Denver InDesign User Group Home Meeting Summary Archive

Meeting Summary

IDUG Denver: Working with Styles
Tue, Feb 3rd, 2009 at 6:00 PM
Front Range Community College: Westminster Campus
Event Details

Denver InDesign User Group Meeting Notes
February 3, 2009

A. Meeting Business
Our February auction raised over $350, with the online auction still open. Auction items that weren't purchased at previous auctions will be available to bid on at auction.idugdenver.net for about two weeks after the meeting. Also, new items will be posted there before the meeting so you can browse the items ahead of time. Remember, the money raised helps pay for food, speakers, and the venue. Bring a friend and get $5 in Auction Bucks to use on auction items, including the full version of InDesign CS4 that we auction every meeting.

To address a few of the evaluation comments concerning the auctions…please remember that some people have older versions of the software than you might. So, it might seem strange to you that we are auctioning off CS3 items, but there are a few members still on CS2, and several on CS3, and we want to have options available to as many members as possible. The choice to upgrade is not available to everyone, whether the reason is financial or that their employer can't/won't upgrade. Also, I know there have been a lot of Mac-only software options, but this has to do with what's being developed and donated to us. We're not trying to leave anyone out. If you know of a product that is cross-platform or Windows-only that you think the group would be interested in, please email me at admin@idugdenver.net and I will see about getting a donation. Thanks for understanding.

Another comment topic this month was the poor projector and display screen setup. I announced early on that we were in a different room than usual, and that we will be in our regular (larger) space for the remainder of the year. We normally meet in the Snowy Peaks room next door; it seats over 50, and the projector is mounted in the ceiling and there is a MUCH better screen. Front Range Community College gives us a great deal on the room and doesn't charge us for the A/V setup at all, which saves us $1200/year…sometimes these things are just beyond our control. To any first-timers, you will see a huge improvement in this area at our next meeting, so I do hope you'll join us for another great presentation…one that you can see better, too!

Don't forget about the IDUG Denver web site www.idugdenver.net for announcements, a community forum, and more. This is where you can get the most up-to-date information about anything going on in our group. Looking for a job or want to share your work or just have an InDesign question? Post it in the user-to-user forum at www.idugdenver.net/forum.

On the off-months between meetings, there is a possibility to have training at the New Horizons facilities at the Denver Tech Center. If you would be interested in possibly attending additional training, please send an e-mail to admin@idugdenver.net.

Want to continue a meeting discussion after the meeting? We are carrying over all the fun to the Exchange Tavern in Westminster between Federal Blvd. and Sheridan Blvd. right after each meeting. We hope you'll join us!

Have a meeting topic that you are dying to know about or would you like to do a presentation? Please send an e-mail to admin@idugdenver.net.

B. Presentation
1. Stylin' in InDesign
Presenter: Barb Binder, Rocky Mountain Training
Barbara Binder is the Principal of Rocky Mountain Training. She has been delivering corporate training as a freelance instructor since 1987, mostly in the Washington, D.C area. She moved to the foothills west of Denver to escape the congestion and the craziness of life "inside the Beltway" in 2005. She has been an Adobe Certified Instructor on multiple programs since the inception of the program in 1997. Adobe Systems recognized her as one of the Top Five Most Highly-Rated Adobe Certified Instructors, Worldwide for July through December 2007.

Presentation Summary:
If you aren't using styles in your layout, you should be! It not only is a time-saver but it is an almost foolproof way to make sure that your content and graphics are consistent throughout your document.

In InDesign there are many different types of styles and style options that you can work with, including:
Paragraph
Character
Object
Nested
Nested Line
GREP
Quick Apply

Paragraph—includes both character and paragraph formatting. This can be applied to one or multiple paragraphs. You can set up keyboard shortcuts to make it easy to quickly apply these styles.

Character—formatting attributes that can be applied to a range of text in one step. For example, if you want to have random text to be italic instead of an entire paragraph, you can set up a Character Style to do that by just highlighting your text and choosing your style.

Object—used to quickly format graphics, frames, and other objects. For example, if you want all of your text frames to have a red stroke and a drop shadow, you can set up an Object Style with those attributes that you can choose instead of manually setting up every frame.

Nested—used to specify character-level formatting for one or more ranges of text in a paragraph. For example, you might have a paragraph that has the first word in color and bold, regular body text, and italic words at the end of the sentence. You can set these as nested attributes. Nested styles are found as an option under your paragraph style menu.

Nested Line—just like Nested Styles, but you define the end of a line of type as the ending point of the style. This option is only available in InDesign CS4.

GREP (Global-Regular Expression-Parsing)—GREP styles are used to find patterns of text and easily apply character styles to that text. Some of the given examples included finding prices and changing them to a specific Character Style, and changing any digits to Old Style.

Quick Apply—is accessed by pressing Command/Ctrl+Return/Enter or by choosing it from the Character Styles or Paragraph Styles panel. The icon is shaped like a lightning bolt. Select your text or paragraph, invoke Quick Apply, and you can easily access ALL of your styles, as well as menu options. There are some time-saving tricks to getting only to the styles you want…like typing in a couple of letters from the style name.

Using styles will save you a lot of time and frustration when creating documents by cutting down on repetition, missed formatting, and making updates and changes easier. Thanks to Barb Binder for de-mystifying a lot of the issues with styles, and showed us just how cool GREP can be (even if the name scares us creative types).

Thank you

Barb Binder Rocky Mountain Training, as our guest presenter

Erika Barnard for taking the meeting and auction notes

Julie Geary for being the greeter at each meeting

Rob MacLeay for being our group's photographer

Dan Baron New Horizons for the training space and our new sponsor

Dan Mulligan, Yellow Dog Printing, for the awesome banner

All of our members for making our little InDesign community great!

Comments from attendees

"This was great, assumed a level of competence and really moved!"

"I am new to this group and didn't know what to expect. I was impressed and learned more than I though I would. Thanks!"

"I thoroughly enjoyed this. Barb is excellent!"

"This group is absolutely great! Tons of useful information. Barb is a great teacher/speaker."

Next Meeting

The next meeting is set for Tuesday, April 7, 2009. Networking starts at 6 and the meeting starts at 6:30. Check out www.idugdenver.net for the latest meeting information. Hope to see you all there! Don't forget to bring a friend — you’ll get auction bucks and you'll be helping to grow our membership.

Photos From This Meeting
Photos are available from this user group meeting.
See the photos