Waratah-ing the Crap Out of Your InDesign
This post has been sitting in my Drafts folder for nigh three weeks. But things don't always work out the way they should, so here I am, eating chips and air (also known as Lays) and trying to save my grade by writing about pink rubbery stuff. Or the application of said pink rubbery stuff in InDesign.
But first, we must create grids. This is best done in the Master Page.
Remember to always select "Remove Existing Grids" when creating new ones. Otherwise, they will overlap, like so:
Paragraph and Character Styles will be your saviour.
To this day, I'm still not quite sure what the Waratah is. At first I thought it was algae, but a quick trip to Wikipedia tells me it's actually a flower. Nonetheless, it triggers my OCD senses and I shall write this post as quickly as humanly possible.
Inserting the provided title and text. Notice all the hidden characters.
Below you will see a Waratah intricately placed inside a circle. To do this, select the Ellipse Frame tool and drag a circle (don't forget to hold Shift to maintain its dimensions). Then, while still selecting the frame, go to File > Place... and select the image you want to insert.
When it comes to InDesign, clicking the Enter key twice is considered a testament to your lack of skill. Do it the graphic design way and use Paragraph Styles and Paragraph Formatting Controls to fix this.
A Drop Cap is when the first letter of a paragraph is bigger than the rest of it. To do this, highlight a paragraph.
Create a new paragraph style, double-click, and go to Drops Caps and Nested Styles. Select the number of lines you want the letter to be as big as. This will determine its size.
The result:
Instead of using the Enter key, use Indents and Spacing in Paragraph Styles to determine the space between paragraphs. This allows greater freedom when it comes to manipulating paragraphs, whereas Enter keys are a one-size fits all kinda thing.
Use Basic Character Formats to change the fonts, sizes, leading, kernings, etc.
And that is it! That was a lot to process in one session, especially since this as also combined with creating folios, but they all come in handy and save a lot of time.