Here’s a quick tip for changing the font of text quickly in all versions of InDesign and InCopy–and without ever touching the mouse. Let’s begin by establishing two facts: First, CMD+T/CTRL+T opens or closes the Character panel/palette. Second, we know that typing into the Character panel’s Font Family field causes InDesign to try to match…

There are so many new features in InDesign CS3 that it’s easy to lose track of some of them. One I’d like to draw your attention to is the new discretionary line break. Like a discretionary hyphen, the discretionary line break (“DLB” from here on out) finesses where and how InDesign breaks a line of…

Among many exciting new and improved features in InDesign CS3, the totally re-imagined Find/Change function is among my favorite top five. The first time I opened the Find/Change dialog I was literally stunned into silence (shutting me up is not an easy task). What about it could possibly silence, even for a moment, this opinionated…

You probabaly already know that you can type into just about any of InDesign’s measurement fields a value based on any measurement system InDesign understands. For instance, if the document uses pica for measurement, you can still specify height, width, and numerous other values in inches by typing X in (for inches [also “ and…

When laying out portraits or headshots close together, such as in a newspaper or magazine article or publications like membership directories and yearbooks, the golden rule is that all photo subjects’ heads should be the same size. In most cases regardless of background and pose, Fred’s head should be the same size as Themla’s, Daphne’s,…

A trio of (occasionally useful) tips for working with measurement fields to resize and transform type, frames, and other objects. Resize, Move, and Transform by Percentage Ever find yourself in need of cutting something down to half, doubling the size of type, or blowing up an image frame 319.2678%? (No, I don’t think I’ve done…