Using type professionally in InDesign
Desktop publishing packages such as InDesign enable almost anyone to create brochures - but what sets a professionally designed brochure apart typographically?
14 December 2009
There's no doubt that Adobe's InDesign is both easy to use and powerful. Yet, when you see a professionally designed brochure, some things - especially the typography seem, well, just 'better'.
Without becoming a typographical expert, there are some aspects of type usage that anyone can pick up - and they make a real difference to the finished piece.
Typefaces
It's easy to select the same old typeface for your brochure - usually the ones found on your PC by default. Sadly, that usually means Arial or Verdana - so your design will look just like everyone else's. Most designers would rather be tortured than use Arial, because there are so many smarter alternatives. And, while there are a lot of free typefaces on the Web, few of these carry the additional information within them to use the more advanced features we'll mention later in this article and come in old type formats such as TrueType or PostScript. The best format to use is OpenType - OpenType fonts not only contain additional font information, but are also compatible on both Mac and PC without conversion, so it's easy to send your job to a professional printer. One of the best places to get OpenType fonts from is Adobe's website - they cost a bit more but the quality is worth it.
Good sans-serif fonts include Helvetica (on which Arial was based), Myriad Pro and Trade Gothic. Good serif fonts include Minion and Arno. For something in-between, try Optima.
Try to stick to one typeface throughout, and use a limited number of different weights and sizes - body text, paragraph headings and main headings, then perhaps using different styles for introductory paragraphs or call-out text (blocks that sit on their own). It's OK to mix serif and sans-serif fonts if you do it logically - say, using serif fonts only for headings.
Hyphenation
Within InDesign, hyphenation is turned on by default. Turn it off. Hyphenation is essential for newspapers and magazines, where every line is valuable - but for brochures and marketing pieces, the hyphenated words are simply a distraction you can do without. You can turn hyphenation off when you define a style (the best way to control formatting in your documents) or by clicking on a text box and, on the 'paragraph' palette, deselect 'hyphenate'. (If you do this when you define your styles, it saves you having to do it on every text box.)
InDesign CS4 hyphenation
preferences
Justification
Justifying your left and right margins makes the page look neat - but professional designers seldom do it. The reason for this is that text that is justified on both margins is slower to read - as the readers' eyes move from left to right, to the next line and then left to right again, the different line lengths help them to easily tell which line to read -so they don't end up reading the same line of text again. As with hyphenation, you'll see this in books, magazines and newspapers where every bit of space counts. But on a brochure, readability is more important. If you do justify on both margins, don't do it where the column of text is wide, as this makes it very difficult for the readers' eyes to orientate themselves line-to-line.
Widows and orphans
Although there is some disagreement about widows and orphans, with people using the words interchangeably, the effect is the same: you want to avoid words (or short lines) either at the beginning or end of a paragraph, that end up on their own at the top or bottom of a column, or even on a separate page. A widow is a line of text (or word) at the end of a paragraph that ends up on the following page or column; an orphan is a paragraph opening that appears by itself at the bottom of a page or column. There's no real automatic way of preventing this. InDesign CS4 does have controls for managing paragraph breaks (the 'keep options') but often the only real option is to edit the text to reduce or increase the number of words - or to slightly change the layout.
Kerning
Fortunately, InDesign does a pretty good job of kerning - reducing the white space between certain characters. A good example of this is an upper case T followed by a lower case a, e or o - the lower case character needs to 'tuck under' the overhang of the T, otherwise it will be too widely spaced. InDesign does a reasonable job of handling this automatically, but sometimes an adjustment is needed. To do this, place your cursor between the two characters, and, in the character palette, locate the kerning setting and adjust visually. If InDesign has already applied some kerning, the value may be already adjusted below zero, say to -70. Don't kern too tightly, as this can be hard to read. You can adjust how InDesign kerns automatically when creating character styles.
InDesign CS4 character kerning
Ligatures
Certain characters - such as an f and an i - 'crash' when they are next to each other, since the dot of the i wants to occupy the same space as the overhang on the f or the two are so close that it looks odd and messy. You can see this in a word such as 'finally'. Typographically the way around this is to use a ligatured character that combines the f and the i as one character - bringing the overhang of the f over the i to the space where the dot would be. Your eye does the rest. If you're using OpenType fonts, then make sure that 'discretionary ligatures' is either checked or part-checked (the default).
InDesign CS4 ligature control
Hung punctuation
When you start a paragraph with certain types of punctuation (or end it when the paragraph is right-aligned) it can look messy. This is because although the quote mark, full stop or comma might be inside the text box, the type is not visually aligned. In typography, visual alignment is more important than alignment by measure. Fixing this is easy, just select the text box and from the story palette, check 'optical margin alignment' and the characters will slide part-way out of the box.
InDesign optical
alignment
Leading
Leading (that's pronounced like the metal, lead) is the distance between the baselines of more than one line of type. Interestingly, the leading plays a big role in the readability of the text - as much, and in some cases more so, than the size of the text. This is because it gives the top of the text characters more room to breathe (it's these uneven top edges that people scan to read a word, which is WHY USING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IS FAR SLOWER FOR PEOPLE TO READ, SINCE THERE ARE FEWER VISUAL CLUES. InDesign typically sets the leading a little loose, adding about 20% (so the leading by default on 10pt type is 12pt). Actually, that's only just good enough, and making it 30% or 40% can help readability a lot - and a lot more than increasing the size of the text would.
None of these tricks of the trade are difficult to do, but they will add a lot of refinement to your documents.
