Moorpark College Graphic Design

Really, it does.

Let’s say you just imported data from Excel into an InDesign Table, and low and behold, you’re noticing lots of what appears to be gibberish.  Strange characters make your text look like a bunch of “expletive deleteds.” Some of the “garbage” may actually be html code if your text originated on the internet. If it has characters like <p>, <strong>, or </strong>, these are html codes that are mixed in with the text.

In InDesign, go to Edit<Find/Change to bring up the dialog. The tab on the far left pertains to finding and changing any string of text, even “invisible characters,” such as a paragraph return, a space or a tab. You can change the found text to any other string of text or invisible character. You’ll find a chart with the special character codes on pages 421-423 of the InDesign Bible.

The find and change technique makes it easy to quickly search and replace double spaces with single spaces, remove extra paragraph returns by changing to “nothing” so that you can instead insert space above or below the paragraphs and changes crazy codes like (&#39;) which is html for an apostrophe (‘).

Filed under: GRM24 Publishing and Prepress, Uncategorized by nancy - No Comments →

Reading: Bible p.547-569 – Setting up Tabs and Tables

While InDesign allows for the most complex of formatting jobs, it supplies a number of tools to ease the tedium and redundancy where formatting text is concerned. When dealing with large quantities of data, such as the information for a price list or catalog, Tables can pick up where Paragrarph Styles, Tab and Paragraph Rules leave off.

First, consider the data flow. The initial data can originate from a number of sources. It may come from Microsoft Word, Excel, or it can come right off the internet. If you are getting the data from a website, ask the provider to export the data to an Excel file. Once you have the Excel file, you can open it and determine if any fields can be eliminated, as it is easier to edit the data before importing into InDesign.

Creating the Initial Table

With the data finally prepared, go to File>Place, importing the Excel file into InDesign. When placing, be sure to check “Show Import Options.”

In the “Show Import Options” dialog, at the top of the dialog you’ll see, “Sheet.” Here, you need to choose the specific worksheet associated with the Excel file.

Formatting: Table > Unformatted tabbed text. By choosing this option, you will be able to control all aspects of formatting the table in InDesign.

With an active text cursor within the table, Select>All and go to the Table Menu>Convert Text to Table. The Column separator can remain set at Tab, and the Row Separator at Paragraph.

Apply Design Styles to the Table

Once your text is converted to a table, it is similar to an inline graphic in that it resides within a text frame. However, to make changes to the table or its contents, use the text tool. With an active cursor in the table, you can edit the column or row size by moving the cursor directly over the line. When it turns to a double-headed arrow, click and drag to change the size. Edit the column widths appropriately so that the rows fit comfortably on a line.

Drag with the text cursor to highlight text in a cell. To highlight all the text in the table, first highlight a row, then go to Edit>Select All to change the font, style and size. Incorporate paragraph styles and a complex task is eased.

The Table>Table Options gives information about the table, and control over the spacing, strokes and fills for columns and rows in the table for graphic customization.

Filed under: GRM24 Publishing and Prepress, Jobs, Printing, Reading List, Technology, Uncategorized by nancy - No Comments →

No matter what type of publication you’re working on: newsletter, magazine, brochure, catalog, greeting card, etc., once the design problems are resolved, the rest is mostly production work. Because production work tends to have repetitive procedures, there are a whole slew of “tricks” that can speed the process up and take the tedium out of the work.

The Page Palette

1. Duplicate a page with all of its elements, including guides – Click on the page in the page palette, hold down the option key and drag it below the existing page. Voila, a twin!
2. To edit and remove master elements from a page in the publication – Click on the page palette pop up menu>Override All Master Page Items. They are no unlocked and free to move about the cabin.
3. In the same palette, you can steal master pages from other documents by first saving, then loading master pages.
4. For that matter clone a page from a different file by dragging its page icon from one file to the other.

Step and Repeat

1. One of my favorite and one of the more useful features for production is Step and Repeat found under the Edit Menu. Use it to duplicate and position elements with a single operation.

Assign Color to Line Art

1. In photoshop, convert your line art to Bitmap. If you scanned it in RGB, you’ll need to convert the file to grayscale before converting it to Bitmap. In the conversion dialog, choose 50% threshold, which converts all pixels under 50% gray to white, and those greater than 50% to black.
2. Place the bitmap file into InDesign.
3. Select the content of the frame with the Direct Select (white) arrow tool and the “fill” swatch active.
4. Choose a color from the swatches palette to convert the contents to the desired color.
5. To fill the background with a color, use the Black Selection arrow tool.

Filed under: GRM24 Publishing and Prepress, Jobs, Uncategorized by nancy - No Comments →

Register at Veer to keep abreast of their new type and images. You’ll get regular mailings with tons of terrific idea-starters.

Filed under: Art & Design, GRM23 Visual Technologies, GRM24 Publishing and Prepress, Moorpark College by nancy - No Comments →

InDesign provides a number of techniques to keeping text and/or objects together as you move elements around on their pages, or to new pages.

• Grouping – this is probably the most obvious way to keep two or more objects together. The dashed bounding box provides the visual clue to alert you to group objects. You’ll find the Group command under the object menu
• Inline Graphics –  cut or copy any graphics or text frame to the clipboard, create an insertion point within a text frame, and paste to create an inline graphic
• Paragraph Rules – this is a great technique for reversing or overprinting text on a colored box. Use Rule Above or rule below, make it a few points larger than your type size, and offset to position as desired
• Anchored Objects – Use this method to attach a text or graphics object within or outside of a text frame. Choose an insertion point; then go to Object>anchored objects>insert
• Documents – Create an InDesign book to link several documents together. One of the advantages of using the book feature to link documents is it’s ability to keep track of the pagination, renumbering the pages in all subsequent documents when a change is made in one document

Filed under: GRM24 Publishing and Prepress by nancy - No Comments →

The object of the exercise is to assemble the elements the Westlake Village Art Guild 4-page newsletter and format the text and graphics to match the example you have been given. Although the original does not include page numbers, I would like you to add page numbering to your newsletter. The completed newsletter should be printed in color, if possible. Turn in a “for print” PDF, as well as a color printout. Exercise is due Nov. 12.

Filed under: GRM24 Publishing and Prepress by nancy - No Comments →

As of November 5, you should have:

• a working dummy for your final project
• a copy log with page assignments for each element in your publication
• begun to gather text, photos, illustrations, advertisements, and graphics
• begun an exploration of color palettes and design

There are no classes on Monday, November 10th. Our next class meeting is Wednesday November 12th.

Filed under: GRM24 Publishing and Prepress by nancy - No Comments →

From this session through the end of the semester, we will concentrate on multiple page publications. Everyone needs to turn in a written proposal specify what your final project will consist of. Your choices are:

• Magazine
• Newspaper
• Newsletter
• Book
• Multi-panel, multi-page brochure
• Catalog
• Instruction manual
• Website Design

You are free to choose the type of publication, the subect matter/content, size, media, and client. You can work for yourself, or you may work with a business or non-profit association. Be forewarned that you are on a deadline, and if you choose to work with or under the direction of another person or organization, you are still obligated to meet all of your class deadlines. There are approximately 6 more weeks to class. Your final project proposal is due NOW. We will discuss the proposals on Wednesday, Oct. 22.

Filed under: GRM24 Publishing and Prepress, Uncategorized by nancy - No Comments →

Reading: Chapter 6 from Getting It Printed, by Eric Kenly and Mark Beach. Pages 90-119. Titled “Using Paper & Ink,”  you’ll get all the important facts that designers need to know about paper.

Filed under: GRM24 Publishing and Prepress by nancy - No Comments →

Let’s review what you are supposed to do for your menu assignment.

The exercise involves recreating the text for the appetizer section of the Melrose Cafe menu, plus any other section of your choice.

Format the text using InDesign’s paragraph styles. Make sure to:

• separate the food title on its own line
• Food description goes on its own line
• Price should be aligned right and preceded by leader dots
• Food description should include a minimum of 4 pts. of “space after”

Due Wednesday, Oct. 8th

An extension of the menu assignment is to pick up a menu from another restaurant, preferrably one that is mediocre or poorly designed, and using what you have learned about paragraph and character styles, redesign the menu.

This part of the assignment is due Wednesday, Oct. 15th.

Filed under: GRM24 Publishing and Prepress by nancy - No Comments →