One of the best reasons for using paragraph styles, character styles, and object styles in an Adobe InDesign layout is the ability to make large-scale changes to a design quickly. Instead of editing paragraphs, text or objects individually while going through the layout, styles applied to groups of items can be edited in the style panels and will affect every instance of that style throughout a document.
Change Paragraphs or Objects Styles Through an InDesign Layout
Paragraph styles are applied to entire blocks of text. A headline, a paragraph of text, and a bulletted item in a list are all examples of text blocks that can use paragraph styles. With individual styles created and applied to each type of paragraph block, a designer could change each type of text block simply by editing those dedicated styles. One edit to a style, and all related items are changed to whatever the designer chooses. There’s no need to go into each block and edit them individually.
The same goes for objects like picture boxes or graphic objects. Object styles can be changed quickly, such as a style where drop shadows are applied to all pictures. By editing a style, the drop shadow can be edited or dropped on all picture boxes in a matter of seconds.
Character Styles re Great for Specific, Quick Edits
Character styles are applied to selected words or characters within a text block. Examples would be italicized titles for books, or bold type for emphasis. When using character styles for situations like these, editing these styles can greatly speed up the process of making changes.
Editing character styles is easier than looking for all instances of a style throughout the text. For example, a bold emphasis style might want to be made even bolder with a “black” weight. By editing a “bold” style to be “black”, all bolded emphasized words can be changed at once, without having to hunt through a long text to find and change them individually. What could take a considerable amount of time to change could be done in less than 30 seconds by editing a character style.
“Nested” Styles - Many Changes By One Edit
Styles can also be related to each other or “nested”. This can allow one style to be edited that can affect other styles that are based upon this main style. For instance, by basing other styles on a style called “basic paragraph”, one can edit the font of “basic paragraph” and all other styles “based on” that style will have their font changed automatically (but retain any other characteristics such as indentations, justifications, font size, etc.). Each style doesn’t have to be edited in these cases. One style can cover a large number of characteristics within lower nested styles.
Designers can have powerful control over their designs and layouts using styles within InDesign. The use of styles gives great flexibility for changes, provides quicker design options, super layout organization, and flexibility in working with clients.
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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