We believe that all InDesign training courses should incorporate the correct use of styles to enhance workflow and maintain consistency within a document and across a range of documents. Most delegates on our InDesign training courses know what styles are: a series of named formats which can be applied to your text so you don't have to manually apply formatting attributes one by one. Even new InDesign users are probably familiar with the use of styles in Microsoft Word: "Heading 1", "Heading2", "Normal", etc. However, InDesign's implementation of styles is much more sophisticated and, when we run InDesign training courses in London, we always emphasise their importance.
The obvious benefits of using styles are, firstly, consistency: the same formats are applied each time without variations accidentally creeping in. Secondly, speed: if a heading needs six formatting attributes applied then, if you do not use a style, you will have to apply each attribute manually. If you use a style, you can apply the necessary formats with one click or one keystroke. A third benefit is the ability to update and modify the look of your text simply by modifying the definition of your style(s).
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 tables of contents. (InDesign creates these from the styles used in a document.) In defining the table of contents, one specifies which styles one wishes to include. When the table of contents is created, InDesign searches for each piece of text in those styles and puts the appropriate page number next to it.
In reality, the table of contents feature is more multi-purpose than the name suggests since it can be used to produce a listing of any elements within a document provided a particular style has been used consistently. For example, if all images in a document have a caption formatted with a particular style, the table of contents facility can be used to generate 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 cover styles both on our basic InDesign training courses and on or advanced InDesign training as well. On our advanced courses, we explain the use of such features as nested styles whereby a character style can be included within a paragraph style and automatically applied to certain characters within the paragraph; for example, all characters up to the first occurrence of a colon or an em dash. - 15432
The obvious benefits of using styles are, firstly, consistency: the same formats are applied each time without variations accidentally creeping in. Secondly, speed: if a heading needs six formatting attributes applied then, if you do not use a style, you will have to apply each attribute manually. If you use a style, you can apply the necessary formats with one click or one keystroke. A third benefit is the ability to update and modify the look of your text simply by modifying the definition of your style(s).
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 tables of contents. (InDesign creates these from the styles used in a document.) In defining the table of contents, one specifies which styles one wishes to include. When the table of contents is created, InDesign searches for each piece of text in those styles and puts the appropriate page number next to it.
In reality, the table of contents feature is more multi-purpose than the name suggests since it can be used to produce a listing of any elements within a document provided a particular style has been used consistently. For example, if all images in a document have a caption formatted with a particular style, the table of contents facility can be used to generate 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 cover styles both on our basic InDesign training courses and on or advanced InDesign training as well. On our advanced courses, we explain the use of such features as nested styles whereby a character style can be included within a paragraph style and automatically applied to certain characters within the paragraph; for example, all characters up to the first occurrence of a colon or an em dash. - 15432
About the Author:
The The writer of this article is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe InDesign training courses at their central London training centre.
