Transcripts
1. Welcome to Super Smooth Styling in Indesign: Hello. Welcome to my class, The Power of Styles
in, in design. My name is El Raus. I'm a graphic designer,
a deesta publisher. And I have been working
with Adobe software and especially in design ever since it's Saw the light of Day, which is more than 20 years ago. And I've seen over
the years that only few people
actually use styles the way they're
meant to be and the way they can use
their actual power. Because it's such
a powerful feature to use object styles, paragraph styles, and
character styles. And there's more and use some scripting and some
grapping in, in design. In this class, I'm going
to well reveal a bit of the power of the super
fantastic style feature that comes in in design for
who you might ask. Well, you need to have at least a basic
knowledge of indesign. You need to know how
you can format text. You need to understand the
basics of paragraph styling. For example, if you are a bit overwhelmed by everything you see when you open in
design for the first time, It's better to start
with a basic course, which is probably somewhere in the class right here
on skill share. But if you are
somewhat experienced, and I'm begging those who are experienced to take a
look at this class too, because this might be just something that you
have missed along the way. So it's for those who are interested in design, basically. What else can you expect? Well, there are downloads
in the resources section, there are two word documents. There's an indesign
document to help you start it using the same
styles as I have here. There is a package of design with the
correct information, the correct images, and
the correct styling. So you can use a document
that I'm working on as your aid to
get you started. This is in design 2024. We are in November 2023. Right now and I'm
working on a Mac. It's always easy to explain
that because people might get a slightly different
view when they are working. If you have an older
version of indesign, and I'm talking about years back then some of the
features might not work. In your case, there is
an IMDL file as well, which is an older version
of indesign or which is suitable to open in
older versions of design. So you can follow along
and see how far you get. Let's get started on
to the next lesson.
2. Project and sharing: If you'd like to join
me in this class, I would like to see
your end result. But it's a bit of
a hassle to upload an entire design file
including images and fonts, and that's not necessary. The easiest way to share
your work is making a PDF. Let's take a look
on how you can make a package and then make
a PDF as well to file, then go to package. You have a summary
here of the things that in design is
going to grab together so that another person
can work on your file and have the images and have the font and have the
indesign file itself. Just go to package. Choose a location I have set my desktop as a
location for now, if you know that someone
is going to work with an older
version of Indesign, you might want to tick IDML. You can also include PDF. I have a print file here. I chose high quality print. Let's go package. And you can see that
it's already working to collect everything and
then put it on my desktop, right there in my Skillshare
Smoothie flyer folder. Now if I open that, I
have the design file, the documents folds,
and the links, there they are, the images
used inside the document. Here's the PDF. When I
press the Space Bar, I have a preview and I can just scroll through
whatever I've made. I would like you to upload this PDF to the project gallery. I can see where you have made
and you have any questions, make a screenshot of your particular problem
that you run into and post it in the discussions so I can help you there
if that's necessary. I'm very curious to
see what you make. Now let's see if we can start styling smoothly with smoothies. Let's go into class.
3. A demo first: Let's go from the end
to the first part. First, I will show you
what you can do in this class and how easy it is
to work with object styles, paragraph styles, and
character styles. Here's my document and I've got a few pages set up already. This is what it looks like. There are these little
words that are, well, just scattered around.
There's a logo. This is the title of the stuff. Here's a short explanation
about the fruit, something about the
special discount and the regular fixed items such as the order number and the
contact information. Now let's go to the
last page here. I've already imported the text that should be on the
last page, on page four. I'll just copy it and go back to page four and
paste it right there. Now what I want to do is
separate some of these parts. Because I have made object
styles that will put this part and this part
and the loose words, scatter words directly onto
the page in the correct way. Just let me copy or cut this, put it in the frame. Same here, cut and paste. Same here, x on V. Now I'll just leave
these words for now. Now let's take a look in
a different screen mode. If we have strange symbols like hard returns or returns
or tab sign somewhere, just go to view screen mode normal and then go to type
show hidden characters. There's an extra line there
that needs to go right there. This is all right. I can
see there's more here. Just leave that
open. Okay, let's take that one extra out. I can take out
these ones as well. My information is ready to go. I'll just select this frame. I'll go to my Object
Styles and I'll apply the head of frame and
watch what's happening. Plo right there. I'll go to the watermelon
smoothie which is yellow body copy frame
and bluf right there. It has the height that it needs. It has the formatting in
the text that it needs, just like it was in
the top. It's ready. It's done, It's finished. Now let's take a look
at the discount, which is the C discount frame. And Tada, you can see
the heart return here. I'll just change that. Let's take this one.
Here's something that I want to assow you because this is
all about scripts. Let's take a look
at the script file. Now, I have added two scripts in the resources section
in the downloads. One is called text merge and the other one is
called text split. I'll just select this frame
and I'll do text split. And now I have four
separate frames instead of one with four lines. I can just go to my
object styles and say, make my orange eye catcher, make this my dark
green eye catcher, make this my yellow eye catcher. Sometimes it does is I'm
not sure why that happens. The last one, let's
take the dark green. Now, the last thing that I
need to do is add the image. That too is of
course pretty easy. Go to file, important
to the watermelon. Which one do we want
to take? This one. I'll just put that
image somewhere there. Well, that's far too small because if you look
at the top ones, they have the size and
they have rounded edges. I want that one to
be like that too. I can enlarge the frame and I can add the contents
and the corners. But it's much easier to
use an object style. All I need to do is bring
that back. I'm done. That's basically it. This is what it looks like. This is so easy because
once you've got this, you can make things
very quickly. The height of this yellow box will adjust as the number
of words increase. If it is too much, just bring down the number
of words a little or the font a bit smaller. This box will always
have a large font, a smaller font there, and the day will be in a different font, in
a different color. The same is right here. So it's so easy to format your flyers in advance like this and then just go, go, go. And don't forget to postpone your e mails because
they might think that it doesn't take you any
time to make this while if you make this in
advance, you win a lot. So let's take a look on
how we can make this now that you've seen how
this class is all about.
4. So HOW did I do this?: We've seen in the previous
lesson how easy it is to work with preset
paragraph styles, and character styles
and object styles. But how does it
work? How do you get the object style to use exactly the correct
paragraph styles? And how do you put things
in the right place? Well, let's take a look
at the paragraph styles. Here's my page one. I've called this first headline, of course, that I did
that along the way. I've called that one header. Let's open up the
paragraph styles menu. I'll rip that off.
I'll tear that off. There it is, Header. One header, and the next one, it has a size, it is 42 points. It is Montserrat, bold version, it's all caps and
it's left aligned. Very simple. Right Now I go to number two and that
is header outline. Well, that's very easy. Just make the same
kind of text and make sure that you
don't have a fill, but you do have a line. Well it's the same
size, same font. Just call that header outline. Then we have deles, which is the subheader. These three things make the
heading of the page, right? If I go to my object styles
called the head frame. Now I can move this
around and you can see that this is what you need. But how do I tell my design that I need specifically
that followed by that, followed by that
paragraph style? Well, that's very easy if you go to the paragraph style head, if I double tap that, I can see by general that it
is not based on anything but The next style is header
outline, right cancel. Now when I go to header outline, I can see that it is
based on header one. The next style is
called subheader. All right, when I
go to subheader, there is no extra next style. It's just the same. Make an empty page here,
Use the word head. Now when I, I will have outline. It's hard to see because
there is no color. I'll give the frame a color. The frame, you can see it. Then I want the subheader. This is really very
easy because this automatically happens
when I type Heather, I type enter, it will know
I need header outline next. Then when I type enter
after the outline, I can have subheader. If I make my header
a little longer, I use a soft return,
it will not happen. It only happens when I add information after a hard return. That's already quite cool. But let's take this out. I'll just make a frame. I'll give it a color
black for now. We've seen that
header is followed by header outline by the subheader. If I type my text, I'll say Heather
outline subheader. I can hear you
think. Yeah. Right. But now I still have to
apply all those paragraphs, all those styles
to that specific paragraph because I have told the object style that it needs to format this specific
part in the right way. Let's take a look
at header frame and I'll tap that and it jumps right to the correct place using the correct formatting. Let's take a look at why
header frame knows how to apply these paragraph
styles to this piece of text. I'll just double click the
object style, a header frame. Then there's paragraph styles. This is usually
unticked by default. Now I have told this
object style that it needs to use paragraph
style one header, apply the next style. That's the secret of this all because it knows that when
there is a heart return, it will have to use the next paragraph style determined in the
paragraph style settings. As you can imagine, when I
have a bit of text here, and I'll say blah, blah, blah, blah, I'll just add a
bit placeholder text here. If I go here, even though I
haven't formatted anything, I can go to the yellow
body copy frame and I have my text
formatted the same way. There's a heading there
which is a bit bigger. It is bold. The body copy
which is light in s9a2 points. As you can see, there's a body copy
header and the body copy. Now if I take a look at
the body copy header, I will see that the next
style is body copy. Things are coming together.
Now let's try another one. Let's go for the cash back part. I'll say, what is it, five euro discount every
other day like that. I'm not certain what
I'm going to get, but I will go to the discount frame and
look, there it is. Even though the word is much bigger than in the
other other parts, I used the dollar sign here, that's of course much smaller. It automatically uses the width it needs to get everything in. Everything is format.
The large font here, the smaller font in caps there and every other
day, which is light. And in a totally
different font as well. All of that is done
in object styles. I'll call this one orange, blue, purple, and red. Did as you've seen in the way
that I showed the scripts, just split the text, Go to the object style and make sure that I get the orange. I don't have blue,
so I'll do green. I don't have red,
so I'll do yellow. The dark green colors, these settings are all set
inside the eye catcher. Let's take a look at,
this is just a setting. I've set up the
corners like this. There's a rounded corner
left up 5 millimeters, and the same goes for
the right corner here, which is also 5 millimeters. I've added the
color if I want to. I can also change this to
multiply, for example, which is quite nice, I
can make this smaller, or larger, or bigger. Again, in this catcher, I have set the paragraph
style to use catches. That's basically how you set up a document very
easy and very quickly. And how you can use scripts, and this is it.
5. About size and position: I showed you how to use paragraph styles to
ensure the texts are properly formatted
with characteristics by checking next style. When creating styles
in design understands which styles follow
each other When a hard return is
encountered in the text, by choosing the first
paragraph style from a series that belong
together in an object style, this is done automatically. Now I'll show you how to automatically
position a frame at a specific location and how to adjust the size
of the frame if needed. Let's take a look at the A
header frame object style. First. By clicking
on the object style, you get the option to fill in
size and position in size. You can specify only the
height on the width or both height and
width in position. You indicate where the
frame should start. Now let's take a look at object
style, yellow body copy. Here you'll see that the auto size option is
checked in this style. The height of the frame is automatically adjusted from
the middle top to the bottom. If the text is longer than
the original frame was. By choosing a different
reference point, the frame can be adjusted
in both directions, up and down or left and right. This ensures that you always
have all the text in view, so there is no overset text in object style discount frame. You can see that the frame is automatically resized
from the top left corner. I've checked no line
breaks so that all text stays on one line until
the return is encountered. Let's take a look at the
eye catches as well Here, no line break is also checked. When I'm looking at
the auto size options, since these are short keywords scattered all over the page, I don't want any brakes
with no line break checked. The keywords in the eye
catches remain fully intact and immediately
getting the right formatting. I would recommend experiment
with these settings. They are very handy feature
and allow you to quickly and consistently add
text to frames and place them in the right
position, right way. The frame has the right
fill stroke if needed, and it is where
you want it to be, including text that
is already formatted.
6. Adding and using scripts: Adding scripts to your
own script panels is much easier than
might look in design. Go to window and
utilities scripts. If you don't see it, I have
them standard right there. You will have application
community and user scripts. Yours might look a
little different, but I already have quite a few. Tap the right mouse
button and say Reveal. Now you will have a text
merge and a text split. I already have them here. Place them in the script panel. You can add extra folders
if you like here. I have scripts by me, I have scripts by third parties. Everything I do I can add here, save a copy of the original script
somewhere on your computer so you won't lose
it when you have a reset and something
is missing, then when you go back, it will appear right
here in the user. Well, I have an extra
folder here and you can see there's text merge
and there's text split. That's basically the start.
7. Scary grep monster: We've seen how object styles and paragraph styles can really
speed up your workflow. But there's one thing more
that is good to show you. That is, using a grip graph sounds terrible,
but it's not really. Just suppose that I want
in these documents to have the word set
or sweetness in the body text in the yellow
frame to be bold And bold, italic, something like that. I'll go to the
character styles first, I'll make a character, son
sweet, let's format that. Let's say it's the
Mona as it was, and then I want the bold italic. And let's for the sake of
clarity, underline it. All right, let's
keep it like that. Now nothing happens because I haven't determined
anything just yet. Apart from the
fact that there is a special character style, remember that character
styles are set to a specific set of characters
in the selection. If you don't select anything,
there's nothing happening. I want the word sweet
or sweetness to change inside the
body copy text only. I'll go to body
copy, double click. I'll go to Grab Style. I'll say new Grab style. Now the stands for
Pattern in Grab. It means it looks for patterns
and a word that is the same every time is a pattern
that's easy to format. I'm going to say use the
word sweet to the text. Sweet, I'll just have
wow, they're sweet. And just realize that I
didn't touch anything. I just added some information
to the body copy. See that there's tang sweet. Here's something sweetness.
This looks all right. We need to change that. Go back to the body copy, I'll double tap it back
to the grab style. I have to add sweetness. And it needs to look for sweetness and it needs
to look for sweet. Important to remember
when you're doing this is that it always
looks for the longest word. First, I'll tap
sweetness right there, and then I'll tap
the pipe symbol, which is the straight line. It is above, at least on a Mac
it is above the backslash. When I tap next to it, you can see instantly that
it changes everything. Now it changes everything in my yellow box with
the body copy text. Just imagine that you have a file that is over
50 pages long. If you have to look
for sweet or sweetness with a search and
replace, that's fine. You get a new text and you
have to change it again. Now once it is determined inside the paragraph
style, it's always there. So that's what a grab
style does in this class. You've done two
sorts of automation. You've done the scripts,
and you've done a very simple example
of grab styles. But it's very useful, very efficient, and it
works like a charm.
8. More settings and keyboard shortcuts: Now you might wonder how I get my objects to move to a certain position or
to get a certain height, or even a certain fill. We've already seen
that the object styles can hold paragraph styles,
which works fantastic. But there's so
much more that you can apply when you are
using object styles. Let's take a look
at this image frame moving to the object styles. Let's tear that off. Just put it over here. When I open the image frame, well, there's of course no need for a paragraph style because it's an image that's not
ticked as you can see. But I have changed the size
and the position options. It's always 85, 139 millimeters, and there's an X and Y position. X is from the side and
Y is from the top. It jumps automatically
to 65 millimeters from the edge and 49 millimeters
from the top, always. Now let's take a look, because this is an image what you can do with the
frame fitting options. Frame fitting is what is inside a frame and how the
image should behave. Well, I turned, in this case, auto fit on and I want it to be proportionally in that frame. I don't want any
white to be visible. I said fill the frame proportionately and
align from the center. If you know in advance that your images will always
start in the left top, you can also choose
another reference point. I don't want it to crop
automatically, in this case. I just wanted to fill the
frame proportionally. All that information can be
stored in the object style. All right, now let's take a look at the yellow
body copy frame. You have seen that I already get the right formatting for the text and it also jumps
to a specific location. But when my text is longer, let's just add a few returns. You can see that it
gets higher as well, it doesn't get any wider. How that is done is like this double take the
yellow body copy frame. Let's take a look at the
paragraph style that has been set as we've seen the body coopiena and
apply next style. I'm going to the size
and the position. I've said that
this width is only important and only needs to
be set to 58 millimeters. I can make this
bigger or smaller, but this is how
wide the frame is. I also set the position to
0.83 millimeters from the top. That's fixed. That's set, but I
want the frame to go higher or less high when
I add or remove text. Let's go and see how that works. Go to the auto size options. Look, I've set the auto size
to move from the top down. If I had put it up here
or here I should say, then the frame would get
higher on the way up. This is the way that I have
set up this entire document. This is set to an object style
and has a horizontal ana, vertical position
and a fixed size. And the same goes for this part. Doesn't have a fixed height, but it has a variable
height to adjust height. This has a fixed size, this has rounded edges and
also a small line around it. And that is all set
in an object style. That's one style to rule them. All right, now to speed up
your workflow even faster, because of course this
is already very fast. It's also possible to add a keyboard shortcut to
your object styles. I have done that in my paragraph
styles, as you can see, command numerical one, command miracle two,
et cetera, et cetera. But once I started working
on my object styles, I realized that that was
probably not very necessary. Let's move over, close this
one to my object styles. Let's make a short, such a difficult word, shortcut key for these eye catchers. This is yellow,
double tap yellow. Let's use old one. I choose the option key
and the numerical one. As you can see, the paragraph
style is there, by the way. There is no need
for where is it? Position isn't changing. Size isn't changing. But there's something
different in the auto size. This resizes from the center. And very important, I have
ticked, no line breaks, because if you use line breaks, and it's a word that can
be split, it will move on. And that's not what you want
it to stay in one frame. If you want to have
it over more lines, you should use a soft return. And then it doesn't
matter, the line break is really like a
carriage return. Unless it finds a
carriage return, it won't break. It's like this. That works. And I'm going
to do the same for orange. I'll say old two. Okay, Catch a green. It a three, and then here. Okay, Now I can try
a little bit more. I can see, is this nice, Just by tapping my keyboard, using my option old key and
the numerical keyboard. And this is the fastest way
to get your work running. Just look at this. This might be better here and this
might be better there. Maybe I want that to be dark and maybe I want
it to be lightened. Now, that's not really
good. I want it like that. And maybe that's better
when I k that dark. Because there are dark
lines here as well. And shall I leave it like
that? Maybe that's better. When I do it light
green, it is so fast, it works like a charm. I would recommend if you use object styles and you have object styles that can
be changed quite a lot, use these keyboard shot keys.
9. Conclusion and thank you!: We've reached the end of
this class, this is it. I hope that you've
seen that working with styles inside object styles, it's very efficient
and very time saving and it is less
prone to mistakes. If you have any questions, leave them in the
comments below. And don't hesitate to ask
if something is not clear. Your assignment would
you like to try? Some of this is make
your own set of flyers. Take three or four
different pieces of text and try to work
like I've shown you. If you haven't got a
real subject and just use your local grocery store, the Neil Studio, make four
flyers for programs of your local baseball team or for something that happens
in the class or at work. There is so much possible
once you've got this set up, it so easy and so quickly to change this,
just imagine that. The client says, in this case, I love it, but I don't
want that yellow anymore. I don't like yellow,
I hate yellow. Then give it a different color, you have to change it once, and it changes everywhere. That is the great power, the absolute strength
of working with styles. Most people know that working with paragraph styles
is something that will help them to get
a nice, crisp layout. And that it always
looks the same and that it's consistent in the
way it's formatted. But working with
paragraph styles, character styles, inside
paragraph styles, and object styles. Well then you've
got your winner. Thank you for watching. Thank you for joining me and I'll hope to
see you next time. If you have any specific design things that
you want to know, just let me know and
I'll see if I can devote a glass to that
specific subject. Bye. See you next time.