News Design School » InDesign tips

Typography basics for newspaper designers

Bob — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 13:38:05 +0000

One of the biggest problems I see with newspaper journalists new to newspaper design is the lack of understanding about type and how to adjust it.

Here is a short video I made last year to try to introduce newbies to some of the InDesign adjustments one can make to improve the looks of their pages.

Tip: Better shadows in Photoshop

Bob — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:49:36 +0000

Shadows are great ways to jazz up your newspaper layouts. Today, you can even make decent looking shadows in InDesign — you don’t even need to use Photoshop. But with Photoshop, you can make a few adjustments that make the shadow more realistic. Here’s one option. It makes the corners of an element appear higher off the paper than the centers of the edges. I use it to create photographic prints. Let’s make one.

First, open a Photoshop document in whatever size is needed to contain the element you want to draw. Create a new Layer — you don’t even have to name it. You can use the Layers panel or the Layer drop down menu.

Draw the rectangle or square and select Layer > Layer Style > Drop shadow. You’ll get a dialog box with some choices, and you can certainly experiment with these. We’ll use Distance of 4, Spread of 0 and Size of 16. You can make the size larger, but you might need to feather it a bit. Let’s forget it. You can probably leave the other settings as they are.

Next, right-click or go to the Layer command and change layer into a Smart Object and then Rasterize it (again, Layers menu or right click).

Now we want to make the shadow thinner along the middle of each edge so it appears the corners are lifted. Easy. Click on the Section Ellipse tool (hold down the Selection Rectangle tool to switch it) and draw a thin ellipse wider than the edge. After it’s drawn, you can use your arrow keys to nudge it up or down, left or right.

When you have it where you want it, hit Delete to get ride of what’s inside the ellipse, then Deselect it (Select > Deselect or Ctrl-D). Then do the same on all four sides. I prefer a more radical ellipse and cut on the top and bottom than on the sides, but that’s taste. The larger shadows at the corners make them appear lifted.

Then place a photo in it, and it looks like a real print. If you angle it a bit, it looks even more real.

You can have some fun with this by making the shadows bigger (mine are pretty subtle) or “curl” the corners more by making the ellipse rounder.

E-mail (bobnewsdesignschoolcom) me if you have questions or need assistance. Check out my InDesign tips

InDesign tip: color photographs

Baseline grids in newspaper design

Bob — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:22:04 +0000

Baseline grids in newspaper design are the best way to achieve typographic consistency. There is nothing sloppier than seeing multiple columns of type with the lines out of alignment.

I can tell this is a popular topic because of all the videos I recently uploaded to YouTube, the one I did on working with grids made it to 100 views quicker than any other.

These two links, one to a previous post and one to the YouTube video should help you answer questions regarding the use of grids in page layout using InDesign. For any other questions, shoot me an e-mail, and I would be happy to respond.

The earlier post: http://newsdesignschool.com/newspaper-design-tip-baseline-grids/

The YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jEMjcWcGOM

Getting better justified type for newspapers

Bob — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:21:36 +0000

Learn how to fiddle with the default justification settings in InDesign to get the best body type possible.

Theme music from danosongs.com

Grid spacing tips for newspaper design

Bob — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:30:26 +0000

Here is another video tip. This one is on quickly adjusting vertical spacing on your newspaper layout in InDesign. Why drag down guides or eyeball it when you can use this easy method? How can I help you with a training video?