Indesign styles

by Design Workshop Sydney

Oct12

Using Styles in Indesign will rapidly increase your productivity and efficiency. We demonstrate how in our Adobe Indesign courses.  indesign-styles
There are several types of styles in Indesign: Character, Paragraph, Table and Object styles. The most useful and versatile are Paragraph styles. The easiest way to set up a style is to first create some placeholder text. On a blank page create a text box with the Type tool. Then right-click > Fill with Placeholder Text. This fills the box with some random Latin text, also known as Lorem Ipsum. This has been used by page designers for the last 500 years, since the days of the Gutenberg Press. Basically it shows you how text would look on the page without the distraction of meaning. You then edit the text using the Control panel, as you wish it to appear on the page.
An example of Body text would be Arial 10.5 pts text height > Leading 18 pts > untick Hyphenation > Space after 5mm each paragraph. Then go to the Paragraph styles panel > Options fly out list > New Paragraph Style > name it Body Text. Do the same for a First Paragraph style – this could be slightly bigger, or in bold, or add a Drop Cap. Just delete the placeholder text box when you are finished creating your styles.
The select some more text from the Placeholder text, and format for a Header sttyle – save this also as a Paragraph Style. Keep going till you have styles for Subheaders, Quotes, Bulleted Lists, etc. Note that Character Styles are used mainly for single words, like italicized words.
Your new styles will be saved within this document. You can also load styles from other documents, from the Options fly out list. Styles are often saved within template documents. Table styles can also be saved from a formatted table, and Object styles can be used for drop shadows on images, or Text Wrap. Styles can be edited later by double-clicking on the style’s label in the Styles panel.
More tips can be found at the Sydney Indesign User Group which meets regularly in the city, and is a free forum for designers to discuss topics and the latest Indesign features. See many examples of our own clients’ work on our Facebook page.
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