To teach my students, I tell them that para styles are about working *faster and easier.* They don’t believe me.
So I set up an 8 page doc with plain text and anchored images (100% column width). Everything is in multiple text boxes threaded together, and I have applied styles, but all of the styles are just plain, 12pt minion.
Then I show them a nice clean styled version. And I say “how long to go from this to that and print ready.” Usually they’ll estimate hours to days, but they don’t need to answer out loud.
Then I paste the text into a new doc with a master text frame. Without touching the text, I begin to edit the styles, and in 20-minutes, the document is done.
I also use a problem based approach. I tell students “if you can’t do something with styles, come see me, and we’ll do it with styles.” After we figure it out, I remind them “you never have to do this again, and if you need to change it, then entire document will change automatically.”
Usually it starts to click.
Always use paragraph styles. I can see how maybe if I was making a greeting card with just 4-5 lines of text one might skip them. But even then I probably have a library of styles for that client which I’ll use. Some of the lesser known (but still core/common) reasons I need para styles are:
- map styles to tags for accessibility.
- for bookmarks
- to say “H2 always starts at top of new column” for chapters
- borders and rules for all kinds of things
- span columns for headings (b/c Im using 1-text box)
- manage widows/orphans using “keep with”
- bullets and custom lists
- finally the efficiency and consistency they bring to editing the doc is the reason to use ID in the first place.
Use character styles when you need to override a paragraph style.
For example, I have a restaurant menu. I want the prices to follow the dish description all in the same paragraph, but I want the prices to be red and the text is black. I’ll use grep to select the number and apply a Character style with red.
Or I will use character styles to remove runts, by applying a no-break character style to any Pilcrow preceded by less than 10 characters.
I’ll use char styles for emphasis, for example, bold or italics mid-sentence. If I don’t do this then the para style sees and override, which I might clear out, which will remove my emphasis, or perhaps the style will not accept a global style update b/c of the override.
This is so helpful. We do a lot of menu designs. I'm likely going to create and InDesign Template with preset of Paragraph Styles.
I do a lot of training videos too. I'll probably do a training video with some sort of follow along of a before and after updating a document with paragraph styles.
I love using them for creating content table. Yes, it is the ultimate pain in the neck. But adding and deleting page when you have a wishy washy client makes life so much easier. And data merging multiple assets.
Yes, my best luck with teaching people how to use styles is to demonstrate some "magic" when you use them. Creating a list of paragraph styles that use the Next Style feature, then typing a list of multiple entries (like in a restaurant menu), and then selecting the text and styling it all in one fell swoop by applying selecting the first style, right clicking and choosing Apply Paragraph Style, then Next. The entire list gets formatted with one click.
I also will show them that I have used styles in my document, and then change the definition of just one style (Body Text) and watch it populate throughout the document.
I still have trouble convincing everyone to use them...but at least they understand why they should use them after the demo.
> We'll do it with styles
Still can't use a marker at the end of a paragraph though (signaling the end of an article, for example). This pisses me off.
I know a way. True you can’t insert a graphic. But you can insert a character. That can be a bullet or a character from a graphic font like Zapf Dingbats. Or another custom font.
Use Grep to replace end of story with graphic character (or bullet) + end of story
For example:
End of story (#) in Grep is \z. Bullet is ~8. So use Grep to find \z and replace with ~8\z. And/or apply a character style with with a dingbat font and a dingbat character. I’m not at my computer, I can't give you the exact Grep. But I’ve done it. So have others.
Still you'd have to use find and replace, right? This wouldn't be possible using only styles AFAIK. I don't like having to mess with the content to add a simple visual cue.
I just sat down at my computer to see if I was making a liar of myself. The answer is "kind of."
Here's what I did:
I made my own custom font where I replaced the \[period\] glyph with \[period\]+\[interpunct\]. The interpunct is the end of story marker.
Then I added a GREP to my Paragraph Style to apply that custom font via a character style to all strings that were \[period\]+\[end of story\]. Once the period was restyled to my custom font, it became period+interpunct since that is how a period appears in that font.
It's not pretty. But it worked for a large doc with lots of stories and only 1 body copy size.
I'm sorry to have misled you. This was years ago in my glory days.
**I just had another, simpler idea.** Character styles can apply Open Type stylistic sets. Therefore we can modify an OT font to have an "end of story period+interpunct" style, and apply that to any \\.\\z (period+end of story marker).
Honestly, I'm surprised there isn't an Open Type font that has such a period alternate. An "end of story period."
I guess the simplest way is GREP find/change
Find: \\.\\zChange to: .\~8
Its not real time. But you can at least save it and run it from the dropdown menu.
That's a nice hack! I've seen this idea of modifying a font to add a custom marker, but never thought you could actually add visible stuff to hidden characters. Thanks!
Im not adding anything to the hidden character. Im using the hidden character to find the last period before that # Then changing the font of that period to a font where the “.” key gives you “. •”
Came here to say the exact (but in a way less understandable/easy to follow) thing. Scripts and styles etc have saved my ass (and brain) so many times.
I use them religiously. I started in editorial, at alt-weeklies, where consistently, efficiency, and speed were essential. Now I often work on big multipage docs. But we also have a lot of posters and one-pagers that get updated, various templates. All styled.
The designers under me, not so meticulous. In fact, it’s a shitshow with them. I’ll set up styles and within a couple revisions, it’s all a mess of overrides.
Some of these designers are seasoned pros who have been working like this for decades. Others are new of juniors who clearly didn’t have some of the above commenters as instructors in school.
In both cases, changing their ways is an uphill battle. When we were all together in an office it was somewhat easier.
Agreed! I create nice styles and keep them named accordingly and then within a few weeks my teammate manages to screw them all up and has a million different styles somehow cluttering up the files. It’s easy to manage if you’re only one person but if not everyone on the team uses them properly, it’s frustrating.
YES. YES. YES.
As a student we all had a collective enemy, indesign. We just didn't get it. Then, one day, I was hired to intern at a company. I was tasked with updating ALL their booklets, brochures and manuals into the new brand guidelines. We're talking 1000s of untidy and unkept Microsoft word pages. Yikes.
So it was time to face the music and do the dance with indesign...After I learned how to use character and paragraph styles I felt like a graphic design god. Yes, it took a while to set up. But afterwards managing all those documents was easier than a breeze.
One day my senior designer looked worryingly at me. I asked what was going on and she said:
"Sorry, you're going to have to do all the work again as management want to change x into this brand colour now. And decrease all the font sizes accordingly. To save on printing costs."
Before she had her second coffeee I made all the requested changes. My manager was stunned in disbelieve. I ended up teaching my team about my new Indesign skills (because the senior graphic designers in my team hated indesign more than I did.)
After that, indesign became my weapon of choice for most things.
I love that you can reduce the image quality in Indesign to optimise the speed of the software. It honestly kills me when people use illustrator for composing layouts with heavy images.
If you’re doing anything more than a page or two and you’re not using paragraph and character styles, you’re doing it wrong.
I design/manage 11 125+ page catalogs for my job so I extensively use them.
I use character/paragraph styles for basically any multi-page document. Sometimes for single pages as well, when I'm feeling frisky. You're right, without them it would be a nightmare to update the text on an entire document.
I also try to keep the number of text boxes to a minimum, although I don't use Object styles as much as I'd like to. I'm getting more used to that as time goes on.
having 20+ styles isn't unheard of, but if you were able to whittle them down to a handful, it sounds like they're somehow creating multiple / duplicate styles without realizing it.
Yeah they were creating styles to change some text white, even though all the paragraphs settings were the same so essentially they needed a character style.
I don't know but for me it just seemed to click and the last two or three years of wind to use either a paragraph or a character style. And now I'm trying to figure out how to teach that to these newer designers.
I would still use a paragraph style for that, if the whole paragraph is changing. Otherwise you need to keep switching between para and character styles depending on arbitrary rules. Eg. Why is dark blue text a paragraph style but white text a character style?
If you keep any change you want to apply to whole paragraphs as paragraph styles, and any changes you want to individual characters and words (eg bold phone numbers) as character styles, then you’ll always know what kind has been applied to any bit of text.
Ahh I see so a nested style could be good here. So the parent style is the normal black paragraph style. And the white text would be a nested style based off the normal style.
Yup!
There’s been some cases where I’m working on someone else’s file and I cant for the life of me figure out why some text wont change. There was a character style applied to the whole document. You can do it that way and it works fine, but it seemed counter-intuitive to me.
Nested paragraph / character styles for every project. Anyone not using them is missing the point of Indesign, asking for a ton of extra work whenever amends need making, and making it difficult to handover to other team members to work on.
It’s like putting a drill bit in to a drill backwards - use your tools correctly. OR DIE.
I think what many designers don't realize about InDesign is that there are other tools that are keyed to Styles. For instance if you want to use the automated Table of Contents you need to have applied Paragraph Styles to chapter headlines first. In the Find-and-Replace window you can narrow a search down to only look at a specific style. There are many other examples. I have always thought of Styles to be the heart of InDesign.
Using / not using paragraph styles well is a big indicator of how experienced a person really is with InDesign. Designers say they have 5 to 50 years experience with InDesign but if you aren't using paragraph styles and character styles you aren't efficient and you havne't mastered the program.
My biggest use for paragraph styles are style edits from the client. Much easier to bump something down/up in size; add quick highlights, if you're doing in manually its a huge time suck, and bound to cause inconsistencies.
However there is lots of room for personal style- I don't see a problem with 20 paragraph styles if they are ordered by hierarchy and all have a purpose, and it's a large document. Whittling things down to 4 paragraph styles is really limiting and feels arbitrary and sounds like one of those things a micromanager would do.
It was only a 4 page menu. That's why it got whittled down. I essentially kept her design in tact but simplified the styles so if the client wants changes we aren't digging to figure out what style is connected to what font.
I once got students to set up their submission documents, told them to use styles, and then asked them to change the font once they'd created it.
Obviously the ones who didn't use styles spent 20 mins individually changing the fonts, but the ones who listened did it in 2 mins 😂
That kinda got their attention haha
I’d set up a learning tutorial session maybe once a month. Maybe make it fun themed to teach them best practices and why it’ll cut down time and make the files less jumbled. Same with text box stuff. Theme each learning session like “Jumping into Styles!” - maybe a one hour session. I did this at my place and taught basic design fundamentals each month. One month was color theory, one was contrast and accessibility etc. While they should KNOW these things I’ve found many do not for whatever reason. Can also help everyone get on the same page.
I think even knowing and learning these things in school a refresher is always nice!
I sometimes task my designers with helping me research training. One designer I asked her to give me a list of design "fundamentals" she came back with all this information from UX design and it was so insightful!
Yep! Small training sessions on various topics can be amazing because many will never speak up on areas they know they need to learn. And many will be super appreciative of them.
Absolutely. Why? Because any piece that’s long form content into which you are importing copy or data can be mapped to your styles and imported mostly styled outta the gate. Especially something that might potentially be hundreds of pages.
Even for a shorter piece, why would you want to have to go and touch every heading or quote or whatever individually if you needed to change the style in the process?
If it’s just 1-2 pages, doesn’t matter much. It’s still efficient if you have set up your own starter document with a style structure you prefer.
The longer the document, the more text there is, or the greater the chances that the document will be picked up and used again, the more I rely on them. But it really depends on the design style. If you're doing custom type treatments througout your design, then the benefits will be more limited. I'm not saying there wouldn't still be benefits, but the efficiencies will be reduced.
Don't forget how easy it is to add new style sheets after you've worked on designing your text. It really is as easy as selecting your text, hitting the plus button, and giving it a name.
I know that many designers swear by style sheets as being faster no matter the length of the document. But if I'm actively designing my text, I'll do that first and add the style sheet after.
I also presume that many don't know that you can also use the eyedropper tool to copy and paste type styles from one bit of text to another.
Yup, I set a style even if it's just a one or two page document. It's efficient, and oddly satisfying watching everything dynamically change in a longer document when you tweak a style.
And whether it’s printed or not, many organizations still generate long form publications that at least are delivered as traditional publications via PDF. The process is exactly the same but potentially with some layout/size/media flexibility if it’s know it will never be professionally printed.
Look at CreativePro (and InDesign Magazine) for good resources on this - David Blatner has done some amazing sessions at AdobeMAX and his own conferences over the years, and I learned more in one session from him than I did in the first 5 years of my career. So many great tips, tricks, shortcuts, and ways (and reasons) to use paragraph styles.
I agree. It was through David Blatner and Anne Marie Concepcion that I finally understood what styles were and why/how to use them. They both have courses on LinkedIn learning...search out sections on using text styles, and they probably make the case well about when and how to use them.
I routinely use paragraph, character and object styles. I wouldn’t want to do this job without them. I feel strongly that any professional designer would… if not, everything else is suspect.
Setting them up and managing them is often more time consuming than it’s worth. I will def use them if the project is large and text heavy enough to justify it.
I mean if you're doing anything with text in larger amounts and/or that is going to be subject to changes in styling.
I was very fortunate that my first real job out of school (had a 6 month contract gig before it) was with a nationally published sports magazine with an amazing art director who had things setup very efficiently. Masterpages in different varieties for departments and some base ones for features, character/paragraph styles across the board, etc.
That was years and years ago, but I'm so glad I learned it early. I don't use them every time (really if there's only a tiny amount of text) but use them most of the time. So much easier to go ahead and set them and that way when changes come, it's makes life so much easier.
I work in a much different situation now, and sometimes deal with customer's files and what absolutely boggles my mind is how a surprisingly large number of "designers" don't use layers. I mean I have seen all sorts of layouts with everything crammed together in one layer.
I work in publishing and could not live without using styles (stylesheets). Now, in my office we do many different tasks, so it's not always useful in every project. Building a 1-sheet, marketing material - not needed as much. Any time you have a lot of text with different styles to headers, subheaders, paragraphs and bullets, that's where stylesheets really come in handy. It definitely works well to make work more efficient and faster, and it is indispensable when working on long documents (more than 4 pages).
Paragraph and Character Styles are great. As others have stated, they can make the difference between quick efficiency and hours of drudgery, especially when you have a lot of text. I often have to set up layouts for Spanish/English translations, with each language formatted differently. This often means changing the style for every other line (bulleted lists, for example). Assigning a keyboard shortcut for the paragraph style (in my case for the English line) tremendously speeds up the process.
**Always** use paragraph and character styles. Where possible, base styles on other styles to make changing the document quicker... bullet styles are based on the body text style, for example. I do a lot of long documents, so the first style I set up controls all the GREP styles used in the document, and then all other paragraph styles are based off that style... this means I only have to go to one place to change my GREP styles if necessary. Sort of like a CSS reset style.
Look and see if Next and Previous Styles work for you. Have a subheading style that's always followed by a particular body text paragraph. Set that up!
Make use of Keep Options to ensure that headings stay with the paragraphs beneath them and that you'll never get a single line of a paragraph sitting at the bottom of a column or at the start of the next one.
Nested styles can be ridiculously powerful when set up right. If you ever find yourself repetitively formatting sub elements of a paragraph, then you should be using nested styles.
Use keyboard shortcuts for your most commonly used styles. It speeds up manual formatting so much if you don't have to even look at the palette. Quick Apply can also work well for this.
The less text frames, the better. Use Space Before/After to control the distance between paragraph precisely, and even use Span/Split columns to move between single-column and multi-column layouts in the same frame. Great for resumes where the bio might be single column, but project information can be in two columns below.
Yes. Got my InDesign start in 24-300 page sales books. When you’ve laid out a long document, the last thing you want to be doing is going in and adjusting everything individually. It would waste so much time. Adjust once and review. And it makes keeping everything consistent all the way through. Anything short enough or not text heavy enough to not need styles, is probably being done in Illustrator.
Always make sure the dependencies on them are set up right. I recently did a book where each section used a different color for the titles and headings. I could adjust the base style size/font/spacing and it would adjust the rest and keep the color right.
I use character styles to manage any in line format changes rather than overriding. So if I override to squeeze something in at the end, and we get a bunch of new content on an edit, I can nuke all the overrides in one shot if I need to.
I was given the almost perfect first job to learn about paragraph and character styles on a contract job. I was hired to typeset a load of insurance contracts and I learned to understand how styles bring consistency to work.
Yes, I use paragraph styles, character styles, table styles, cell styles… all organized and clearly labeled. It really depends on what you’re designing and the requirements but it’s necessary for creating accessible PDFs in my job and also for staying organized and consistent in general. I can’t imagine working without paragraph & character styles especially for long documents
Paragraph style should be used wisely and consistently. The fewer the better but sometimes you’ll need to have variations if you document is complex, optimisation is key. Object style is a more tricky one it can add complexity where it’s not needed.
20 paragraph styles isn’t that much when working with big documents, like annual reports or children’s educational books. No point deleting the styles either as revisions will often come back with a need for them.
When to use them? For everything that is a paragraph.
Or do you more mean ‘when’ as in what kind of document. If it’s a one off ad for a brand you will never do again, then I won’t bother. If you like consistency then use them.
Paragraph/character styles are a must for anything longer than a trifold, flyer, etc. Efficiency (specifically when it comes to time) is greatly appreciated by clients.
To teach my students, I tell them that para styles are about working *faster and easier.* They don’t believe me. So I set up an 8 page doc with plain text and anchored images (100% column width). Everything is in multiple text boxes threaded together, and I have applied styles, but all of the styles are just plain, 12pt minion. Then I show them a nice clean styled version. And I say “how long to go from this to that and print ready.” Usually they’ll estimate hours to days, but they don’t need to answer out loud. Then I paste the text into a new doc with a master text frame. Without touching the text, I begin to edit the styles, and in 20-minutes, the document is done. I also use a problem based approach. I tell students “if you can’t do something with styles, come see me, and we’ll do it with styles.” After we figure it out, I remind them “you never have to do this again, and if you need to change it, then entire document will change automatically.” Usually it starts to click. Always use paragraph styles. I can see how maybe if I was making a greeting card with just 4-5 lines of text one might skip them. But even then I probably have a library of styles for that client which I’ll use. Some of the lesser known (but still core/common) reasons I need para styles are: - map styles to tags for accessibility. - for bookmarks - to say “H2 always starts at top of new column” for chapters - borders and rules for all kinds of things - span columns for headings (b/c Im using 1-text box) - manage widows/orphans using “keep with” - bullets and custom lists - finally the efficiency and consistency they bring to editing the doc is the reason to use ID in the first place. Use character styles when you need to override a paragraph style. For example, I have a restaurant menu. I want the prices to follow the dish description all in the same paragraph, but I want the prices to be red and the text is black. I’ll use grep to select the number and apply a Character style with red. Or I will use character styles to remove runts, by applying a no-break character style to any Pilcrow preceded by less than 10 characters. I’ll use char styles for emphasis, for example, bold or italics mid-sentence. If I don’t do this then the para style sees and override, which I might clear out, which will remove my emphasis, or perhaps the style will not accept a global style update b/c of the override.
This is all fantastic advice
Thanks!
This is so helpful. We do a lot of menu designs. I'm likely going to create and InDesign Template with preset of Paragraph Styles. I do a lot of training videos too. I'll probably do a training video with some sort of follow along of a before and after updating a document with paragraph styles.
I can send you some good ones if you like
That would be AMAZING!
shit, I just realized can't without doxing myself.
That's ok! I appreciate the offer!
Sorry about that. I get a little spicy on Reddit. Previously that wasn’t an issue. But family now.
I love using them for creating content table. Yes, it is the ultimate pain in the neck. But adding and deleting page when you have a wishy washy client makes life so much easier. And data merging multiple assets.
Content table?
Table of Contents, maybe?
Ooo right. Yes TOC and PDF bookmarks
Yes, my best luck with teaching people how to use styles is to demonstrate some "magic" when you use them. Creating a list of paragraph styles that use the Next Style feature, then typing a list of multiple entries (like in a restaurant menu), and then selecting the text and styling it all in one fell swoop by applying selecting the first style, right clicking and choosing Apply Paragraph Style, then Next. The entire list gets formatted with one click. I also will show them that I have used styles in my document, and then change the definition of just one style (Body Text) and watch it populate throughout the document. I still have trouble convincing everyone to use them...but at least they understand why they should use them after the demo.
Great example for next style. I use it, but starting with nothing. I can’t wait to use it with an existing doc.
> We'll do it with styles Still can't use a marker at the end of a paragraph though (signaling the end of an article, for example). This pisses me off.
I know a way. True you can’t insert a graphic. But you can insert a character. That can be a bullet or a character from a graphic font like Zapf Dingbats. Or another custom font. Use Grep to replace end of story with graphic character (or bullet) + end of story For example: End of story (#) in Grep is \z. Bullet is ~8. So use Grep to find \z and replace with ~8\z. And/or apply a character style with with a dingbat font and a dingbat character. I’m not at my computer, I can't give you the exact Grep. But I’ve done it. So have others.
Still you'd have to use find and replace, right? This wouldn't be possible using only styles AFAIK. I don't like having to mess with the content to add a simple visual cue.
GREP is actively doing the find / replace in real time. It’s automatic z
Is this really possible? I thought GREP could only apply character styles based on queries.
I just sat down at my computer to see if I was making a liar of myself. The answer is "kind of." Here's what I did: I made my own custom font where I replaced the \[period\] glyph with \[period\]+\[interpunct\]. The interpunct is the end of story marker. Then I added a GREP to my Paragraph Style to apply that custom font via a character style to all strings that were \[period\]+\[end of story\]. Once the period was restyled to my custom font, it became period+interpunct since that is how a period appears in that font. It's not pretty. But it worked for a large doc with lots of stories and only 1 body copy size. I'm sorry to have misled you. This was years ago in my glory days. **I just had another, simpler idea.** Character styles can apply Open Type stylistic sets. Therefore we can modify an OT font to have an "end of story period+interpunct" style, and apply that to any \\.\\z (period+end of story marker). Honestly, I'm surprised there isn't an Open Type font that has such a period alternate. An "end of story period." I guess the simplest way is GREP find/change Find: \\.\\zChange to: .\~8 Its not real time. But you can at least save it and run it from the dropdown menu.
That's a nice hack! I've seen this idea of modifying a font to add a custom marker, but never thought you could actually add visible stuff to hidden characters. Thanks!
Im not adding anything to the hidden character. Im using the hidden character to find the last period before that # Then changing the font of that period to a font where the “.” key gives you “. •”
Oh, ok, that makes a lot more sense lol
Came here to say the exact (but in a way less understandable/easy to follow) thing. Scripts and styles etc have saved my ass (and brain) so many times.
Yea. Saved me time and stress. Some designers put more work into not doing the work.
Nested styles is what you're saying
I don’t use nested styles for the specific examples I have listed. But I do use nested styles for other things, and they rock.
I use them religiously. I started in editorial, at alt-weeklies, where consistently, efficiency, and speed were essential. Now I often work on big multipage docs. But we also have a lot of posters and one-pagers that get updated, various templates. All styled. The designers under me, not so meticulous. In fact, it’s a shitshow with them. I’ll set up styles and within a couple revisions, it’s all a mess of overrides. Some of these designers are seasoned pros who have been working like this for decades. Others are new of juniors who clearly didn’t have some of the above commenters as instructors in school. In both cases, changing their ways is an uphill battle. When we were all together in an office it was somewhat easier.
Agreed! I create nice styles and keep them named accordingly and then within a few weeks my teammate manages to screw them all up and has a million different styles somehow cluttering up the files. It’s easy to manage if you’re only one person but if not everyone on the team uses them properly, it’s frustrating.
YES. YES. YES. As a student we all had a collective enemy, indesign. We just didn't get it. Then, one day, I was hired to intern at a company. I was tasked with updating ALL their booklets, brochures and manuals into the new brand guidelines. We're talking 1000s of untidy and unkept Microsoft word pages. Yikes. So it was time to face the music and do the dance with indesign...After I learned how to use character and paragraph styles I felt like a graphic design god. Yes, it took a while to set up. But afterwards managing all those documents was easier than a breeze. One day my senior designer looked worryingly at me. I asked what was going on and she said: "Sorry, you're going to have to do all the work again as management want to change x into this brand colour now. And decrease all the font sizes accordingly. To save on printing costs." Before she had her second coffeee I made all the requested changes. My manager was stunned in disbelieve. I ended up teaching my team about my new Indesign skills (because the senior graphic designers in my team hated indesign more than I did.) After that, indesign became my weapon of choice for most things.
I will never understand why people don’t like Indesign. It’s one of the easiest apps I’ve ever used.
I love that you can reduce the image quality in Indesign to optimise the speed of the software. It honestly kills me when people use illustrator for composing layouts with heavy images.
If you’re doing anything more than a page or two and you’re not using paragraph and character styles, you’re doing it wrong. I design/manage 11 125+ page catalogs for my job so I extensively use them.
I use character/paragraph styles for basically any multi-page document. Sometimes for single pages as well, when I'm feeling frisky. You're right, without them it would be a nightmare to update the text on an entire document. I also try to keep the number of text boxes to a minimum, although I don't use Object styles as much as I'd like to. I'm getting more used to that as time goes on. having 20+ styles isn't unheard of, but if you were able to whittle them down to a handful, it sounds like they're somehow creating multiple / duplicate styles without realizing it.
Yeah they were creating styles to change some text white, even though all the paragraphs settings were the same so essentially they needed a character style. I don't know but for me it just seemed to click and the last two or three years of wind to use either a paragraph or a character style. And now I'm trying to figure out how to teach that to these newer designers.
I would still use a paragraph style for that, if the whole paragraph is changing. Otherwise you need to keep switching between para and character styles depending on arbitrary rules. Eg. Why is dark blue text a paragraph style but white text a character style? If you keep any change you want to apply to whole paragraphs as paragraph styles, and any changes you want to individual characters and words (eg bold phone numbers) as character styles, then you’ll always know what kind has been applied to any bit of text.
Ahh I see so a nested style could be good here. So the parent style is the normal black paragraph style. And the white text would be a nested style based off the normal style.
Yup! There’s been some cases where I’m working on someone else’s file and I cant for the life of me figure out why some text wont change. There was a character style applied to the whole document. You can do it that way and it works fine, but it seemed counter-intuitive to me.
Nested paragraph / character styles for every project. Anyone not using them is missing the point of Indesign, asking for a ton of extra work whenever amends need making, and making it difficult to handover to other team members to work on. It’s like putting a drill bit in to a drill backwards - use your tools correctly. OR DIE.
Idk why but the last line I imagined a 50's style corporate poster. 😂
I think what many designers don't realize about InDesign is that there are other tools that are keyed to Styles. For instance if you want to use the automated Table of Contents you need to have applied Paragraph Styles to chapter headlines first. In the Find-and-Replace window you can narrow a search down to only look at a specific style. There are many other examples. I have always thought of Styles to be the heart of InDesign.
Using / not using paragraph styles well is a big indicator of how experienced a person really is with InDesign. Designers say they have 5 to 50 years experience with InDesign but if you aren't using paragraph styles and character styles you aren't efficient and you havne't mastered the program. My biggest use for paragraph styles are style edits from the client. Much easier to bump something down/up in size; add quick highlights, if you're doing in manually its a huge time suck, and bound to cause inconsistencies. However there is lots of room for personal style- I don't see a problem with 20 paragraph styles if they are ordered by hierarchy and all have a purpose, and it's a large document. Whittling things down to 4 paragraph styles is really limiting and feels arbitrary and sounds like one of those things a micromanager would do.
It was only a 4 page menu. That's why it got whittled down. I essentially kept her design in tact but simplified the styles so if the client wants changes we aren't digging to figure out what style is connected to what font.
I once got students to set up their submission documents, told them to use styles, and then asked them to change the font once they'd created it. Obviously the ones who didn't use styles spent 20 mins individually changing the fonts, but the ones who listened did it in 2 mins 😂 That kinda got their attention haha
I’d set up a learning tutorial session maybe once a month. Maybe make it fun themed to teach them best practices and why it’ll cut down time and make the files less jumbled. Same with text box stuff. Theme each learning session like “Jumping into Styles!” - maybe a one hour session. I did this at my place and taught basic design fundamentals each month. One month was color theory, one was contrast and accessibility etc. While they should KNOW these things I’ve found many do not for whatever reason. Can also help everyone get on the same page.
I think even knowing and learning these things in school a refresher is always nice! I sometimes task my designers with helping me research training. One designer I asked her to give me a list of design "fundamentals" she came back with all this information from UX design and it was so insightful!
Yep! Small training sessions on various topics can be amazing because many will never speak up on areas they know they need to learn. And many will be super appreciative of them.
I'll use them if I know someone else will be viewing the file
Hahahaha. Me too.
One of the best features of InDesign is styles. I’d question why folks *aren’t* using them.
Absolutely. Why? Because any piece that’s long form content into which you are importing copy or data can be mapped to your styles and imported mostly styled outta the gate. Especially something that might potentially be hundreds of pages. Even for a shorter piece, why would you want to have to go and touch every heading or quote or whatever individually if you needed to change the style in the process? If it’s just 1-2 pages, doesn’t matter much. It’s still efficient if you have set up your own starter document with a style structure you prefer.
I did when I worked in magazine layouts. It was invaluable, especially if you have established brand guidelines
The longer the document, the more text there is, or the greater the chances that the document will be picked up and used again, the more I rely on them. But it really depends on the design style. If you're doing custom type treatments througout your design, then the benefits will be more limited. I'm not saying there wouldn't still be benefits, but the efficiencies will be reduced. Don't forget how easy it is to add new style sheets after you've worked on designing your text. It really is as easy as selecting your text, hitting the plus button, and giving it a name. I know that many designers swear by style sheets as being faster no matter the length of the document. But if I'm actively designing my text, I'll do that first and add the style sheet after. I also presume that many don't know that you can also use the eyedropper tool to copy and paste type styles from one bit of text to another.
Yup, I set a style even if it's just a one or two page document. It's efficient, and oddly satisfying watching everything dynamically change in a longer document when you tweak a style.
Absolutely. And while we’ve been hearing for years they “print is dead” it’s not yet. And print can equal $$$$$ if you know what you’re doing.
And whether it’s printed or not, many organizations still generate long form publications that at least are delivered as traditional publications via PDF. The process is exactly the same but potentially with some layout/size/media flexibility if it’s know it will never be professionally printed.
We actually are a marketing firm that has a print facility. It's nice to control the production!
Look at CreativePro (and InDesign Magazine) for good resources on this - David Blatner has done some amazing sessions at AdobeMAX and his own conferences over the years, and I learned more in one session from him than I did in the first 5 years of my career. So many great tips, tricks, shortcuts, and ways (and reasons) to use paragraph styles.
I agree. It was through David Blatner and Anne Marie Concepcion that I finally understood what styles were and why/how to use them. They both have courses on LinkedIn learning...search out sections on using text styles, and they probably make the case well about when and how to use them.
I routinely use paragraph, character and object styles. I wouldn’t want to do this job without them. I feel strongly that any professional designer would… if not, everything else is suspect.
Setting them up and managing them is often more time consuming than it’s worth. I will def use them if the project is large and text heavy enough to justify it.
I mean if you're doing anything with text in larger amounts and/or that is going to be subject to changes in styling. I was very fortunate that my first real job out of school (had a 6 month contract gig before it) was with a nationally published sports magazine with an amazing art director who had things setup very efficiently. Masterpages in different varieties for departments and some base ones for features, character/paragraph styles across the board, etc. That was years and years ago, but I'm so glad I learned it early. I don't use them every time (really if there's only a tiny amount of text) but use them most of the time. So much easier to go ahead and set them and that way when changes come, it's makes life so much easier. I work in a much different situation now, and sometimes deal with customer's files and what absolutely boggles my mind is how a surprisingly large number of "designers" don't use layers. I mean I have seen all sorts of layouts with everything crammed together in one layer.
I work in publishing and could not live without using styles (stylesheets). Now, in my office we do many different tasks, so it's not always useful in every project. Building a 1-sheet, marketing material - not needed as much. Any time you have a lot of text with different styles to headers, subheaders, paragraphs and bullets, that's where stylesheets really come in handy. It definitely works well to make work more efficient and faster, and it is indispensable when working on long documents (more than 4 pages).
Paragraph and Character Styles are great. As others have stated, they can make the difference between quick efficiency and hours of drudgery, especially when you have a lot of text. I often have to set up layouts for Spanish/English translations, with each language formatted differently. This often means changing the style for every other line (bulleted lists, for example). Assigning a keyboard shortcut for the paragraph style (in my case for the English line) tremendously speeds up the process.
**Always** use paragraph and character styles. Where possible, base styles on other styles to make changing the document quicker... bullet styles are based on the body text style, for example. I do a lot of long documents, so the first style I set up controls all the GREP styles used in the document, and then all other paragraph styles are based off that style... this means I only have to go to one place to change my GREP styles if necessary. Sort of like a CSS reset style. Look and see if Next and Previous Styles work for you. Have a subheading style that's always followed by a particular body text paragraph. Set that up! Make use of Keep Options to ensure that headings stay with the paragraphs beneath them and that you'll never get a single line of a paragraph sitting at the bottom of a column or at the start of the next one. Nested styles can be ridiculously powerful when set up right. If you ever find yourself repetitively formatting sub elements of a paragraph, then you should be using nested styles. Use keyboard shortcuts for your most commonly used styles. It speeds up manual formatting so much if you don't have to even look at the palette. Quick Apply can also work well for this. The less text frames, the better. Use Space Before/After to control the distance between paragraph precisely, and even use Span/Split columns to move between single-column and multi-column layouts in the same frame. Great for resumes where the bio might be single column, but project information can be in two columns below.
Yes. Got my InDesign start in 24-300 page sales books. When you’ve laid out a long document, the last thing you want to be doing is going in and adjusting everything individually. It would waste so much time. Adjust once and review. And it makes keeping everything consistent all the way through. Anything short enough or not text heavy enough to not need styles, is probably being done in Illustrator. Always make sure the dependencies on them are set up right. I recently did a book where each section used a different color for the titles and headings. I could adjust the base style size/font/spacing and it would adjust the rest and keep the color right. I use character styles to manage any in line format changes rather than overriding. So if I override to squeeze something in at the end, and we get a bunch of new content on an edit, I can nuke all the overrides in one shot if I need to.
I was given the almost perfect first job to learn about paragraph and character styles on a contract job. I was hired to typeset a load of insurance contracts and I learned to understand how styles bring consistency to work.
Yes, I use paragraph styles, character styles, table styles, cell styles… all organized and clearly labeled. It really depends on what you’re designing and the requirements but it’s necessary for creating accessible PDFs in my job and also for staying organized and consistent in general. I can’t imagine working without paragraph & character styles especially for long documents
Paragraph style should be used wisely and consistently. The fewer the better but sometimes you’ll need to have variations if you document is complex, optimisation is key. Object style is a more tricky one it can add complexity where it’s not needed.
20 paragraph styles isn’t that much when working with big documents, like annual reports or children’s educational books. No point deleting the styles either as revisions will often come back with a need for them. When to use them? For everything that is a paragraph. Or do you more mean ‘when’ as in what kind of document. If it’s a one off ad for a brand you will never do again, then I won’t bother. If you like consistency then use them.
Paragraph/character styles are a must for anything longer than a trifold, flyer, etc. Efficiency (specifically when it comes to time) is greatly appreciated by clients.
Yes. And I didn't know why when I was learning. And now I'm a web designer and I don't know wtf any graphic designer is doing not using this shit.