Long Hours of Design

I’m generally on my Mac, and if I’m on a PC, I rarely am doing anything serious or designerly. So I never knew this:

To add the ellipsis ^{[ 1 ]} punctuation mark to text, hit Option-semicolon (Mac) or Alt-0133 (Windows).

Really? You have to type Alt-0133? ^{[ 2 ]}

I’m glad I don’t have to remember that.

Underline-y Goodness

Paragraph rules and underlines are highly under-appreciated.

Here’s a fun little underline technique for creating a tag exclaiming the newness of an item.

"New" Tag

"New" Tag

This is pretty simple.

1. Type “New” with a space before and a space after.
2. I’ve styled this with small caps and brought the size down a bit.
3. Now, we create an underline, staring with the space before NEW and ending with the space after. Make the “Weight” about the same size as the rest of the body text. Adjust the offset until it looks right.
   
   New Tag Underline Settings

   New Tag Underline Settings

   That’s it!

As I mentioned in “Quick and Dirty Job Tracking”, everyone should have and use a job tracking system of some kind.

On further inspection, EVERYONE should HAVE and USE a job-tracking system of some kind.

A design department I know recently wasted hundreds of dollars for lack of a job-tracking system.

With modern design groups having gigabytes upon gigabytes of data on servers, with project after project in different folders and placed differently by different people, sometimes named obscurely, files can become difficult to find—to say the least.

With tracking numbers, a simple OS-level search will find you your files.

Otherwise, brilliant creatives spend their time looking for file x y and z.

And that’s too bad.

Or: “What’s New?”

I’ve always opined that Acrobat was the red-headed step child of all Adobe products. I mean, have you ever used the thing? Did Adobe hire a bunch of ex-Microsoft usability and interface design guys for this one? Admittedly, the newer versions of Acrobat are better than they used to be… On the upside, I get really cool errors when Acrobat crashes!

Look, Ma—Acrobat crashed again!

Look, Ma—Acrobat crashed again!

You don’t need to be an acrobat for this balancing act.

Here’s a useful InDesign feature I often forget about: “Balance Ragged Lines.”

Ragged lines come up in a block of right- or left-aligned text and depend on word lengths, column width and similar variables. Instead of a natural ebb and flow of line endings, ragged lines jut out unevenly like some sort of typographical flotsam and jetsam

“Balance Ragged Lines,” buried under the Paragraph panel flyout, does pretty much what it sounds like it does. ^{[ 1 ]} It adjusts each line in the paragraph so they’re all of approximately equal length—and so there aren’t lines sticking out every which way.

Example

Here are the ragged lines I want to tackle.

Ragged Lines, Oh My!

Ragged Lines, Oh My!

Now, this isn’t actually so bad; my lines flow pretty much as I’d expect them to.

But the bottom two lines—where the URL breaks onto the last line—that’s a problem. I want that URL on one line, not two.

I could shore this up with forced line breaks—but I can’t add just one (putting the URL on the bottom line) as then I’d REALLY have some ragged lines. No, in this case I’d have to add a break to the end of every line.

I’d get this:

A Chicken for Every Pot, and a Forced Break for Every Line

A Chicken for Every Pot, and a Forced Break for Every Line

Yikes! Too much.

So let’s use Balance Ragged Lines.

Balance Ragged Lines—My Hero!

Balance Ragged Lines—My Hero!

And Viola! Well-balanced lines.

The Pièce de résistance

The Pièce de résistance

Caveats

This is a great feature, but I’d caution against its overuse.

Applying “Balance Ragged Lines” can sometimes destroy the typographic-rhythm paragraph lines have, and make them look somehow “unnatural” or “just not right.”

I’d recommend steering clear of using this everywhere—but in those places where unwieldy lines have gotten away from you, “Balance Ragged Lines” is a real peach.

Or: How many rules could a paragraph rule if a paragraph rule could rule? ^{[ 1 ]}

As dull as they may seem, paragraph rules are actually amazingly versatile, and with a little ingenuity and “Thinking Outside the Rules” you can easily harness paragraph rules and make yourself a superstar.

Or at least semi-pro.

In addition to my own posts on the subject, here are some great resources on paragraph rules.

http://www.theindesigner.com/blog/episode-50-tab-topped-text-frames

http://www.theindesigner.com/blog/episode-49-paragraph-rules-rule

http://www.layersmagazine.com/indesign-paragraph-rules.html

http://typophile.com/node/29199

http://www.fontshop.be/details.php?entry=262

Stet is a Latin word (meaning “let it stand”) used by proofreaders to instruct the writer to disregard a change the editor had previously marked.

This convention is usually marked by writing and circling the word stet above or beside the unwanted edit and underscoring the selection with dashes or dots.

Stet is also sometimes used as a verb, e.g., “Stet that colon.” ^{[ 1 ]}

Stat is an abbreviate for “Statistic”

Statistic is a fact or piece of data from a study of a large quantity of numerical data. From German statistisch . ^{[ 2 ]}

Sometimes, you just need more space.

Like me, (6”4’) after being on an airplane for 6 hours—sometimes you just need to stretch out.

Well, there’s plenty of ways to do that, typography-wise, but here’s a nice little guy who can be easily overlooked.

The em space. (Or Señor em space-o)

What’s an em space? From Adobe: ^{[ 1 ]}

Em Space
Equal in width to the size of the type. In 12‑point type, an em space is 12 points wide.

En Space
One‑half the width of an em space.

An em space (or an en space) is great for spots where, otherwise, you might be tempted to use multiple spaces.

Here’s an example:

Multiple Spaces

Multiple Spaces

With Em Spaces

With Em Spaces

Using an em space follows “The Fewer the Better” Rule. As well, while multiple spaces can be adversely affected by tracking or kerning, an em space will give you a consistent width no matter where you use it.

So use the em space.

And be happy.[3. Em and En Spaces are located: In Adobe InDesign, Type:Insert White Space: and in Quark XPress, Utilities;Insert Character:Special Characters:

• The Basics of Production — #1

All designers need to work with a contract. Without one, you’re a high-wire act without a net.

In earthquake country.

On a windy day.

But perhaps even more fundamental than that are the basic agreement that make up your project.

Today, let’s talk about specifications.

Specifications

“Specification” is defined as “the act of describing or identifying something precisely or of stating a precise requirement.”

It almost goes without saying that if you don’t precisely identify what you’ll be designing, it’ll be mighty hard to design it.

Now, as stupid as it sounds, the lesson to learn here is that specifications are about specifics.

Learning from My Stupidity

Now, this doesn’t mean that requirements can’t change, or that a project may evolve into something else — but before you start a project, you’ve got to nail down exactly what you’re building.

A direct-mail house recently requested a postcard from me. They didn’t know the exact size, but they knew their client would want something big—6x9, they thought.

So, I went ahead and started with a 6x9.

I didn’t nail down the exact size; I didn’t double check to see if he was certain; and I sure didn’t require that he get me a final size before I start any work on the project. I had worked with his printer before—I didn’t even look over the old card I had done to check the size.

We worked the card, I submitted proofs, and everything had traveled up the line to the semi-approval phase (that’s a technical term.)

Only then did I actually check with the client.

Turns out, it wasn’t a 6 x 9, it was a 5 x 8.

We All Make Stupid Mistakes

Now, a change of one inch less may not seem like a big deal, but trust me—after you’ve designed a piece all the way through, changing the size to any degree is a pain.

Like a falling-out-of-a-plane-without-a-parachute type pain.

Of course, this was an rank-amateur mistake.

But it pointed up some valuable things about specifications.

‘Da Specifications of ‘da Specifications

Now, the list of things which you could specify is as long and varied as the number of print projects you could ever possibly put your hands on.

But there are some basic items that you’ll always need to know:

1. Size

• How big is the piece?
  
• What are it’s bleed dimensions, if any?
  
• What’s a safe area for trim?
  

2. Colors

• Full Color?
  
• Black and White?
  
• Duo- Tri- or Quadra-Tone
  
• Any PMS or Trumatch colors?
  

3. Copy/Content

• Just what the heck is supposed to BE in this piece, anyway?

The Lesson

The lesson here, though perhaps it seems like an obvious one, is: know before you go. Get the specs!

I got this posted on InDesign Secrets.com.

Original Post is here

Daniel T. wrote us to report a creative use for InDesign:

My current contract had used Quark for a long time; they recently purchased CS3 with the intent to switch over to InDesign, but because no one really knew InDesign, they were slow to get started.

I was stuck revising a pretty long text document in Quark—about 32 pages worth of exhibitor listings. I started out by assigning keyboard shortcuts to my Quark Style Sheets, and manually applying these to each paragraph. This was going to take FOREVER! I wanted to quit! I longed for InDesign’s “Apply xx Style then Next Style” command.

But alas.

Then, I had a bright idea.

I imported the unformatted text into InDesign and quickly set up paragraph styles. Then, using ID’s Apply Style then Next feature, I styled the whole 32 pages in one mouse click. (Woo-hoo!)

Then I exported the text as RTF, and then imported it into QuarkXPress, selecting the option to “Keep Style Sheets.” The text flowed in with all the style sheets intact! I needed to redefine the colors, as RTF doesn’t really keep them well, and tweak a few other things in the Quark version of the style sheets: but hours and hours and hours of endless clicking and arrow-downing evaporated into about 45 minutes.

Thank you, InDesign!

Daniel wins this weeks official InDesignSecrets chutzpah award for a great use of InDesign in the face of adversity! Plus, bonus points if you can write an AppleScript to merge the QX and ID workflow automatically.

To that I add: Excellent.