Long Hours of Design

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!

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