How to Create a Checkerboard Paragraph Rule

In a recent InDesign Secrets article, Keith Gilbert explored How to Add a Rule Around a Paragraph. It is a very cool trick that overlaps gradients stop to create gradients that aren't really gradients at all, but rather, bands of colors that transition sharply from one color to the next. One of our readers then commented  "I wonder if anyone has worked out a way to combine this with underline to create a hacked shaded box." And today I will explain how to do just that. This technique uses both InDesign and Illustrator.

Read the entire article at InDesign Secrets.

How to Make Lumberjack Plaid

How do you think this plaid was created? Squares: stepped and repeated? Or perhaps using a plugin? Or maybe a table? Learn how by reading this article over at InDesign Secrets.

Pointer Lines for Technical Writers: Part 2

Five years ago, I began using a workflow which involved using pointer line to call out objects on technical photographs. Part 1 shows you how to make a basic pointer line. Part 2 shows you how to make an inverted pointer line.

Read the entire article at InDesign Secrets.

Understanding Dotted Stroke Styles in InDesign

InDesign’s Stroke Styles, especially the dotted stroke styles, are a mysterious topic; and for good reason. The Adobe InDesign Help File offers just basic instructions on how to create custom stroke styles, but essentially no information on the logic behind how they work. This article is dedicated to demystifying the dotted stroke styles. To access the Stroke Styles dialog box, click on the Stroke panel flyout menu, then choose Stroke Styles.

Read the entire article at Creative Pro.

Introducing “Magneto Paths”

The great folks over at Rorohiko have developed an amazing plugin called Magneto Paths. This plugin makes objects stick together while they are being drawn, resized, and reshaped. This means you can effectively apply more than one stroke or fill to (what appears to be) a single object.

Read the entire article at InDesign Secrets.

The Beauty of Stacked Strokes

Have you ever yearned to apply multiple strokes to on object in InDesign? Have you wanted more flexibility with your strokes than just a stroke and a gap color? For years now, I have wanted InDesign to be able to have the equivalent of the Illustrator’s Appearance panel, where I can apply multiple strokes and fills to a single object.

Read the entire article at InDesign Secrets.

Ignite! 2013: Making Patterns in InDesign

This was the slideshow I created for my Ignite presentation at the 2013 Print and ePublishing conference. The original presentation was 5 minutes long, with the slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds. In this video, I opted to take a bit more time for each slide, so I could better explain each pattern and how it was created. I discuss TeaCup PatternMaker, InDesign tables, Illustrator graphic styles, InDesign stroke styles, type on a path, and knitting.

 

Create a Flat-bottomed Stroke

Check out my latest article at InDesign Secrets, where I reveal another trick: How to create a stroke that has rounded endpoints on its top half only.

http://indesignsecrets.com/create-a-flat-bottomed-stroke.php

The Elusive Stroke Style Units of Measurement

Why does my Stroke Styles dialog box always display strokes in inches? Find out the source of this annoyance, and how to fix it. This article can be found in its entirety at InDesign Secrets.

http://indesignsecrets.com/the-elusive-stroke-style-units-of-measurement.php

Making Slanted Strokes

Don't settle for the default right hash! Learn to make custom slanted strokes using a dashed stroke style and Skew. This article can be found at InDesign Secrets. http://indesignsecrets.com/making-slanted-strokes.php

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Learn to use Illustrator to expand your stroke styles; then apply several of them in sequence. This article can be found at InDesign Secrets: http://indesignsecrets.com/follow-the-yellow-brick-road.php

American Flag Stroke Style

I recently wrote an article on how to use a custom striped stroke style to make the stripes of the American flag. You can find the complete article over at InDesign Secrets. http://indesignsecrets.com/american-flag-stroke-style.php

But I wanted to show you some other cool things you can do with this custom style. Continuing on the patriotic theme that inspired the original design, you can apply this stroke style to a star.

You can apply this stroke style to a circle and make your very own gold record. I copied and pasted some gradients swatches in from Illustrator so I didn't have to recreate the gold gradients in InDesign.

Or you can apply this stroke style to rounded rectangles and stack them on top of each other. For this purple design, I took advantage of a bug in InDesign that automatically expands Live Corners when you try to move the individual anchor points with the direct selection tool.

In case you want to use this stroke style and not have to create it yourself, click here to download a snippet of the waving flag stroke shown at the top of this article. When you place the snippet into InDesign, it will automatically bring in the stroke style and gradients. Enjoy!

Making a Chevron Pattern Within InDesign

This is a pattern I saw recently while in the stationary aisle at Target. I like this pattern because it reminds me of the brightly colored crocheted chevron afghans that my grandmother made when I was a child. We had a number of these afghans around our house growing up, and after learning how to crochet at age eight, some of my first projects were efforts to duplicate her handiwork. My early efforts were not as well crafted, but they were good practice for me as I learned to be diligent in improving my craft.

So, how to create a chevron pattern in InDesign? At first, it's not clear. Usually, when creating a pattern in InDesign, I use TeaCup PatternMaker. Other times, I'll use tables and apply interesting stroke styles to them. But to create a chevron pattern, neither one of those methods will work. But I eventually found a suitable method.

But first, let's explore why my standard go-to pattern creating methods won't work.

TeaCup PatternMaker has a pattern type called "Waves," but it is exactly that: wavy. It's a really nice pattern, and I even wrote an entire blog post about it. But in this case, I need my "waves" to have sharp points, not curved points.

The "Waves" pattern is neat because you can change the amplitude stroke weight, and angle. But...you can't specify sharp corners.

Another limitation of the Waves pattern (or any Teacup pattern) is that it must fill a graphic frame: you cannot apply Patterns to strokes. Nonetheless, the Waves pattern is pretty neat, and one of of favorite TeaCup patterns.

My second go-to pattern creating method involves tables and stroke styles. In a couple of instances, I've used the "Wavy" strokes style on a table. While the Wavy stroke style is great because you can (obviously) apply it to a stroke, you have virtually no control over how it is applied. You can't change the amplitude, wave length, number of waves... nothing. All you can do change the stroke weight.  There seems to be a fairly strict limitation on the shape of the wave, and the number of waves will change in order to keep the built-in wave shape relatively constant. Thinner strokes get more waves. Thicker strokes get fewer waves.

Now that we know why my first two ideas didn't work to give us the pattern we're after, let's talk about the method that will give us the pattern we're after.

But first, let's take a step back and look more closely at the image.

Do the blue wavy lines it remind you of anything in InDesign? No? Well, how about if the lines were red? Now do you see how it looks similar to the squiggly underline beneath a mispelled word?

So, we know that InDesign has the capability to create a chevron pattern, as demonstrated by the squiggly red underline of dynamic spelling. But we need to find a way to translate this chevron pattern into a printable, editable object. Now, I don't know of a way to print the dynamic spelling underlines (why would anyone want to? See note below...), But I do know of another feature in InDesign that also has a wavy underline. This feature is "Conditional Text."

In case you've never used Conditional Text before, it is a great feature. It's got to be among my top ten favorite InDesign features. Basically, conditional text let's you show and hide different bits of text. For example, if you are doing a textbook with both a teacher and a student version, you can use conditional text to hide the teacher's portion of the document (such as the answer key). You can also use conditional text to hide bits of text that perhaps you don't need right now, but might want to save for use later. But in this case, what's so cool about conditional text is that you can show AND print text indicators!

So, now we have a way to create a chevron pattern, and to also print it. So how to get a whole frame of these wavy conditional text indicators, but not have any text to get in the way and obstruct the pattern?

First, let's attempt removing the letters, while still having the conditional text indicator. The solution is a right-indent tab (Shift + Tab). Right indent tabs are neat because they are dynamic. However wide your text frame is, a right-indent tab will extend all the way to the right-most edge of the text frame.

Now, we need to get a whole bunch of these little conditional text indicators stacked on top of each other. You may think that we would simply add a bunch of paragraphs, and the tighten up the leading to zero. That will work, but it would be very difficult to edit. Plus, it limits you to one color of chevron. Instead, we simply need to make more Conditions. InDesign will by default, want to make them all different colors, so you'll have to change the colors one by one.

Because I want to replicate the chevron pattern I saw at the store, I'll make all my conditions Light Blue.

Now, select your text (which is just a right-indent tab), and apply all five conditions. You have a chevron pattern!

You can add as many new conditions as you want, apply them, and the little chevrons will just be added to the top of the stack.

If you want to change your chevron colors, simply double click on the Condition, and change the color.   Here, I changed all the odd conditions to Blue (as opposed to Light Blue). Note that the conditions at the top of the panel are actually displayed at the bottom in the text frame. The conditions are sorted alphanumerically (top to bottom) in the Conditional text panel and in the reverse order (bottom to top) in the text frame.

So now that we have a chevron pattern that will show and print, and it's the colors that we want, it's fully dynamic and will extend as high and as wide as we want it to... what if we want to edit it further? What if I wanted real live strokes instead of just conditional text indicators?

A few weeks ago, I heard about a new plug-in from Markzware that converts a PDF into an InDesign layout. There is another piece of software (PDF2ID) that's does something similar, but I haven't tried it. During the course of my experiments with chevrons, Markzware was calling for beta testers for their new plugin, so I leaped at the opportunity. I think the original intent of the plugin was to translate recognizable patterns in text formatting of PDF documents, and recreate that text formatting as InDesign character and paragraph styles. But the cool thing about the Markzware plugin is that it will allow you to OPEN a PDF and have live, editable vector objects right in InDesign. Wow!

So, I exported my chevron pattern as a PDF, and then converted it using the PDF2DTP plugin. Once it's converted, when you select all the blue lines, you'll see that they are now fully editable strokes (click on image to enlarge).

If I wanted to, I could further stylize these strokes. And you can see that I can now easily change the stroke width, the amplitude, the stroke height, the colors, and pretty much whatever I want to change about them. I now have a fully editable chevron pattern, created right within InDesign.

Author edit on 6-10-12: If you don't have a copy of PDF2DTP, you can still use this method to create a chevron pattern. Simply open your PDF in Illustrator. If you like, you can simply copy and paste the strokes from Illustrator back into InDesign. The PDF2DTP plugin is very neat, because it allows you to "open" PDFs and edit them without ever having to leave InDesign.

Author edit on 8-24-12 regarding dynamic spelling underlines: I found a plugin that will include dynamic spelling indicators when exporting to PDF.

Did you like this article? Then check out my article about Chevrons at Creative Pro. That article discusses how we see chevrons and the simplest way to create a chevron in Illustrator.

http://www.creativepro.com/article/seeing-patterns

Diamonds, Dots, and Waves: Stroke Style Options for InDesign Tables

For today's episode of Fun With InDesign Tables, I started out by to experimenting with the White Diamonds stroke style.

I made a table 4 columns by 2 rows and gave it a 35 point White Diamond stroke. Just a note: "White Diamond is the name of the stroke, but you can color the diamonds however you want. I suspect that the name "White Diamond" has to do with the fact that the center of the diamonds appear as white (paper-colored)...that is, unless you give the stroke a gap color.

Then I colored the outside border red, and the inside column strokes to yellow.

Next I took the same table and widened it a bit, and then added a black gap color to the table strokes. I thought it was interesting that the gap color stayed confined to the border of the diamond shapes, and made inverse white knockouts in the corners of the table.

Next, I took the same table and gave it a stroke style of Japanese dots. Notice how the black gap color now extends to fill out the rounded corners. This one sort of reminds me of the beaded counting toys that I remember from my childhood

Here are a few more tables, with different stroke styles.

Straight Hash Stroke Style

Think-Thin-Thick Stroke Style

Wavy 

Dashed

Note that the only thing I changed in these 6 tables is the stroke style. The stroke width, stroke colors, and gap color remained the same.

The British Flag as an InDesign Table

This post is a continuation of my other posts about diagonal lines within tables. Now for those of you who are British, please don't get upset that I didn't get the diagonals quite right. But my goal was to: using a single InDesign table, replicate the British flag as closely as possible.

Technically, the diagonals should line up exactly from one corner of the table to the opposite corner of the table, but InDesign: diagonals run from one corner of the cell to the opposite corner of the same cell. In this case, our table is 2 cells wide by 2 cells high, so the diagonals aren't perfect. But you get the idea.

My mental starting point for this table was a graphic containing geometric specifications for the British flag. You can find it here.

Because the specifications graphic listed proportions for the stripe width, I was able to create custom stripe stroke styles based on those proportions.

First, I made a table; then I filled the table with Blue and then started working on my strokes. I made a three custom stroke styles: one for the horizontal and vertical lines, and two for the diagonals. Then I applied a thick white stroke, set the gap color to Red, and applied my new custom stroke styles.

So, download my sample files, make 2 row by 2 column table, with the cells each 15 points high x 30 points wide. Then apply these cells styles to it. Voila! An almost British flag. 

The stroke style for the horizontal and vertical table strokes (10 pt white stroke with gap color set to Red )

Stroke style for the right-slanting strokes (6 pt white stroke with gap color set to Red)

Stroke style for the left-slanting strokes (6 pt white stroke with gap color set to Red)

If you're puzzled by the logic that InDesign uses to apply stripe stroke style to diagonal lines, well, you're not alone. Check out one of other articles where I have a bit of a writeup about it, as well as some samples of a larger variety of stripe stroke styles applied as diagonal lines. Data-less Tables: InDesign meets Knitting

Pointer Lines for Technical Writers

I write technical manuals. Each of our photo-heavy documents requires hundreds of photos, most of which have multiple pieces of equipment in view that need to be identified using captions and pointer lines. I recently converted a legacy FrameMaker 7.0 production workflow to a much more efficient InDesign CS4 workflow.

In my old Framemaker workflow, the pointer lines were created by placing a 2 point white stoke with rounded caps behind a .5 point black stoke. I often had to work with legacy (AKA ancient, and created by someone other than me) documents and the pointer lines were neither the same length nor aligned at the same angle. So instead of writing, I spent hours fiddling with those dreaded pointer lines.

Ideas that Didn’t Work

In converting the workflow to InDesign, and in my quest for improved efficiency and perfect pointer alignment, I had to find a better way. I thought about using a drop shadow for  my lines, but that would involve transparency and would perhaps be subject to the mercy of a new InDesign user not familiar with transparency flattening. And besides that, I just really like to clean lines that vector offers.

I tried the old dreaded FrameMaker method: two lines stacked on top of each other. But alas, it worked the same in InDesign as in Frame. The only way to make sure that the two grouped strokes stayed properly aligned was to use the Direct Select tool (white arrow) to drag a box around the end points of both at the same time and move just the end points. Never in my wildest dreams would that be an acceptable work flow in a production environment. And besides, I would still be dealing with two separate objects. So whenever I wanted to make a new pointer line, I would have to: draw a line, apply a style, copy it, paste it, send to back, apply a new style, and finally Group them together. No way Jose!

I knew how to make the perfect pointer line in Illustrator. It would be a simple graphic style with two different strokes. But a placed Illustrator stroke would act as any placed artwork, and its size and proportions could easily be scaled disproportionately.

However, an offhanded comment of mine about dash and gap on the InDesign forums led to a brief comment from Peter Spier which launched me into research mode into stroke styles. Admittedly, the only time I ever used InDesign stroke styles prior to this was in playing with the Christmas lights Easter egg a couple versions back. So I had some learning to do.

Using GAP settings in a non-dashed line

Apparently, dash and gap setting in the stroke styles aren’t just for dashed lines. Hmmm. The GAP portion of the stroke style effectively creates a second stroke behind your main stroke. The GAP occupies 100% of the width of your stroke. So if you have a 2 point stroke with a dash, the GAP will be 2 points. In a standard dashed line, the stroke itself also occupies 100% of the width of the stroke (in this example, it is 3 points). So by using a gap color, you would simply see another color peeking through the gaps in your dashed line.

To activate the Gap Color drop down menu in the Stroke palette, you have to first make the line type something other then “Solid.” I chose dashed during my experimenting. The choose your gap color, and the concept of dash and gap is readily apparent. But wait, we don’t want a dashed line. What now? The stroke “Type” options that appear in the Stroke palette are the default InDesign Stroke Styles, plus a couple of other like Wavy and Japanese Dots. You can create your own stroke style and it will show up in the bottom of this list. If you create your own stroke style, you can still specify a gap color, even if your stroke style is not a dashed line.

In this case, I want the bottom stroke (the GAP) to be white. That means that somehow I need to create a small black stroke on top.

Create Your Stroke Style

In the stroke styles dialog box, click New. Now choose type: Stripe. By playing around with the built-in stroke styles, I found that I could have a stroke with as many stripes as I want. All have to do is specify where the stripe starts and what percentage of the total stroke width it is to occupy.

So, I need a 2 point white stroke behind a .5 black stroke.

2 points is the total width of the stroke, and what will appear in the Weight section of the stroke palette. So I need to work down from there to get the center portion of the stroke. I need the black portion to be .5 points. Do a little math, and you’ll find that .5 (black stroke) is 25% of 2 points (total stroke width). That means I have 75% of the stroke that is going to show up as white (or whatever gap color you choose) and the little section in the middle will show up as the main stroke color. To make it even, I adjusted these values to: Start: 37% and Width: 26%.

When you create a new Stripe stroke style, InDesign automatically starts you off with two stripes. The black portion represents the part of the line that will be visible. So in this instance, we’ve got the center portion knocked off of a black line. That’s close to what I need, and I’m getting excited…until I apply the rounded end caps…Plus there’s that little black halo on the edges. Not good.

I realized that what I need was not a white stroke with the center knocked out, but a black stroke with the sides knocked out. So I went back to the stroke styles dialog box and found that I could edit each of the black stripes independently. Next to each stripe, in the percentage bar on the left, are two little arrows. The arrows are highlighted, indicating, that stripe is active. Grab the top of one of the arrows and drag it all the way down. That stripe will fall right off the dialog box into oblivion. Now, you are left with a single stripe you can edit. Plug in the values mentioned above: Start: 37% and Width: 26%.

Create an Object Style

So we’re getting closer. However, a stroke style alone won’t give me all the features I need for my pointer lines. You can’t specify a gap color, a stroke color, or end caps in a stripe stroke style. (Incidentally, you can specify End Caps, but only in a Dash stroke style, not in a Dotted or Stripe stroke style.) I found that I can assign all the remaining attributes I needed: gap color, stroke color, and end caps in an object style. So I made a new object style containing rounded ends, a 2 point black stroke, a gap color of Paper, and my newly created pointer line stroke style. Be sure to preview this on a colored background, or you’ll be left scratching your head, wondering why it didn’t work.

Author Edit: 4-25-16

Please take a few minutes to read Part 2 of this topic: Pointer Lines for Technical Writers: Part 2, written approximately five years after this article.

This technique was also discussed by Anne Marie Concepcion in a Lynda.com course: "Creating Better Callout Lines with Effects and Object Styles."