Intuitive InDesign 3: Concise, Creative Text | Peter Bone | Skillshare
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Intuitive InDesign 3: Concise, Creative Text

teacher avatar Peter Bone, Designer who mentors marketers

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      0–Intro

      0:50

    • 2.

      2 Understanding Text

      3:29

    • 3.

      3 Create Paragraph Styles

      4:59

    • 4.

      4 Quick Apply

      2:49

    • 5.

      5 Editing Styles and Fixing Overrides

      3:44

    • 6.

      6 Character Styles

      4:45

    • 7.

      7 Nested Line Styles & Nested Styles

      5:15

    • 8.

      8 Baseline Grids

      3:09

    • 9.

      9 Span Columns & Next Style

      3:19

    • 10.

      10 Next Steps

      0:35

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About This Class

You don’t need me to tell you that one of the key components of most InDesign documents is text. But many InDesign users find that working with text can be extremely un-intuitive – at least when it comes to styling text creatively, or with any consistency.

On this course, aimed at intermediate users, you’ll learn how to make use of InDesign’s powerful text controls, so you can be confident that your text will be consistent, whether it’s in a single page document or a hundred page one. And consistent whether your styling is on the conservative side or whether you’re pushing the creative boundaries.

Meet Your Teacher

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Peter Bone

Designer who mentors marketers

Teacher

Peter Bone has worked in graphic design for 25 years. During that time he has taught thousands of people to use Quark Xpress, Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop – at every level from complete beginners through to experts in their field. He has taught designers, marketing people, creative directors, writers, editors, illustrators, fashion designers and photographers for companies as varied as the BBC, the British Museum, Condé Nast, Paul Smith, Price Waterhouse Coopers and The Designers Guild.

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Level: Intermediate

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Transcripts

1. 0–Intro: I'm Peter by a designer author teacher. You don't need me to tell you that one of the key components of most in design documents have text, but many in design users find that working with text could be extremely un intuitive, at least when it comes to styling text creatively. With any consistency on this course and intermediate users, you'll learn how to make use of in designs powerful text controls. So you can be confident that your text will be consistent, whether it's in a single page document or 100 page one on, consistent with your styling is on the conservative side or whether you're pushing creative boundaries. So join up with this class, build your confidence in creativity, working with text and in design. 2. 2 Understanding Text: If you want to get more out of working with text and in design, then there's a couple of essential things you absolutely have to know because everything else is really built on these. The first thing is this. So when using the type two, as you know, you get these options up here and what you may or may not know is that these two things are buttons. So this one gives you access to the so called character formatting. This one gives you access to the so called paragraph formatting. I'm starting with that because that gives us a sense that there are two halfs to text, if you like so more about that in due course. But then focusing on this for seconds of the paragraph formatting. Now you may have seen that symbol elsewhere. The place you may have seen it is in the type menu you can choose show hidden characters. Now, this is a really big deal, because this shows us where the paragraphs end like here, and therefore where the next one begins so you can start to navigate through your document in terms of paragraphs. So you might think, Well, why is that a big deal. It's a big deal because it opens up things called paragraph styles, which you may or may not have used. But if you have used them, you'll get sense of how useful they can be. But let me give you a really quick introduction toe. Why they useful two main reasons why they're really useful. The first is that they give you consistency. This is particularly is for on longer documents. But with this one, for example, I know that this is exactly the same. Is this I know, because when I use my paragraph styles panel, if it was any different, it would tell me by means off a little Plus. So, for example, if this was a tiny bit bigger, he says, is a plus tells him what the problem is and through means will get into shortly. You can basically fix it, so that applies to a simple change. Or if I just select a bunch of stuff on pressed a few buttons toe ready, ruin it. Can I get to the small detail later? But if I press this button here, notice it all gets fixed. So the first reason you get consistency. Second reason is that you can be way more creative. So, for example, if I was toe edit this paragraph style, there's a huge list here of all kinds of things you can do to text. It's not absolutely everything but most things. The vast majority of things you can do to text and in design is all in this one place. So once you know about this, you can't, for example, apply site bullets. You can apply it underlines is looking terrible. I realized you can plus shading and some really subtle stuff as well, so I'm not suggesting that it's any good, but very quickly. I can do that and it's consistent. So that's two reasons why paragraph styles are really what you need to be using. If you want to control text, anyone consistency and you want creativity. So in the next video, you look at how you can create these styles 3. 3 Create Paragraph Styles: we've seen then that we might use paragraph styles for consistency and for creativity. So these are the four styles were going to use. This one is called introduction. This one is called days. This is places This is body on. These last three repeat throughout the document. So this is the same text, but without any styling on it. So does seem in put my cursor in the paragraph somewhere command plus on a Mac control plus on the PC to zoom in. I can't see the hidden characters So that's type show hidden characters. I also can't seem a paragraph style, so window styles, paragraph styles. So those four steps so creating a paragraph style the 1st 1 is to select a whole paragraph , and the easiest way to do that is four klicks. So two clicks select a word. Three clicks select a line and four select a whole paragraph. Let's step one. Step two is we apply so called character formats. So these air formats that could apply to any individual character or letter whether in this case, we're gonna apply them toe every letter in the paragraph. So the first thing is the front. That's gonna be myriad pro. I've used it before, so it's near the top of the list. But you can find that within design, it comes within design, and then the weight of that is gonna be bold of the font. Size is going to be 14 on the leading is gonna be 16. So that's step two. That's the so called character formatting. Step three is the paragraph formatting. So that's this button here, and this gives us access to things like alignment in dense spicing. But what will focus on is this one over here hyphenate. So I hope you can see if I zoom in across a bit. The word combines now that's broken. That's hyphenated automatically. So we're simply going to turn that off. So as that affects the whole paragraph, that is a paragraph format. So that's the 1st 3 steps we selected. The paragraph would apply character formatting replay paragraph formatting of finally we're gonna do is capture that as a style. So we go here, drop down menu in paragraph styles, right, The top new paragraph style. You get this huge dialog box here, all you gotta do is name the style. So we're gonna call this in the trip. Action like that, we're gonna choose Apply style. The selection on then what I suggest you leave unchecked is at two C C. Library. If you know about city libraries, this means that you can always access them from any document that can be really useful to some people. But further other people, it will be way more than you need. So we're gonna leave that one unchecked. And then when we press OK, that is our first style called Introduction. So that's the process we're going to use to create the next three styles. So secondly, so, like the paragraph character formatting again, Miria pro bold this time 20 on 23 and then the paragraph formatting this time we're going to use so called space before and then capture that has a style Cold days on this one. Set the paragraph character formatting again, Myriad pro bold this time 15 point size on 16 letting. And finally this one price surprise Myriad pro this time Regular font size 11 letting 13 And it was a paragraph for my thing. No hyphenation kept to that as a style called body. Oh, when I realized I didn't create this style of the previous one. Let's just do that places. So there we are. There are are four styles, and in the next video, we're gonna look at how we apply them either relatively, slowly or relatively quickly. 4. 4 Quick Apply: we've created styles. Now let's look at how we can apply them so three ways, firstly, manually. So you'd simply put your cursor in the appropriate paragraph and shoes. Days, places, body, for example. Notice you don't need to select the whole paragraph again. This is because this is a paragraph style, so it knows it's gonna apply it to the whole paragraph. That's you know that's fine. Actually, that's that would work. But for a document like this, where is two pages worth of text? You might want to speed it up a little bit, So the second approach is to use a keyboard shortcut. So, for example, if I right click on the days style and she's edit days here, it's a short cut. And if you got a so called extended keyboard, so that's one way on the right, you got a numeric keypad. You can use those numbers in combination with so called modify key. So that would be, for example, the control key on the PC, the command key on the Mac so you could have control 1234 for the styles that works. Great. If you got that kind of keyboard. If you haven't. You have to use the third option, which is what I'm gonna show you next. So if you put your cursor in the appropriate paragraph and then do command return on the PC control Return brings up a dialog box so called quick apply. And I just used a second ago and I started the type the word days. And it recognizes that there's a paragraphs dicho days, as that's what I want to apply. I simply hit return, and it doesn't so more that one in a second. But to jump to the next paragraph, you hold down command and the down arrow on your keyboard that cannot be the control key on your PC. So again, command return this time that needs to be the places style. So when I start to type places, it recognizes it and I hit return. And then Kamande down arrow again, Command return start to type body and someone. So you might be thinking Goodness, that isn't any quicker than just doing it manually. And you might be right, but im gonna go through this more speed and you'll hopefully see a bit of a difference. I think you get the idea. So that's a kind of options that you might choose two years, which ever way you do it. By the time you've gone through it, you'll have something which is absolutely consistent, because that is what you get with paragraph styles. 5. 5 Editing Styles and Fixing Overrides: having created paragraph styles. Having applied that, you may want to edit them so very briefly. If we right click on the name of the style, you can edit it. Get this big dialog box again. And essentially, the thing I want you to see is that allow these different sections apply to the text in different ways. So there's a lot of, um, I'm not gonna go through all of them. But for example, basic character formats would change the size, for example, whether it's upper case lower case you could affect the tracking, for example, in dense and spacing control. Things like the alignment, the space before the left in dense, for example. So those airport of the two main ones and then there are other ones that affect different things, like taps, paragraph rules that's effectively underlines for the whole paragraph, for example, and then some of the other kind of more subtle things, like how hyphenation is applied, how justification is applied, and then some other more complex stuff we're gonna be doing later. But the main ones, then our general basic character, four months in dense and spacing those the ones you're gonna be going to mainly win your editing on. I know I've given the the settings. I wanted you to apply for these in real life. What, You intend to do something when someone gives me a job to design when they give me the text , when they've given me the images or put the text in, create some basic styles. And then a lot of time goes into then editing them to just try to get the text, if it in the appropriate space in either making it short for or longer using the kind of things we've just been doing. Okay, then intuitive overrides. We've we've done this at speed. So let's do this Ah, bit more carefully. So as you've seen, if you select that's a paragraph of text and you make it different in any way. For example, make it tiny bit bigger. You see a plus there. Add that if you can see that, but it says overrides option click to clear on. It says that it's 12 point. So in other words, that's what's different about it. So if I hold down the option key or the or key, that's what it means. And click on the name of the style it goes back. So the pluses, how you see it and Ault for option clicking on the name of the style takes it back. The only problem with that is that sometimes you might have the old word that say in the middle of a paragraph, which is different when that's highlighted. You can probably see that appears there, but if it isn't highlighted, you don't see it. So a relatively new feature is this button here. As you can see, it's helping shows you where there's an override so you can easily or click on the name of the style and fix it, so that can be useful. But it can be a bit too much sometimes, so you can turn that on and you can turn it off. But the other way you saw me do it earlier. Was this little button down here? This is useful when you got multiple styles selected. For example, if I had all these three selected on, the whole thing was up a case, for example. Now it will say there's mixed styles there, Andi. There'd be mixed overrides because I'm using Different was it can't even turn what's going on? But this bunk here, the fact that it is clickable tells me there are overrides in the selection. So when I click it, it gets rid of them all. Okay, so either the plus all the little plus button. Oh, clear override in selection. Those are three ways to get the text back to how it should be. 6. 6 Character Styles: to recap, we've discovered that if you use paragraphs styles, one of the benefits is if there's any inconsistencies, you get a plus. Well, actually, there's one time when you don't. And this is it. This paragraph here. Clearly, you can see there's a world which is different from the rest. But if I click four times to select the whole paragraph, you can see there's no plus there. If I click on this again, you can see no plus. So the time when you don't get a plus is when you use a so called character style. So this is potential source of great confusion. So to make it easier, we're gonna look at the paragraph styles on character styles separately. So the idea with a character style is that what least the way I would use it is you use paragraphs. Tiles were most all the time. But when you have the odd single word that is gonna be different but consistently different throughout the whole document. So for example, I might say, would that wants to be bright red again? Then I want to use that consistently throughout the document. So in that case, you'd use a character style. So because of that, because it needs to be consistent in design has decided it will not flagging up with a plus . So, in other words, if you're using character styles, even if you click on the word inside, the paragraph does not come up with a plus. Also, if I hold down the key and click on the name of the style, as you know, that takes out overrides. But again, that hasn't worked. If I turn on the override highlighter again, you can see there's no issues there, so you might wonder how you take them out. One way to take Max manually. You select like that and you choose the nun style no, rather than all to clip you Hold down Ault and Shift and Click, and that will take. I think I double click their all to shift and click will take them out, and we just go back to that one more time. So old shift click. It takes an hour, the character styles useful for when you need something consistently that's different throughout the document and the way you create them is really simple. You actually go straight to the fourth step if you like, you go to the character stars panel here, did your new one, and then you choose your settings. So, for example, if I wanted to do Poplar on by Black could just choose my family there. Popular black, for example. Uh, let's make up a case, and then I would choose it there, for example, And then I can't. And then when I want to apply it, there it is. Okay, And again, there's no plus, but again, old shift click that would take it out. So I briefly the kind of times when you might find it as well as doing it manually. This is another example here you can see if I select that whole paragraph school drop cap. There's no plus, and yet we can see the difference. So that might mean that I have selected that manually, or, more likely, the drop cap is an example. If I just right click to edit it, where you can see that character styles are built in, so the drop cap character, and if you haven't seen that, that's this thing. Here. You can choose how many lines it goes across. You can choose a character style. So the other times when you likely to come across this one is when you do bullets. So if you choose a list type of bullets, for example, you can choose a character style. And if you do numbers as well again, you can choose a character style. So those air to shake quickly. Um, thank you, because he doesn't work in this context. But that's how that would work. So you like I could see the manually. You're likely to see them when you do bullets, you like to see them. When you do drop caps, you like to see them when you do numbering. And in that case, if I would just say what's going on with this when I select it, can you see that it's saying a case using drop cap? It's not using a character style. That means it hasn't been applied manually. But notice down here, it says part of Paragraph Start is using popular red, so this does make things more complicated. But it does give us way more creative options and two times when you like to see that one is using a nested line style on one is using a nested style, which is what we're gonna look at next 7. 7 Nested Line Styles & Nested Styles: if you'd like the first line of your paragraph to be different from the rest of it than a good way to do that is by using something called a nested line style that embeds a character style within the first line of your paragraph. So this is how you do it as previously you've seen you can. We're gonna get a new character style. I find these things. It's good to describe what it's doing or what How are you using it? So I'm just describing natural form time using that, I simply edit my paragraph style So the body one go to drop caps and nested styles come across nested styles in a minute, but a nested line style. You simply choose the character style you want to use, and you say how many lines you want it to be used over. If you turn the preview off and then back on again, as he could see, that automatically kicks in and what's really good about that? If I okay that if I was to edit the text. So, for example, if I change that sense of the word and there I just put an ampersand as it bring the text back, You could see that the word African becomes part of the first line, and so that automatically applies that. So again, particular longer documents that come out really well. So that's a nested line style. So here is a more complex example. This is a natural nested style. So this bit here. This is how the main paragraph style is working notice. There's no character styles being used, but here, this one called small Italic. And there's one of the beginning that called Small Bold. Now this is all happening automatically. So just to give you an idea about this, this is how it starts off like that, and this automatically adjusts. So the way that's done, we'll show you on the more creative. So, firstly, the bullets numbering. It's a list type on the character start being uses small, bold, so that's not bad. And then with a nested styles. Basically, from here, nothing is going on until we get toe one closed quote mark, and when we hit the close quote mark, small light Alec is used to the end of the sentence. So that's what's happening. So to set this up, I've created the character styles already. I'm simply gonna edit the paragraph style toe Make that happen. So every guy. So I'm gonna editor. Firstly, the numbering. So? So this type of numbers character start is gonna be small, bold cancer last that first bet And then in terms of nested styles, offs, a new nested style I'm gonna say none through. Well, im gonna say through one and it goes all the way through one closed quote mark. Now, actually, I need to have copied the closed quote mark to make that work. So just okay, that So let's one do at it. Copy and then try that again. Nested styles. None through one words. Okay, well, I want none through one. And then I'm gonna select that and paste. So that's command V or Control V on the pc. Okay, so nothing happens up to and including that. And then what happens afterwards? I say noon Estes style. I don't say small metallic. So that's a style like created previously. If I turn the preview often on what you should see is the word comp I A. Just because it's just saying through one words, which is a horrible, tacky way of saying it, but you can see it doesn't work. So I change words. Toe sentences. There are loads of other options, but one sentences will cover it again. If I turn the preview off on a turn it back on again, you're gonna see that works great. So it's a more complex example. It takes a bit of setting up. But the beautiful thing is, if I added another just okay, that's so if I added another one in here hit return, notice it automatically just the numbering. Then I could put what what? What? I'm gonna type in here. But notice that the moment I hit the close quote mark it just the style automatically. So there we go. That's nested line styles and nested styles. 8. 8 Baseline Grids: One thing that you might really want to do with your text is to get it to line up across columns as it is here. You can see this Texas automatically lining up across columns, and that is also the bottom of the images lining up. It's lining up to something called the Baseline Grid. This takes a little bit of setting out, so let's take a look at how we do that here. So notice here that the text is no lining up now. If we were to go view grits and guides show baseline grid, it's one of many grids and in design, and you can see that the text is not lining up to it now. Whether the text is lined up to the grid or not is not to do with the fact that the grid is visible. No, it's about two things. It's firstly how you set great up, and secondly, how you set up the paragraph style. So it's another thing that is really you really only gonna make sense of this. I think if you use paragraphs styles, so this is a way using the body style. So if I right click on the body style and she edit body. It's under indents and spacing, and it's align to grid. So none is the default. So I'm gonna say aligns. And if you were to adjust your tech, this is the kind of thing is likely to happen. So notice that the grid is now that the text is now lining up to the grid. But you've got this mighty gap in the middle now. The reason for that is the grid, by default based language, is set to 12 point and in our case, here, the text the leading of the Texas set to 13. So what we're gonna do is either edit are paragraph style said the leading matches the grid or edit the grid. So the grid matches the leading of the body copy. So we're gonna stick without us 13 point and what would do? Whoops. Sorry. No, I'm needed to not press cancel their Let's leave that they're so aligned. Total lines, Chris. OK, so we need to do is add it the great. Now this is different on the Mac than it is on the PC. On a Mac, you go to the in design menu and then preferences and then grids on a PC. It would be edit preferences, ingrates. This is the key value here, the increment, every value that needs to match the leading of your body, Copy said. The reason why the Texas gone haywire because it's lining up to the grid and as the great is every 12 point effectively jumps over one of those because it has to slap the grid line . So if I make that 13 you will see that now lines up so noticed that the body copy lines up . That doesn't necessarily mean that other text lines up, so you might have to do some work to get the other ones the lineup. Although I have to say, if we did get this telling up as well, it wouldn't necessarily work. So it works much, much better when you got copy. That doesn't have headings and subheadings as this does. But as you can see, I can get my text to line up on. That looks really, really good when you've got multiple columns 9. 9 Span Columns & Next Style: as we near the end of this course, we're gonna take a look. A couple of things firstly, spelling text across columns and then secondly and even quick a way of applying paragraph styles so firstly spanning across columns. So I brought the text in here that's gonna end up looking like this. So notice before you're just the text with my selection tool. If I click, you can probably see this is a This is one frame and it's in two columns. You don't about that. That would be in object text frame options. That's in two columns. That's what we're there. Look at the hidden characters, So this is gonna be the so called heading on notice. This style actually goes away across. Let's take a look at how that is done again. This is in paragraph styles, and it's under span columns. So by default, that's on single column. And of course, that just wouldn't even fit. SPAN column Mexico all the way across, So that's a really useful one for some people. And then most of the rest of this text is using body no indent. But then let's take a look at the finish. One here, you can see it says Go here Basically this stylist place followed by name, Flood by rating, followed by Price, followed by description. Now let's imagine you in the kind of document where you have this kind of thing repeated over and over again. If that's the case, it's possible to set it up so you can apply. Allow that in one go. So let's do that here. We're gonna select all of that text and then we right click on the 1st 1 and we say apply place. Then next style clear overrides and you can see it basically applies this style and then this one, this one and someone the way that's done is here in the number one style place. It says Next time is to name if we were to look at to name is going to say next time is three rating. If we edit three rating, you'll see it says Next Dallas four on DSO. So I'm not suggesting that something you would do every single time, but occasionally that's exactly the kind of thing you can do. So it's another example. Both this and what we saw at the top both these things are deeply embedded inside paragraph styles. So if you're comfortable with paragraph styles and what they do that'll that stuff becomes really, really straightforward. So gives you more creativity, mawr, consistency, much more speed. And hopefully, once you set it up, it's really straightforward. So good luck with that in the final lesson would just look at the exercise that I'm gonna get you to try and do. 10. 10 Next Steps: the best way for you to make sense of all of this stuff is to get on with it in your own work. But if it helps, what might be good for you is to try and recreate some of the things you see here. Well, possibly take what I've done and change it completely. So use any aspect of character styles. Paragraph styles combine them together. So used nested styles use any combination you like to do something similar to this or completely different, hopefully by the end that have discovered what you can do using in designs paragraph character styles to greatly improve your work.