Paragraph Shading Is a Long-Awaited New InDesign Feature

Paragraph Shading is the cool new feature in InDesign CC 2015 and I’m loving it.

Paragraph shading can call attention to pull quotes or sidebars, create interesting running heads, or make introductory text stand out. Paragraph shading is important. And until now, it has always been a challenge.

If you’ve never had to shade a paragraph or haven’t used rules to create reversed heads in long documents, then you can’t imagine how big a deal Paragraph Shading really is.

Long documents often use shaded paragraphs to call attention to text. They can be used for callouts, pull quotes, or sidebars. They can be used to stripe tabbed text, to create interesting running heads, to make introductory text stand out. Shaded paragraphs add to readability and utility. Long runs of tabbed text without shading can be very difficult to read. Have you ever watched someone take out a ruler to follow along when reading tables? That’s one sign of poorly formatted text. Paragraph shading is important. And until now, it has always been a challenge.
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Digital Books Should Be Interactive

A Digital World Demands Interactive Media

Designing for devices becomes a puzzle of what to animate and why. I’ve been experimenting with different website layouts (using Adobe Muse, mostly) as well as using Adobe DPS (Digital Publishing System) for redefining printed matter to use on a tablet. It’s been a fun experiment.

I’ve found that less is more when it comes to animations so I’ve tried to pare pages down to their basics. I enjoy the possibilities afforded by interactive pages.

One of my clients is a volleyball club here in the Puget Sound region. I have been putting their yearbooks together for many years, but once I got an iPad in my hands, I knew that the yearbook format was perfect for an interactive device. Here’s an example of how I rethought the pages so that they work better as an interactive format.
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Interactive Books; Not Digital Books

Puget Sound Book Artists Present 4th Annual Members’ Exhibition

Image of Puget Sound Book Artists 4th Annual Members Exhibition Poster — Puget Sound Book Artists 4th Annual Members’ Exhibition

Each Puget Sound Book Artist exhibit seems to overshadow the previous one. This latest exhibition at the Collins Memorial Library at the University of Puget Sound is no exception. These handmade, one-of-a-kind works of art are all books that tell a coherent story whether they are popup books, accordion books, embroidered sampler books, or map and felt books. I can never get enough of the intricate workmanship and thoughtful intent that goes into each one.

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Finessing Files in InDesign: Adding GREP No Break to Paragraph Style

Widows, Orphans, and Runts, Oh My!

It has been my experience that nothing (except maybe bad kerning or poor font choice) makes an art director grab for a red pen like finding paragraph runts in text. A runt is a very short word or phrase that sits by itself in the last line of a paragraph. In previous posts we discussed the benefits of using a Nonbreaking Space and a No Break Character Style to help finesse your text flow.

But wouldn’t it be grand if you could actually prevent most bad breaks from occurring at all?

While these tools make it easier to control how your text flows, they will not save much proofing time on your part because you will still have to read the text to spot bad breaks and then manually apply these options to correct them. Wouldn’t it be grand if you could actually prevent most bad breaks from occurring at all? You can! With the power of GREP.

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Finessing Files in InDesign: No Break

Give Me a Break–Not!

This paragraph contains a runt (single word) on the last line.

In the last Finessing Files-related post, I discussed uses of the Nonbreaking Space. It is a quick and easy way to prevent text from breaking at awkward spaces. But InDesign also provides a No Break option that unites the words you have highlighted and does not allow them to break at the end of a line. You can access it in a number of ways. The illustrated paragraph contains a single word on the last line. As a production artist, you could let it be, or you could spare your art director from having heart palpitations by correcting it at this stage.

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