Four Adobe InDesign “Tips & Tricks”

Over the years of using InDesign regularly for client and in-house projects, OPP has four “tips and tricks” to help streamline your work with InDesign. These tips aren’t ground-breaking, but we’ve found them especially helpful and hope you will, too.

“Tips and Tricks” #1: Paragraph and Character Styles

When working on multi-page documents for our clients, paragraph styles is an essential function InDesign offers. Paragraph styles shape the document as it’s assembled, and allows for quick and efficient adjustments.

In the Paragraph Style Options (Figure 1), all aspects of the paragraph format can be set, from font settings to underline options. For more reliable and faster editing, any Paragraph Style (F11 or PC, ⌘+F11 for Mac) can be copied and applied to another.

For example, a subhead and accompanying body copy are likely to share many properties, and you can replicate this style throughout the document. Also, it takes minimal effort to change a typeface midway through a project with this function.

In this example, the header style was set based on the body style, since there are only minor differences. It’s also possible to set the style of the next paragraph; here the next style is Subhead since one will follow each header.

    Figure 1

Focus on the Basic Character Formats section next. Plan to format the base font for the entire document here. When specific character styles are required, use Character Styles to “override” the paragraph settings.

As a general rule, application of Character Styles (Shift + F11 for PC, ⌘+Shift+F11 for Mac) should be limited to full sentences or less. Editing the appearance of hyperlinks in keeping with your style guide, for example, is a good use of character styles. With Character Styles, you can control every aspect of appearance and, if adjustments are needed, they can be done all at once.

In the Character Style Options (Figure 2), styles can be modified to bring attention to selected text. In this example, the hyperlink style is modified from the body text.

    Figure 2

“Tips and Tricks” #2: Table of Contents

Paragraph styles are an important element when creating a Table of Contents (TOC). The hierarchy of the TOC is specified based on paragraph styles; in a standard document, the first level is the header style, the second level the subhead style, and so on.

Paragraph styles are selected and added to the TOC with the Table of Contents settings box (Figure 3). Once the hierarchy is set, you can format the TOC itself and set it in the document. The TOC can mimic the paragraph styles included or have its own style.

    Figure 3

“Tips and Tricks” #3: Manage Assets with CC Libraries

Creative Cloud Libraries will sync your frequently-used assets (colors, styles, and logos) across your entire CC account. This includes the popular Adobe products – Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign. The CC Library organizes your assets to increase the accessibility of elements you use on a regular basis across different programs.

Assets are imported by simply dragging the item into the Libraries Panel, where they are automatically organized by type and identified by the program used to create it (Figure 4).

“Tips and Tricks” #4: Calculate Values in Panels and Dialog Boxes

We’ve found this tip to be quite handy, especially to reduce human error when creating a grid. Instead of calculating distances between grid lines, for example, just add the desired distance in the dimension text box and InDesign will automatically calculate the new location. In the example here (Figure 5), the object will be moved 2p6 to the right and down. Select Constrain Proportions if you want to maintain the proportions of your grid when editing the height or width.

   Figure 5

We hope you found some benefit from this post. We are proud of the many awards our clients have won for the OPP support creative materials—many of which were done in InDesign.

Come back to the OPP blog for more tips and tricks on the latest cool tools. Thanks for reading!