preparation and organization is key. A lot can go into a document, so it can be just as important what's going on outside in design as what's going on inside. Before starting any in design projects, I would highly recommend taking steps to be organized, which will greatly improve your workflow. And one of these steps is to create a project folder. In the next video, we're going to discuss how to best prepare for your project in in design. So see you in the next video. 28. Preparation For An InDesign Project: When it comes to working in in design, preparation and organization is key. When we start working in in design and developing layouts, a lot can go into a document, so it can be just as important what's going on outside in design as what's going on inside. Depending on your project, a document can include a lot of content, include many resources, files, and images. So it will help to have a place to manage all your content and files, doing a project and also where you will want to export your files. Before starting any in design project, I would highly recommend taking steps to be organized, which will greatly improve your workflow. In this video, I want to discuss how to best prepare for your projects in in design. So when it comes to using in design, the more organized you are, the easier the whole process will be. As mentioned earlier, in in design, documents can contain many linked images and files, so it can be helpful to know where they all are. One method I find really practical when undertaking projects in in design is to have a project folder set up beforehand. With the download folder open, click into Folder one course assets, click into folder two Project folder, and you will see a folder called Blank Project folder. This download folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we'll be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. Now, to help you with this process, you can also refer to the worksheet that comes as part of this course. This document can also be found in the download folder that comes with this course. With the download folder open, click into folder two Practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. If we scroll down to page two, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we're going to look at the project preparation worksheet. With the selection tool, I'll click on the Project preparation thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original, or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own document. Worksheet, you can see what we are going to cover and a folder structure you can reference below. Now, a lot of people will have different ways of organizing their files, and there's lots of ways you can do it. This is a logical approach that I take, and if you don't already have a system in place, I recommend you take some inspiration from this. This is a folder template, and the structure I use when creating projects in in design. And before I start a project, I will always duplicate this folder and rename it. This is a single folder, and inside it contains other folders. The first folder is called assets. The next folder is called resources. Next, we have layouts, and the last folder is called publish. If I click into the Assets folder, you will see some additional folders named AI all the way through to TIF. These folders are all here to contain any assets that I want to include in my in design document. I find having a folder for each format makes it easy to manage my files instead of having all the assets bunched together in one folder. Now, I may not use all these file types, but they are there just in case I find myself using them in future. Now you may notice some unexpected file formats in here such as GIF and MP four. Now it is possible to add video, audio and animated gifts to your in design files, but more on this later in the course. So back out into the main folder, next, we have the resources folder. Now, the resource folder will be for any content or files regarding the document, such as text documents, briefs or spreadsheets you may receive from a client or discover or prepare yourself in the process. This is a neat place to keep all your resources. Next, we have the layout folder. This is where I will save my in design documents. Here I have a folder called IDML where I can save backwards compatible files. And lastly, we have the publish folder. In the published folder, there are three folders, one called PDF, one called JPEG, and one called EPUB. Here is where I will keep my exported files from my in design documents. If I export PDFs, they will be placed in the PDF folder, and any JPEGs in the JPEG folder and any EPUbs in the EPUB folder. So this is a folder structure that ensures that I have a place to keep all my project files and I know where everything is for any given project. Now, to some, it may seem a little extreme to have a folder for each image format, but trust me, in my experience, when working with lots of images, I have found keeping everything organized like this can really help with your workflow, especially when coming back to documents after a while of not working with them. Searching and locating assets on the computer can be a pain. So, trust me, you will be rewarded for your organization overall, and you will thank yourself in future. So I would always recommend having a folder structure like this in place before beginning a project. So before you start any in design project, it's wise to create a project folder. I always find the more organized I am allows me to concentrate on being creative, rather than worrying where all my source images and content is. If you want to get hold of this project folder to be organized, ready for your project, remember, you can acquire it from the Download folder with the project folder open, click into folder one, course assets into folder two project folder, and make a copy of the blank project folder, and then paste this somewhere where you know you can access it. So up to this point in the course, we have learned some of the most fundamental paradigms of in design, practicing with worksheets to understand all the creative features that in design has to offer. In the next class, we're going to move on to the most exciting step and bring everything we've learned together to start creating some projects from scratch. But before that, it will help to reflect on some of the things we have learned before we get into the nitty gritty of creating projects. In the next video, we're going to do a quick recap and get warmed up, ready to take the next big step in this creative adventure. So see you in the next video. 29. Warm Up To Using Adobe InDesign: So now we are at the end of the essential practice section. Up to this point, in the course, we have looked very closely at each essential feature and tool, and there has been a lot to learn. Now we are ready to embark on creating full projects from scratch. But before that, it will help to reflect on some of the things we have learned before we get into the nitty gritty of creating a project from scratch. In this video, I'm going to recap on the key things that will help you hit the ground running, improve your workflow, and help you use the program effectively, and to make this really easy I have prepared an awesome resource that you can use to get fully warmed up and ready to start creating your own projects from scratch in in design. So are you ready to get warmed up? I know I am. So let's get into it. So here I have a document open that lists all the essential things you can keep in mind to warm up to using in design. This document breaks down everything we have learned over the previous videos into an easy reference list. Here you can go through every key section and view each point with instructions. Now, I've put this together for you as a crucial reference to help you get started, which you can use as a reminder of how to use in design and action certain tasks. Before we move into the next class and start creating projects from scratch, I would highly recommend you read through this list to warm up. This document can be found in the downward folder that comes with this class. This downward folder comes with multiple projects and a ton of assets and resources we will be using in this course. You can find the link to acquire the folder from the description. With the downward folder open, click into folder two practice files and open the practice worksheets in design file. If we scroll down to the second page, we can see a variety of worksheets. For this video, we're going to look at the Idsign warm up worksheet. So with the selection tool, I'll click the in design warm up thumbnail. Now I'll either come to the Links panel and click Edit original or I'll hold Alt on the keyboard and double click on the worksheet thumbnail, and the worksheet will open up in its own document. The warm up document here contains key sections that you can reflect on from preparation all the way through to how to export your files. The first section will help you be prepared to work in in design, and this section covers everything from setting up a project folder to pre loading your fonts. The next section will help you with the in design interface. And this section covers everything from setting up preferences to using a double monitor setup to help with your workflow. The next section will help you regarding your workflow in in design, and this section covers everything from mastering keyboard shortcuts to viewing crucial link criteria in the links panel. Next section will help you regarding your document management in in design. And this section covers everything from organizing your layers to adding non printable layers. The next section will help you work with objects in in design, and this section covers everything from adjusting anchor points to applying stroke effects. The next section will help you with your layout in in design, and this section covers everything from using grids and guides to using text frame options for columns. The next section will help you to work with text in in design. And this section covers everything from find and replace to using placeholder text. The next section will help you to work with images in in design, and this section covers everything from importing images to adding gradient feather effects. The next section will help you work with color in in design, and this section covers everything from managing swatches to using the CC library. The next section will help you work with interactivity in in design. This section covers everything from adding hyperlinks to optimizing file size for interactivity, and the last section will help you to export in in design. And this section covers everything from using pre flight to exporting ePubs for digital publishing. So that's a comprehensive list of all the things to keep in mind to get you started using in design. Before we embark into the next section, I recommend you read over all these points to familiarize yourself with all the criteria and get fully warmed up and ready for the next big challenge. 30. SECTION 1: Closing: This brings us to the end of the first part of the ultimate guide to in design. I hope you've enjoyed this class, and it's helped you become more familiar with how in design works. Now, it does not end there. In fact, this is actually just the beginning. Things are about to get a lot more creative and a lot more exciting. This class was all about learning each feature that in design offers. Now it's time to bring it all together and apply what we have learned in real projects. In the next class, we are going to create a variety of publication projects from scratch. So be sure to check the PDF document that came with this class to move on to the next class here on Skillshare. You can also check the link in the description. Now we are fully prepared to move on, so I'll see you in the next class.