When creating a design in Adobe InDesign, using the Paragraph Styles, Character Styles, and Object Styles can help a graphic designer work more creatively and efficiently with typography and layout. Styles can help organize the layout and the production.
Paragraphs Styles Keep the Design Looking Consistent
Paragraph styles are applied to entire blocks of text. A headline, a paragraph of text, and a bulleted item in a list are all examples of text blocks that can use paragraph styles. By creating a paragraph style, a graphic designer can have font sizes, leading, first-line indentations, justifications, character spacing, and many other features saved as a style in order to apply it to other paragraphs throughout a layout.
Styles help maintain consistency in a design. By clicking on a style, a group of characteristics are applied consistently rather than relying on making all the individual style attributes choices to one paragraph at a time. Paragraph styles are consistent whether working with three paragraphs in an advertisement, or hundreds of pages of text in a novel.
Character and Object Styles in Adobe InDesign
Character styles can be set up for a group of characters in a paragraph, such as an italicized book title or a bolded word for emphasis. Typographic changes can be applied using normal menus for each situation, but by creating a style for them, the design and editing flexibility benefits are far greater.
Object styles can be created for picture boxes, such as text wraps to various sides, and a drop shadow underneath. By creating an object style, these settings can be automatically applied to other picture boxes using consistent settings.
Styles Help Organize the Design Layout
Using Paragraph, Character, and Object Styles can help organize how a design is executed during the layout process. Creating styles for items such as headlines, sub-headers above paragraphs, and bulleted or numbered lists will greatly help when laying out various portions of a layout.
By creating these styles, one only needs to click in a paragraph, select some text, or choose an object and then click on the style name in the appropriate style palette. A design can be more easily applied throughout a document by using a set of organized styles. This can save a lot of time and headache by simplifying the process. This is especially helpful when working on a large project like a book layout, a magazine, or a catalog.
Graphic designers can have powerful control over their designs and layouts using styles within Adobe InDesign. The use of Paragraph Styles, Character Styles, and Object Styles allow for consistent and easily organized design projects.
David Borrink - David Borrink is a graphic designer who lives in Rockford, Michigan and is a partner with his wife in their design and writing business, ...
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