Graphic design is telling a story by using both text and images. With that definition in mind, the next few videos will utilize the skills you learned in the previous modules to focus on the textual elements when using specific computer programs. In this module, we will learn the value of selecting the best combination of font to get your message across in a visual pleasing manner, and how to fine-tune sizing, spacing, and alignment of text in design projects. So at the end of this course on textual elements of graphic design, you get to make or design either a brochure, a front and back one or a front and back flier. So I have set up an InDesign page here to show you manipulating text in InDesign and I've already entered some colored boxes and things like that, and I've got my two pages set up because it's a front and back. But I want to play around right now with character and paragraphs, so lot of stuff with text. One of the first things I want to show you that Adobe has done really well is they have pretty much in a lot of ways branded or made things a specific way in each program. So you'll see this menu bar over here that has some very similar, your T is your text, you've got a little eye drop guy over here, we've also got our zoom in, we've got our fill and our stroke, which is somewhat similar to Illustrator and Photoshop. They just try to make it look similar and almost give it a branding thing. Another thing they do is they put all these little pallets and panes over here that you can, if you choose use InDesign, you can set these up the way you want to. If you'll notice, I've actually got one floating out here dealing with character. It is also, if you've noticed, watch when I click on direct select this box here that is a text box. So I've clicked away from it and this change and I click back on it, it does add some of the same stuff that is in these characters over here, which is a personal preference as to if do you want to look in this box or do you want to look over here, up to you. One thing about these panes is you can move them around and some people just like that option, totally up to you, but I'm going to leave both of them open just so you can see it going on both sides and you can pick. You can also extend this for more, oops, didn't mean to do that, edit undo, will help me some edit undo, command Z. Wish we had that in real life. Let's not fix in this. So we're just going keep going, but you can also, these three little dots here means it's going to collapse it or expand it and you attend to do character and paragraph together because they're obviously dealing with the alignment and different ways to manipulate your texts. undo this sum because this part is driving me crazy, control Z. So let's start a little bit with the first thing I want to do is click over here on my T, a type tool, a tall T. I'm going to click on him and I am going to make a type box right here because I'm going to play around a little bit with this color that I've actually matched these two using my eyedropper tool. I actually went in and had mobile eyedropper tool and notice it actually gives you some of them, but the colors might be up here so it matched it for me and then I eyedropped it. I actually picked it there and then look I filled my little eyedropper and then it just filled it in, just one way to go about doing it, but I've already set that up for us. So let's go ahead and play a little bit with our text box here. I'm going to show you one of probably my favorite, I don't know why, It's just one of my favorite features in InDesign, and it's type, fill with placeholder text. So that you can also get to it over here with fill with placeholder text. When I click on that, it is going to fill my box with a bunch of gobbledygook. I think one of the reasons why I like this feature so much is that, let's say you are the designer and you are waiting on a writer to get you some information, but you know that they know, hopefully, that the writer knows that it needs the whatever words they're going to give you basically needs to fit in this section. You may have given a word count, you may have some standards that you're following, it's just one way to ahead and start designing some stuff while you're waiting on them. So that's probably why I like it, notice that I have a weight on too many of them but I have in the past. Now, you'll notice this is not formatted in any way. Nothing, no indents, no spaces between the line, nothing. It is left aligned because that's one thing that it defaults to up here in this paragraph setting. But one font you're going to, I'm going to object character here, you're gonna get really familiar with Minion Pro, I don't know why the people at Adobe picked that, a lot of times the Adobe programs for some reason they default to Minion Pro. But if I click on this, you'll notice I've got a lot more to choose from other than just good old Minion Pro. A feature that some people don't necessarily know about is if I go into this box and I double-click on the whole name here, and let's say I'm just being lazy for the day and I do not want to scroll all the way down to the Ts, I can actually start typing in Times New Roman and it's going to isolate that part of the alphabet for me. I could, and notice it's changing my font over here too depending on which way I'm going, it's giving me lots of different options for it. I could also type in D because God forbid, I scroll all the way down to Didot, God forbid I did that. So over here notice it does have a little bit of the Greek stuff, it's called Greek text, showing you what's not English, but they just call it that, showing you what this text will look like. So I'm just going to click on the regular one, but that's just something fun for you to know that you can just start typing in instead of scrolling, God forbid you scroll. Down here, this one font right here does come in italics and bold. There is another way that if they don't come in italics, you see this little guy right here where it's saying skew, and that's a false italics. Then there are some fonts that do not come in italics. So I could select all this font over here and then maybe give it a two percent, which that didn't do too much, let's go with 12 just to really show you, that's given me a false italics. Because some fonts, just whoever designed the font decided not to give an italic version. Now, over here in this one, we do have italics, but I just wanted to show you one of a fun one down there. Another thing I want to show you too is that, do you see this little over here I'm in the text box down here, this little red plus mark? What that means is that there's more texts that this text box will hold. So a couple of things I can go and do with that is contract my characters, I could lead my lines and play around with some of that stuff. So I want to show you where those two things are within these boxes here. Tracking your characters is right here because look, this big old T, big tall T he's on a track. So I could go, I can either select ones they've already got here for me or I could just start click in here and it's going to give them to me, still not quite fitting so we're going do some other stuff. But this number, 97 percent, that's one that I have noted a lot of graphic designers who had been in the industry for a while, for some reason, we like 97 percent. It just looks better with most font than a 100 percent. So a lot of times people will go in and they'll set everything up the way they want it and then they'll start doing some design stuff because some of this features, you actually can't make them like your preferences, they just automatically set this way in InDesign. Then also too if you notice right here, this is actually going to be, and if you hover over some of these it's going to tell you that's my leading. So that's leading, my line. Remember we talked about how it's usually about the 80, 20 rule. So if I click on this, I could go to 12 and that's going to make it fit, or I could go to 14, or I could put it at 13, and that's going to somewhat make it fit. Let's go back up to our 12 up here and it's made it fit nicely. I can also, if I want to, over here down in the paragraph, this is where I can center, right align, can also justify with last line aligned left. What that means is normally, sometimes with justification, it would spread it all the way out here and that doesn't, it fix it really nicely for you, it doesn't do that. So couple of other things I want to show you is up here. Let me set this up just a little bit for you, because I want to do maybe a bulleted list here with some of these. I know my writer is going get it to me soon enough, but there's going to be a bulleted list in here. So I want to show you how to do a bulleted list over here. So I've selected this type here because I know it's going to be bulleted and yes, you can look for character and paragraphs stuff under these different panes. But you can also, if you're dealing with type, go to the type drop-down box. So for instance, right here, you notice I've got a ton of my different fonts and it shows me the different regular, italics, and all that stuff just like it does over here. This little guy gives me little examples and everything. Also too shows me my sizes. I can't go up to other, but it's automatically going to default me over here. So sometimes, it will do that, it will default you to certain places. So I said I wanted to bullet point things and sometimes some people have a hard time finding, for some reason, the bullet point area in InDesign. Once you know where it is, you've noted down where it is. So if I'm dealing with type, I'm going to look at the type menu and if I bullet list, the bullet list deals with types. So over here is bulleted and numbered list and I can say apply bullets. That's going to give me a bulleted list. I can also go over here with type. There is also numbered list. There is also too, there's my fill with placeholder text, my little buddy that I like. Another one that I like too is change case. I was very excited years and years and years and years ago when this one got added. Because for some reason, some writers would give me stuff in all caps for some reason or just issues. Or we were copying it from somewhere and it just wasn't correct. Or I did want to make it all uppercase, for some reason, and I didn't want to sit there and retype it because it's already been proof read or something like that. So I can make it all uppercase. There is a similar feature, yes in this, just like Word, but here's where you find it change case. Can make it title case, which is obviously capitalizes every letter, even those prepositions and some other articles, B and B that you would go back in a lowercase. Then we've got our sentence case. So I'm going to go and make it back to lowercase. So let's say maybe I wanted to make this my bullet list for some reason. I don't know, a different color, some other color. While you do that, as you go over here where it says appearance and it's going to say fill. If you'll notice right now, it's got a big old T on it, because it knows I'm in a text box, InDesign knows I'm in a text box. So I'm going to click on that and that's going to give me some different colors that are already in here. Click on it again for it to go away. Click on it for it to show up. I've put a new blue in there, I could decide on a new color that I want to go to. So I am going to actually click on my new blue and maybe I want to make it. I can play around here with the colors. That is horrible to put on top of my blue, but we're going to do it anyway just to show you some things. Maybe, I want to go to a pinkish color. So I'm going to call this new pink. Notice right here, this is one thing I want to show you is that you can change your colors to know when you send it to the printer, whether you can give them the CMYK values or the RGB values. This is where you change that. I'm going to change it to RGB, just to show you something in this appearance menu in just a minute. So if I say that and I'm going to say, "Okay. " If you'd notice, I want you to see these little tiny icons to the very far right. This one, CMYK. Here's my C. No, excuse me. A C, M, Y, K. There's my R. Just totally, it's so small to see but there's my percentages of the colors as well, they're are in there. I can, also too, make it a gradient if I want to. There's other stuff I can do it. There's my gradient with the color. Lots of different stuff you can do with it. That was another thing I could do is if I want to change the color totally and the total fill, I can double-click on this guy and you could go to town on this and have a lot of fun. So I maybe want to change it to yellow and you'll notice this guy right here, it's not and in some other programs it actually shows the entire color spectrum. In InDesign, it kind of pretty much only shows you bits and pieces of it. So you've got to pull it to other areas and maybe I want to make, I don't know, an even darker pink, bubblegum pink. I can say, "Okay" there. Now it's going to be filled, just got to be that. Got awful pink there. So there we've learned a little bit about aligning our stuff, character sizes, character choices, letting our line, tracking our lines. Excuse me, tracking our texts. I could also go in here and if I want to go up here and play around, because maybe I don't like the spacing between some of this letter right here. I want to show you one more thing with the tracking your text and letting and kerning your characters. If you'll notice, tracking is pretty much always on no matter what I pick, because it's on a track. But I can't do over here is where the kerning of your characters is, I can't. There's nothing to pick. Because remember kerning your characters is in between just two characters. So right now, I've got them all pics so it's just never going to show up. So instead, let's say I want to start playing with this d and this space on either side of it. Now, this little guy is going to show up and I can go to negative five. I'm going to make it a little bit bigger so you guys can actually see what I'm doing. Negative 25, so that really brought it in. Then maybe I go over here. I mean you could really spend a lot of time fixing a lot of these things. I could just go on for days with some of this. That is the skills that you are learning in this course, on how to manipulate text in InDesign, as well as other programs. So hopefully, that got yo started a little bit it. Again, if you have access to InDesign, it is a fun program to play around with and text is really fun to play with it. This gives you enough to at least get started on and give you some really cool stuff with your projects in this class.
