Hi, there in this tutorial, we're going to talk about placing text and formatting it in Adobe InDesign,
so let's get started.
I already have a document ready for you now I'm going to go to the type tool.
It's this icon with the capital T. The shortcut to activate the type tool is the letter T..
There is another option text on a path under the type tool, something we would cover in a later tutorial.
Now let me tell you that InDesign works a little differently when it comes to typing, so you can't
just click once on the screen and start typing, much like an illustrator like in the previous lesson,
we've learned that every image has to have a frame around it.
Similarly, every text has to have a text box and InDesign, and to create one, you've got to click,
hold and drag to create a text box.
So it's entirely up to you how big or small the text box is going to be.
Now that we have of a text box created, I'm free to type.
But since this is just a demonstration, I'd rather fill my text box with some placeholder text.
And there are two ways you can do that with the cursor blinking in the text box.
Either you can go to type and select fill with placeholder text, or you can right click the text box
and select Fill with placeholder text from here and you shall find your text box getting filled in with
text.
Let me zoom in for a better view.
Let's make a few paragraphs out of this text.
When you click inside the text box wherever your cursor lands, you are free to type.
You can move your cursor in any direction using the arrow keys when you double click a word that would
get selected when you triple click it.
The entire line gets selected.
Quadruple clicking away will select the entire paragraph, and five clicks will select everything in
the text box.
It's a nice way to make selection.
However, I'd suggest to use command on a Mac or control on a PC to select the entire text inside the
text box.
I think it's any better than clicking five times.
Let's select the first paragraph using the mouse and go to the fonts, drop down and select a different
font.
We won't discuss much about fonts as we have a separate lesson, in fact, a separate section dedicated
to fonts.
But this is just to give you an idea how to change fonts in InDesign pretty much like you're doing other
software as well.
Similarly, you can select your text and change the font size as well from the toolbar above.
When you place the cursor before a word and hit command and right arrow on a Mac or control and write
arrow on a PC, you should be able to skip a lead with each click.
And same is true with Left Arrow as well, except that you're able to move to the left in your text.
When you press command and down arrow on a Mac or control and down arrow on a PC, you should be able
to skip a paragraph.
And same holds good with up arrow as well.
Now, with command, control and arrow keys, if you press shift as well, you will be able to select
the word or paragraph depending upon what arrow keys you click with your text selected, you can even
change the alignment from the text alignment options on top.
Let's add a textbox here and also fill it with some placeholder text.
Now, if you look closely to your first text box, you'll find there is a small plus sign on the right,
which in in design's eyes is an error.
What it's telling you is that there is more text than what you see right now.
And a simple way to deal with this is either we can drag the text box to accommodate all the text.
There is all we can.
Click the plus button and our cursor will be loaded with the remaining text.
Now, if we just click anywhere on the document, it will create a text box from margin to margin.
But that's not what we want.
So let's hit Command Z on a Mac or Control Z on a PC to undo that action, and you shall find your cursor
loaded again with text.
Click and drag to make a text box of the same weight as earlier.
And it will restrict your text box to that size.
Now, the best part is that the first text box and this last one are linked, which means if I type
in anything in the first text box, the text will spill over to this one.
So they are connected, even though we have another text box in between.
It does not really matter.
You can even change the font color, and for that, you'll have to select your text and either click
this icon and make your selection or select your text and double.
Click this tea icon here to reveal a color picker.
Here you will find the R Note from our be selected, which is why we can see this red bar here.
We can move the slider to change the colors and pick one of our choice.
Or we can move on to pick the green node here, in which case the slider will turn to green.
And much like with red, you can move the slider and pick a color of your choice from the color space.
And same goes for Blue Note as well.
Once you zero in on a color hit, enter or press OK and your text color will be updated with the text
selected.
You can even click this underlined T icon and it will underlying your text.
Click the first one with two capital TS and it'll turn your selected text to capital letters.
The one in the center is the superscript for use in fractions or exponential notations.
Click it again and the text turns back to normal.
Similarly, the T just below it is the subscript use for the same reason and the same way as well.
So basically, when you select superscript or subscript from the character panel and menu, InDesign
scaled the selected text and shifts its baseline, which is why it either gets dragged up or down.
The one on the left with a bigger capital T, followed by a smaller one, is used for a special effect.
Let's have the text adobe here in which my A is in uppercase and the rest in lower.
So what I'm going to do is select the letters in lowercase and hit this icon.
And you shall find that although it turns the text into capital letters, but these letters are all
for smaller size than the first letter of the word, giving a different feel to it.
Let me type in Adobe here as well in uppercase.
For comparison, you should be able to figure out the difference between the two now.
It's a nice text effect for headings, so do make use of it.
With your text selected, you can change the leading or line spacing using this option here.
Either you can use the up and down arrow here or just type in the number and it'll do the job.
The option with a Capital V and A and a bi directional arrow underneath is tracking tracking a just
overall letter spacing across a word line or a paragraph.
It affects the overall tone of your design.
Increasing the tracking makes your text low, spacious and refined.
Reducing it makes it look compact and urgent.
Just ensure that you don't overdo it.
Let's click between B and E of Adobe.
This option on top is canning.
Canning adjust the spacing between any two letters.
So with my cursor between the letters B and E.
When I do a minus 100 here, it narrows the space between the letters.
Similarly, a positive number here will increase the space between the two letters.
Canning is an important factor, particularly in typography on logo design.
The vertical and horizontal scale and the base line shift are not used as much the use to achieve certain
design effects.
But I personally don't use these three options much.
However, skewing is an interesting option.
It's how you can fake or mimic italics.
Alright, let's move this text box to the right.
This text box does not have any more text in it.
How do we know that?
Because it's not showing any read plus sign.
On the right.
So when we click and drag in this anchor point, you see what happens?
The text size remains intact, but now that the dimensions of the text box have been reduced, it cannot
accommodate the entire text.
Hence, you can find the red button appearing now.
Let's do a Command Z on a Mac or Control Z on a PC to undo the last action.
This time, let's hold command on a Mac or control on a PC and then click and drag in the anchor point.
Much like we did earlier, and you'll find that along with the text box, even the text within is reduced
in size to accommodate all of it within the reduced text box.
Hence, no read plus sign up during this time.
All right, guys, that concludes our session.
I hope you've enjoyed it and have learned something from it, so I'm going to see you in the next one.
Goodbye.