Class 12

Assignment 04: CIAB Chapter 1

Assigned. Due at our final on May 21st.
Specs

How to Get Started

Measure the pages
Measure the top, bottom, inside (gutter) and outside margins
Figure out what you need to make styles for. Some of the more obvious:

Main Heading (on page 6)
Heading ("Getting started" on page 8)
Subheading ("Selecting and using tools" on page 10)
Sub-Subheading ("Using the Selection tool" on page 10)
Body Copy
Red Numbered List (page 8)
Red Bulleted List (page 9)
Tips
Notes
Intro Photo Paragraph
Intro Photo

Lesson 9: Working with Styles

Lesson 9 Download

Styles are probably the most important and powerful feature set in InDesign. They are why it is a professional tool. They are not simple, but it's their inate complexity that makes them powerful.

Remember, digital publishing is all about saving time, meeting deadlines, and producing consistant, high-quality designs.

Understanding Styles

Styles store information about the formatting of a category of object that pretty much align with the settings you'll find in a given object's Panel, like:

Characters: Fonts, weights, sizes, kerning, leading, tracking, glyphs, etc.

Paragraphs: Alignment, spacing between, indents, character styles, etc.

(Graphic) Objects: Fill, stroke, text-wrap, corners, etc.

Tables & Cells: Horrid drugery and to be avoided at all costs.

Basic Styles

AKA Default Styles. The ones in the Styles panels that are in square brackets, like [Basic Paragraph]. What a given object has applied to it when you don't do any styling of your own. When you apply attributes to an object, like set a word to italic and red, you modify the default style and rename it to create a new style. Whenever you find yourself repeating a formatting task, stop and think about whether it makes sense to modify the relevant basic style or creat a new style.

Creating and Applying Paragraph Styles

The Paragraph Styles dialog has more than 230 different buttons, checkboxes, and menus in it to set the various parameters of a paragraph style. From as simple as Indent Spacing, to as complex and precise as the HTML tag format for the style when it gets output for the Web.

Creating A Paragraph Style

Focus on the heading on page 2 Heirloom Vegetable Seed and select the whole line (out to the paragraph mark)
Open the Properies panel and scroll (but not with the scroll wheel!) to the Appearance section
Set the fill of the text to Red-Tomato

Move down in the panel to the Character section and set the font size to 18pt on Auto leading (something they left out in the book)

Move down in the panel to the Paragraph section and expand it with the little dot-dot-dot button
Set the Above Paragraph Spacing to .05in and the Below Paragraph Spacing to .025in

In the Paragraph Styles panel, use the flyout menu to choose New Paragraph Style...

Set as shown above

Style Name: Head2
Based On: [No Paragraph Style]
Change from the default, which was Intro Body Style, because it isn't actually based on that, it was changed from that into a Headline style, which shouldn't be related.
Next Style: Intro Body
Changed from default [Same Style] to Intro Body because it's highly likely that you won't have another Heading style, but you likely will have a block of body copy, or in this case, Intro Body, coming up next.

And lastly, set up a keyboard shortcut, check off the Apply Style to Selection and Add to CC Library options and hit OK

This creates a new style called Head2 in the Paragraph Styles panel.

Open the Heads folder in the panel and drag the new style up into the folder

Result

Applying A Paragraph Style

Focus on page 3 and click anywhere in Fruits & Flowers and click on the Head2 style in the Styles panel
Then do the same with Tools & Accessories

Creating And Applying Character Styles

The big concept with Character Styles as opposed to Paragraph styles, is that a Paragraph Style will apply to the entire paragraph that the text cursor is positioned within, you don't have to select the whole paragraph to apply it. Character Styles will only apply to the set of characters you have selected (and shows as inverted in the UI).

Creating a Character Style

Focus on page 2, in the first paragraph, on the company name Urban Oasis Gardens
Set the color to Green-Medium in the Properties panel

Expand the Character menu in the Properties panel with the little dot-dot-dot button
Click the button for Small Caps

Click on the Create New Style button in the Character Styles panel

Set as shown above

Style Name: Garden Name
Based On: [None]
The default, since there are no defined character styles in this document yet

And set up a keyboard shortcut, Shift+Num 8, and hit OK

Result

Applying a Character Style

It's really just a matter of selecting a block of characters and clicking on the Character style you want in the Character Style panel. However, since we're styling the name of the company wherever it is in the we could use the Find/Change feature in InDesign (even though there are only three other instances of the name - it could be a big document with dozens of repitition of the name).

Choose Menu Edit Find/Change
Find What: Urban Oasis Gardens
Click on the Change Format button
Choose Character Style: Garden Name

Click on the Change All button

Result

Apply Styles with Quick Apply

In a production environment, speed and efficiency are everything. Use Command-Return/Ctrl+Enter to invoke a popup menu of styles (of all applicable types) and start typing the name of the style. As soon as the one you want is at the top of the list, hit Return/Enter to apply it.

Nesting Character Styles inside Paragraph Styles

Nesting is wierd and takes a lot of careful setup. I think it's mostly a feature that played well at conference demos, but isn't used much in the real world. Let's take a quick look just for grins. I think it speaks to the tendancy for feature bloat that so many mature applications suffer from...

Creating Character Styles for Nesting

Select Green: near the top of page 4
Flyout menu
New Character Style...
Set the Style Name to Variety and the Basic Character Formats to Font Family: Myriad Pro and Font Style:Bold

Set the Character Color to Green-Medium

Create a new Character Style, name it Vegatable Name
Set the Basic Character Formats to Myriad Pro, Italic

Creating a Nested Style

Double click on the Catalog Body style in the Paragraphs Styles panel

Set as show above:

You need to click the New Nested Style button for each Nested Style.
For the first nested style, type a colon (:) into the last field.
For the second nested style, choose Sentences from the popup menu.

Once you commit the changes to the style, all instances of the Catalog Body style will show the nested styles.

Creating and Applying Object Styles

Object styles are styles applied to graphics rather than characters or paragraphs. Things like Effects, Strokes and Fills. The example in our textbook I think is confusing, since it's done on outlined text rather than editable text, which you can get by selecting editable text then choosing Menu Type Create Outline . What makes it confusing is that you can also apply an effect like drop shadow to both editable text and outlined text. And you should never create outlined text when you don't have to!

Formatting an Object for a Style

Select the outlined text Urban Oasis Gardens on page one
Choose Menu Object Effects Drop Shadow
Leave the default settings and click OK

Creating an Object Style

With the object we just applied a drop shadow to still selected, open the Object Styles panel
Option/Alt click on the Create New Style button
Name it Drop Shadow
Click OK

Applying an Object Style

Go to the back page, select the How To Grow outlined text and click on the Drop Shadow object style to apply it

It's interesting to note that if you apply this style to a text frame, it overwrites the text and makes a rectangle filled with orange with a dropshadow. This is because we not only put the dropshadow effect in the style, but also the fill color of the outlined text.

Creating and Applying Table and Cell Style

Ugh. Rarely used and damned confusing. Something that if we learn it now, it will be so long until we have to use it again, that we'll never remember how it works, at least I cant. I just review the help docs or our textbook when it comes up. Let's pass it by...

Globally Updating Styles

This is actually really important. Every time you format something, it will effect the style of that thing. A little plus mark [+] will appear next to the style in the Style panel. Paragraphs have a default [Basic Paragraph] style applied to them, so if you do any paragraph formatting, it will show [Basic Paragraph] +. It's a good sign that you should probably make a new style to handle the modified styling.

Go to page 4 and select BEANS at the top of the page
With the Paragraph (not the Paragraph Styles) panel, choose from the flyout menu Paragraph Rules...

Choose Rule Below, set it to Red-Tomato color, and give it an Offset of 0.025in

Note that Head 3 has a plus sign [+] next to it, indicating the style has been overriden. An Option/Alt click on the style will set the paragraph back to its original formatting, but if you don't do that, you can use the flyout menu to update the style everywhere its used in the document.

Choose from the flyout menu Redefine Style

The red rule will appear wherever the Head 3 style was applied

Loading Styles From Another Document

You can load styles from another document, and even select which styles you load, without actually openingthe other document.

Choose Load All Text Styles... from the flyout menu of the Paragraph Styles panel

Select the file you want to take style from, in this case the finished lesson 9 example file, 09_End.indd

A dialog appears showing the names of all ths styles in the document.

Click on Uncheck All

Pick Drop Cap Body, which will automatically select Drop Cap for you since it's a Character Style embedded within the Paragraph Style

Drop Cap Body will appear at the bottom of the list of Paragraph Styles

Put the cursor in the Look for your tried... paragraph and click on the Drop Cap Body style to see it applied

Review Questions

How can using object styles speed up your workflow?
What must you have created previously in order to create a nested style?
What are the two ways to globally update a style you’ve applied in an InDesign document?
How would you import styles from another InDesign document?