All InDesign training courses should include coverage of the use of styles to improve workflow and maintain consistency within a document and across several documents. Most computer users have some familiarity with what styles are: named formats which can be applied to your text as an alternative to manually applying each formatting attribute individually. Even users new to InDesign will probably have encountered styles in Microsoft Word: "Heading 1", "Heading2", "Normal", etc. However, InDesign's use of styles is much more sophisticated and we always ensure, when we run InDesign training courses in London, that we emphasise their importance.
The salient benefits of using styles are, firstly, consistency: the same formats are faithfully applied each time without variations accidentally occurring. Secondly, rapidity: if a heading needs six formatting attributes applied then, without the use of styles, you will have to apply all your attributes manually. If you use a style, you can apply the text formatting with one click or a single keystroke. A third benefit is the ability to change the appearance of your text simply by changing the definition of your styles.
One less obvious benefit of using styles in InDesign is what we might call scalability. Styles play a key role in some of the program's advanced features and documents that do not use styles cannot benefit from these features. For example, a key part of creating XML-based layouts, is the mapping of XML tags to styles within a document.
A second example is the creation of tables of contents. InDesign creates tables of contents based on the use of styles. In designing the table of contents, one specifies which styles are to be included. When the table of contents is generated, InDesign finds each piece of text in that style and places the appropriate page number next to it.
In fact, the table of contents feature is more flexible than the name suggests since it can be used to produce a list of anything within a document where a particular style has been used consistently. For example, if every image in a document has a caption formatted with a particular style, the table of contents facility can be used to produce a list of images.
A third example of advanced applications of styles is when working with InDesign books; a features which enables several InDesign documents to be treated as one entity for such operations as preflighting, creating PDFs and the generation of tables of contents. Separate users can work on each document within the book but the styles used within all documents can be streamlined by a process known as synchronisation.
Because of its importance, we include styles both on our beginners InDesign training courses and on or advanced InDesign training. On our advanced training courses, we explain the use of facilities like nested styles whereby a character style can be embedded within a paragraph style and automatically applied to a given set of characters or words within the paragraph; for example, it might be to all characters up to the first occurrence of an em dash or a colon. - 16003
The salient benefits of using styles are, firstly, consistency: the same formats are faithfully applied each time without variations accidentally occurring. Secondly, rapidity: if a heading needs six formatting attributes applied then, without the use of styles, you will have to apply all your attributes manually. If you use a style, you can apply the text formatting with one click or a single keystroke. A third benefit is the ability to change the appearance of your text simply by changing the definition of your styles.
One less obvious benefit of using styles in InDesign is what we might call scalability. Styles play a key role in some of the program's advanced features and documents that do not use styles cannot benefit from these features. For example, a key part of creating XML-based layouts, is the mapping of XML tags to styles within a document.
A second example is the creation of tables of contents. InDesign creates tables of contents based on the use of styles. In designing the table of contents, one specifies which styles are to be included. When the table of contents is generated, InDesign finds each piece of text in that style and places the appropriate page number next to it.
In fact, the table of contents feature is more flexible than the name suggests since it can be used to produce a list of anything within a document where a particular style has been used consistently. For example, if every image in a document has a caption formatted with a particular style, the table of contents facility can be used to produce a list of images.
A third example of advanced applications of styles is when working with InDesign books; a features which enables several InDesign documents to be treated as one entity for such operations as preflighting, creating PDFs and the generation of tables of contents. Separate users can work on each document within the book but the styles used within all documents can be streamlined by a process known as synchronisation.
Because of its importance, we include styles both on our beginners InDesign training courses and on or advanced InDesign training. On our advanced training courses, we explain the use of facilities like nested styles whereby a character style can be embedded within a paragraph style and automatically applied to a given set of characters or words within the paragraph; for example, it might be to all characters up to the first occurrence of an em dash or a colon. - 16003
About the Author:
The The writer of this article is a training consultant with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe InDesign training courses in London and throughout the UK.
