ADOBE INDESIGN FOR BEGINNERS: Tips and Techniques to Creating Professional Magazines and Books for Online and Desktop Publishing using InDesign
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ADOBE INDESIGN FOR BEGINNERS: Tips and Techniques to Creating Professional Magazines and Books for Online and Desktop Publishing using InDesign
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5 Ways to Instantly Improve your Layouts
Five Ways to Improve your Layouts Instantly…
tutorials Design, Intermediate, Typography Five Ways to Improve your Layouts Instantly… Five Ways to Improve your Layouts Instantly…
You began creating your layout in InDesign with so much enthusiasm, but despite your hard work it’s still looking, well, a bit ‘meh’.
Panic not! Here are 5 ways to spice up your designs super quickly and easily, and make them look instantly more attractive, polished and professional!
1. Make your Margins Wider
Never underestimate the transformative power of a generous margin around the edges of your page(s). It really is the simplest tip for making layouts look instantly more visually appealing, and giving text and graphics more breathing space.
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Adjust your margins in InDesign by going to Layout > Margins and Columns, accessible from the top menu. Try increasing your existing margins by an extra 5 mm, and see your layout look more attractive pronto!
2. Limit your Colour Palette
Colour has the power to transform the mood of your designs, but introducing too much colour can make a layout appear cluttered and messy. Try to limit your use of colour to no more than three colour swatches to a page—you’ll be amazed how bold and punchy your design can become!
Another colour tip to make your posters and brochures look ultra-dramatic and to draw attention to headers and logos is to use just one colour on an otherwise monochrome layout. In the example below, white and black tones allow the red text to really pop and draw the eye.
Edit colour in InDesign using the Swatches panel (Window > Color > Swatches). Learn more about using colour in InDesign with our handy beginner’s guide to colour.
3. White Space is your New Best Friend!
Whenever you design your layouts remember this mantra: less is (almost) always more (I say almost because ornate layouts can look lovely in the right context; see Tip 5 below…). Even layouts that have a lot going on—text, graphics, colour, the lot!—will always benefit from a bit of breathing space.
This is what graphic designers call ‘white space’, which is effectively space on the page that’s empty of visual content. It doesn’t necessarily need to be white in colour; just a blank bit of background with nothing on it. This helps focus the eye on the content you want to draw the viewer’s attention to, and it makes the layout much less stressful to look at.
Introduce more white space on your layout by cutting down on the quantity of content or resizing elements to create more room on the page. Try to stick to a maximum of two main focal points on the layout, like in this example, where the image and header are the only things seeking your attention.
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4. Tweak your Typography…
…Is your text looking a little lacklustre? Adding a Drop Cap to the start of your opening paragraph or increasing your Leading (the space between lines of text) may be subtle changes, but they can work wonders for improving your designs. Setting your headings and sub-headings in different Weights (Bold, Italic, Light, Black etc) can also create visual separation in text-heavy layouts.
Another tip used by design professionals is to apply Optical Margin Alignment to paragraphs of text. This creates ‘Hung Punctuation’, shifting punctuation marks outside the boundaries of a text frame, creating a more uniform block of text. InDesign will also subtly move any overhanging serifs on letters, so your text looks more perfected and polished.
You can find the Optical Margin Alignment option in the Story panel in InDesign (Window > Type & Tables > Story).
5. Get Fancy with a Border!
Minimal layouts can look beautiful—clean, uncluttered and easy on the eye. But what if your layout’s looking more bare than minimal? Sometimes, a little touch of something fancy can lift your layout and transform it into something special.
The easiest way to give your layouts a touch of the ornate is to introduce a Border. Borders frame your content, drawing the eye inwards, just as a picture frame helps to focus the eye on the image it contains.
Create a border in InDesign by using the Rectangle Tool (M), accessible from the Tools panel. Use your margin lines as guides for getting the border perfectly sized; then adjust the look of the border using the Stroke panel (Window > Stroke) and Corner Options (Object > Corner Options). Here, I’ve used a ‘Thin-Thick-Thin’ Stroke Type and a ‘Fancy’ Corner Shape.
Take note of these five tips when you create your own layouts—you’ll be amazed how a few subtle tweaks can transform your designs! And remember, above all, have fun with creating layouts. Design is meant to be fun; so feel confident with experimenting and breaking the rules (in moderation!).
Enhance your layout designs with some fresh font inspiration for magazines, books, or print design; or check out our beginner InDesign tutorials page for more tips and tutorials!
5 Pro-Tips for Mastering Adobe InDesign
5 Pro-Tips for Mastering Adobe InDesign
by Jason Forrest, Creative Director
We’ve been using Adobe InDesign, one of the most popular layout and page design tools, for what seems like forever – at least 84 years.
Generally, we use InDesign when creating marketing collateral, including posters, flyers, interactive PDFs, digital magazines, and more.
Over time, we’ve learned a bunch of simple tips and tricks that have had a big impact on our workflow and product.
Here are the 5 most important pro-tips that we’ve learned along the way.
Hot Keys: Speed up the Design Process
Hot keys are keyboard shortcuts for actions that you would otherwise access from the application menu. Learning these hot keys will save you a ton of time, especially for projects with a lot of pages.
Select vs. Direct Select
There’s a difference between a frame and the stuff within a frame.
You can select the frame by hitting the ‘V’ key for the select tool, but if you want to select the stuff within a fame, hit the ‘A’ key for the direct select tool.
Paste in Place
Did you know you can quickly copy an object and paste it in the exact same spot on a different page in your document? It’s a game changer.
First, select the object, then hold the ‘Command’ key and hit the ‘C’ key in order to copy it.
Once you’re on the new page, hold ‘Shift’ while simultaneously pressing the ‘Option’, ‘Command’ and ‘V’ keys to paste it in place.
Boom.
Preview Mode
InDesign’s default view shows a lot of visual information, like margins, columns, and frames.
Hit the ‘W’ key to toggle Preview Mode to see what your final layout will look like.
Toggle Guides
If you still want to see some of the building blocks of your layout (like text frames), but you don’t want to see anything else, hold the ‘Option’ key and then hit the Semi-colon (;) key.
Place Image
Hold the Command key (or Control in Windows) and press the ‘D’ key to insert an image into a frame.
Frames and Content
A lot of InDesign is placing images into frames. After you’ve hit ‘Command’ + D to place an image, you can:
Fit an image in a frame proportionally (Shift + Option + Command + E)
Center an image in a frame (Shift + Option + E)
Resize an image and the frame it is in proportionally (Shift + Click + Drag)
Object Alignment: Perfectly Balanced, As All Things Should Be
Don’t just eyeball your design. Use the Alignment function to easily achieve a clean and perfectly-balanced layout.
Use the Select tool (hit the ‘V’ key) to select an object (frames, type, etc.) or multiple objects. Choose what you are aligning the frame or frames to: themselves, the margin, the page, or the whole spread.
Aligning a group of objects together first, and then to the margin or page results, in the most balance.
Hidden Characters: Don’t Let Them Wreak Havoc
No, we’re not talking about Scooby-Doo style hidden characters. The kind of hidden characters I’m referring to are things like bizarre line breaks and mysterious spacing issues.
When you copy formatted text from outside of InDesign and paste it into a text frame, a whole bunch of hidden characters sneak into your layout.
You can find them by going to ‘Type’ in the top menu and selecting ‘Show Hidden Characters’. Then you’ll be able to identify and eliminate all the hidden characters wreaking havoc on your design.
This will also help you fix line and page break issues.
It’s either you or them. Don’t hesitate. Be merciless.
Text Threads: Reveal Frame Connections
It’s common for a layout to have multiple connected frames of text, but it can be confusing to keep track of how each frame is connected.
You can reveal the connections between frames by selecting View in the top menu, selecting ‘Extras’, then ‘Show Text Threads’.
Exporting PDF Files: Best Practices
There are several preset options for exporting PDFs, depending on your needs and requirements:
For sending PDFs as attachments and viewing online, select ‘File’, ‘Adobe PDF Presets’, and ‘[Smallest File Size]…’
When you have more wiggle room for larger file sizes, like printing at home or in an office, choose ‘File’ > ‘Adobe PDF Presets’ > ‘[High Quality Print]’
When you need to send your artwork to a print vendor who specifies everything to be in CMYK color, choose ‘File’ > ‘Adobe PDF Presets’ > ‘[PDF/x-1a:2001]’
These 5 tips and tricks are crucial, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
If you’re interesting in leveraging our full master of Adobe InDesign, let’s talk.
About Jason Forrest Jason Forrest is the Creative Director at Digital Ink. Forrest began his career as a staff designer at a futurist consultancy in Washington DC, and since then has worked for clients both large and small in a wide variety of industries. Digital Ink tells stories for forward-thinking businesses, mission-driven organizations, and marketing and technology agencies in need of a creative and digital partner.
