Remember our little horror situation described last time? Appropriate for graphic designers on Halloween, no?
So how do you go about making massive changes to things like header colors, body copy fonts or paragraph rules after you’ve already laid out the entire publication?
Simple! Set up your paragraph and character styles as soon as you start working!
Paragraph Styles - What are They?
Before explaining what a paragraph style is, it’s probably important to define what a paragraph is. In this case, a paragraph is a section of the text that ends with a hard return (press Enter). This is not your high school composition class. Paragraphs do not need to be at least five sentences long.
Paragraph styles are basically a saved set of all the details that go into crafting the look of a particular paragraph, whether it be a header, bulleted list or disclaimer. The most common things to customize for a paragraph style include the font, font size, text color, paragraph rules (lines above or below the text), indentation and spaces before and after the paragraph.
Paragraph Styles - When to Use Them
Always. Nuff said.
Not enough? Ok, always, always, ALWAYS!
Yes, a-l-w-a-y-s. This is how you avoid the disasters. Every time you set up a different type of paragraph (as defined above) set up a new paragraph style.
Paragraph Styles - How to Use Them
To create a paragraph style, I usually modify everything I’ll want it to contain first. Go to the Character Palette and adjust the font, size, tracking, etc and then head over to the Paragraph Palette to set your indents, spacing and rules. Now bring up the Paragraph Styles Palette (all of these frequently accessed palettes are located on the right hand side of the InDesign screen by default). Hold down Alt (Opt for you Macs) and click on the New Style icon (looks like New Layer icon from Photoshop). By holding down Alt/Opt you’ll be able to name your style and also, a wonderful new feature in CS3, you’ll be able to check the box that says Apply Style to Selection.
Applying a paragraph style to another paragraph is easy! Go to the paragraph and click somewhere in it so that the cursor is blinking within the text. Then go to the Paragraph Styles Palette and click once on the style you want to apply. Done!
Not sure when to make a new style? Take this example: I have a bulleted list style that I’ve created. I have five groups of bulleted lists in a row. I want there to be separation between all the groups so people can tell where one ends and another begins. I’ll create a new style called Bulleted List End Item (base it on Bulleted List so that any changes to that style will apply to this style!) and add some extra spacing at the end of the paragraph. Now when I apply this to all the end items, I can later change the amount of space if I need to without going back to each end item. I simply open up the paragraph style and adjust away!
By the way, I never use double returns at the ends of paragraphs to add space in between them. I use just a single return to force the next paragraph to a new line, and then in the style add space after the paragraph. Again, I do this because it makes changes that much easier.
Oh, and another tip: If you have a paragraph that you need to break up (force text to go on a new line) you can hit Shift+Return. This adds what’s called a “soft return” and it does not create a new paragraph as we’ve defined them above. You might be familiar with the break tag in web design? Same thing.
Wait! There’s More!
In this series we’ll talk about InDesign basics, Master Pages, Character Styles, InDesign Layers and common shortcuts—the keys to really start unlocking InDesign’s power.
So what do you think of InDesign and this introductory series so far? Would a discussion of InDesign shortcuts benefit you? Let me know if you’d like to see that and I’ll create one!
huh, you scared me with that eye image, Lauren.
I’m soooooo glad you’re covering InDesign on your blog. Thanks so much. I’ve never used Quark before, started with InDesign right away, but never used it that much, because I was mainly dealing with Web Design. But now my company hooked me with its marketing department, and I’m working on re-designing and updating most of the company’s brochures and other marketing materials. So I started working with InDesign more and more and your articles are definitely helping me a lot.
Haha, that was the point, to scare you! It’s a horror story when you have to change major stuff like that at the end of a project!
Yay!!! I am incredibly pleased to hear how my articles are helping you, Vivien! That’s a tall order to have you redesign your company’s print materials, but what an opportunity for you! If you have any other InDesign questions/issues, please don’t hesitate to ask. I would love to answer!
oh, I’ve got so many questions, Lauren - you’ll be sorry you asked
First of all, what format should I save my images for placing them to InDesign? I started with JPG & 300 dpi, but it didn’t work well, so then I saved them as EPS, and the quality is much better now when viewed in InDesign. But then when I create InDesign packages to send to the head office, they’re huge. So do I really need to save all my images as EPS, or JPG 300 dpi should be enough?
2) Is there a way to re-link the images automatically? Say whenever I update the source image in Photoshop, InDesign shows that the image was updated, but it’s not updating the image properly, and I have to relink it manually. Is there any other way to deal with it?
More questions to come… but if you could dedicate some articles to Bleed issues in InDesign - how to set it up, how to ensure that I have proper bleeds set up, etc; and how Masks work in InDesign (clipping masks, transparency, etc), that would be great. Thanks, Lauren :-)
Oh, lord, never use JPGs if you can avoid them. I’m sure Lauren has better specific, positive advice than that, but I know that much! (I tend to use PSD files in Illustrator, and, if the file sizes creep up too much, I generate a PDF and let Illustrator downsample the graphics for me.)
Good article, by the way, Lauren.
Vivien, I am so thrilled to help you! I won’t be sorry!
1. If there are Illustrator files, you can save them as EPS. Photoshop (bitmap) images I would save as lossless TIFF. Don’t ever compress images that will be for print (JPG compresses). A wonderful feature of InDesign, being part of the Adobe family, is you can directly import PSD and AI files without a problem!
2. There is no way to auto re-link that I know of. But the easiest way to do it is open up your Links Palette (Ctrl+Shift+D) and use the Update Link button at the bottom. In CS3 it’s the second from the right. There’s no need to place or browse for the image. Just click the button. [Edit: Got a little ahead of myself there. You have to make sure the image is selected in the Links Palette first. Then click the update button.]
Wow! Lots of requests. I think I may not focus on InDesign too much all in a row, but I’m planning on discussing Character Styles and Layers next. Then we’ll probably move on to something else (maybe I’ll feature a post on common shortcuts since the PS shortcuts posts were popular).
Bleed is pretty simple, when you’re setting up your document (or afterwards if you go to File>Document Setup (Ctrl+Alt+P)) you can set bleed there. The standard bleed for most printers is 1/4 of an inch, or 1p6 in picas and points (that system will be a future post, too). After you’ve set this, a red line will appear around the document. That’s your bleed. You need to make sure your images extend to or beyond that line. Bleed is essentially a safety zone for when the printer is cutting the paper down, it’s the margin of error for most trim machines. The important part to remember is when you are exporting your PDF you must go to the Marks and Bleed tab and check the boxes under Marks that say Crop Marks and Bleed Marks and be sure to check the Use Document Bleed Settings box too. This will make sure your PDF includes those marks (and the bleed of the images!).
As to the file size, you can use the different PDF settings. Go to File>Export to do this; don’t use a PDF printer driver. But they will be big. That’s just the nature of print!
You know there are several ways to view your working documents in ID, right? Most of the time it’s set to just be a quick preview for images. This lessens the strain on your system for rendering everything. If you really need to see a close-to-reality render of the pages, go to View>Overprint Preview (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Y). But don’t expect things to move quickly! You can also hide all the outlines/guides/grid by hitting W.
And Alec, thanks for your compliment. I hope you are finding these as useful as Vivien :P
Thank you so much, Lauren. And, Alec, thanks to you too.
Ok… I do have Bleed set up, I can see it when preview it as “Normal”, but why can’t I see any red lines, or anything when I click on Bleed view?
Another quick question: is it okay to use Reduce File Size option in Acrobat, when opening the resulting PDF file there (I do export it from InD, not print), or should I just leave it as is?
Glad you’ll be talking about picas, that was one of my other questions ;-)
I am not sure what you mean when you say “Bleed view.” How do you get to this option?
I have never used the Reduce File Size option in Acrobat, but it sounds to me like it will compress the file, which you don’t want. If this is just to show someone comps or how the document is progressing or to send it to someone for review, that’s fine, compress all you want! But for the printer, send the highest resolution version you can. They can always down sample if they need to. If you need to mail it and you can’t send something that big, use YouSendIt (free up to 100MB, otherwise pay for up to 2 GB, more like email attachments) or Files Anywhere (free trials available, but only up to 10MB up/download, 1 GB storage, more like an online file storage site).
you know, there’s this last Preview Button on the Tools panel. If you click and hold it, you get 4 preview options, and Bleed is one of them. (in CS3)
Ok, no compression, whatsoever - got it! :-)
Hmm, I’m at home now and I only have CS2. Let me see if it’s there otherwise, you’ll have to wait until Monday when I go back to work (they can afford CS3!)
Ok, CS2 has it (that’s the W shortcut I was talking about earlier). The way it previews for me is that it shows you a black line where the edge of your document is and the white border around that is your bleed area. If you have no bleed, you won’t see the white border on the outside of your document.
I always just leave the Preview on the first one. They must’ve added a 4th for CS3, I only have 3… or maybe they just combined two buttons. I have a separate one for going back to normal view)
This was fun helping you, Vivien! It’s a lot easier to answer your questions than trying to organize my thoughts into a post I think will be useful! If you have any more, fire away! Oh, and I found this InDesign site. It’s by the same guy that wrote Real World Photoshop, a book I love. Tons of usefulness in that book (and on this site)
Hi,
Really Informative article.I have question,
I have text loading from xml file, which has
text like below
“Welcome
The People of United States of America”
coming in single xml tag.
I want to show “Welcome” in one line and the rest in second line. How to apply Shift+Return in this case.
Thanks Giridhar
giridhar,
I’ve never used an XML workflow before. You can try to look it up in InDesign LiveDocs on the subject or, if that doesn’t help, I would highly recommend InDesign Secrets.