The InDesigner

Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of Find/Change (or Search and Replace, or whatever your word processing, spreadsheet or text editing program calls it). InDesign boasts a robust and powerful Find/Change feature that incorporates its even more powerful … (read more)

Posted in Podcasts-Video, Productivity, Type & Text | 3 Comments » |

Picking up right where Part 1 left off, this episode concludes my InDesign Inventory of features put to work in the design of a 256-page magazine. In two more examples, I cover working with Master Pages and Document Pages simultaneously, and deconstruct how … (read more)

Posted in Design, Document Set-up, Layout, Podcasts-Video, Styles, Type & Text | 1 Comment » |

When you design 4 full-page ads, 19 charts and graphs, and 123 page layouts in 24 working days, you really see how InDesign’s features make a big project much more manageable. Having just completed a 256-page magazine, I decided that this episode would take inventory of some of the ways that InDesign … (read more)

Posted in Layout, Podcasts-Video, Styles, Tables, Type & Text | 4 Comments » |

Control and update dozens of styles by changing only one or two. This episode demonstrates my method for creating master paragraph and character styles that are used to control many other … (read more)

Posted in Podcasts-Video, Styles, Type & Text | Comments Off on Episode 26: Yes, Master (VIDEO) |

A subscriber who watched Episode 23 (Practicing Safe Output) was trying to follow my advice by moving objects with transparency to lower layers to avoid rasterization issues. But he was experiencing unwanted text wrap changes. He e-mailed me saying:

“Moving text to another layer above the Default layer overrides the text wrap applied to the image on the Default layer.”

Actually, it only does that if InDesign’s text wrap preferences are set the way they work in QuarkXPress (where only the objects below get affected by the text wrap / runaround). To set this to the much-improved InDesign text wrap method, go to the … (read more)

Posted in Type & Text | Comments Off on Text Wrap Preferences |

I got an e-mail question from someone who said:

“I’m having trouble with the type on a path thing, trying to get the type to go on a circle. When I do the bottom part of the circle it makes the type upside down. Is there a quick fix?”

InDesign considers the path a single line, so when it sees the bottom of the circle, it sees it as the line turned upside down…and puts your type on it accordingly.

There definitely is a quick fix. While you still have your upside-down text selected (or just your cursor somewhere in the type), control-click … (read more)

Posted in Type & Text | 2 Comments » |

Designers have very strong opinions about type…so I’m anticipating a lot of questions, and perhaps complaints, about my justification choices in Episode 25…particulary concerning Glyph Scaling.

Purists may say that this should never be done, but I would argue that doing it only as much as I did in this episode is definitely an option to consider. InDesign will only apply this if the Adobe Paragraph Composer evaluates the whole paragraph and finds it necessary to … (read more)

Posted in Type & Text | Comments Off on More Type and Tracking Tips |

If you’re only using tracking to control the look of your type at the paragraph level — like I will confess to doing in the past — you’re missing out on features that give you far greater control of your type and make for much better-looking paragraphs. This episode covers … (read more)

Posted in Podcasts-Video, Type & Text | 5 Comments » |

Collect your custom characters into an easy-to-use set by using the Glyphs palette and a little-known feature explained in this episode. Whether you need quick access to dingbats, accented characters, fractions or any other special glyphs … (read more)

Posted in Podcasts-Video, Type & Text | 6 Comments » |

At last, the thrilling conclusion of the Style Sheets Trilogy. The final installment on this topic demonstrates some additional flexibility you can build into your style sheets to account for the unexpected by using samples of nested styles I’ve created. Also, for good measure, you’ll find out … (read more)

Posted in Podcasts-Video, Styles, Type & Text | 10 Comments » |