Fun Text Style Effects from The InDesign Conference
I’m about to head over to FIT for the opening day of The InDesign Conference in New York City. Yesterday, Sandee Cohen and Anne-Marie Concepción did full-day pre-conference tutorials on InDesign and InCopy which went very well, but today begins the tips, tricks, and techniques. For example, I’m doing a session this afternoon on Type Tricks, but in the meantime, I thought I might just upload this sample file that I’ll be demoing there.
I’ve been having great fun playing with InDesign CS3’s transparency effects, and watching how you can apply amazing effects to plain ol’ editable text. Here are some of the effects that I’ll be showing:
Remember that in all these cases, the text was just regular 80-pt Franklin Gothic Std Condensed. All the special effects were applied with regular strokes, fills, and transparency effects. If you want to pull these apart to see how I did them, you can download this InDesign CS3 file, open it up, select one, and look at the Effects panel.
Unfortunately, InDesign doesn’t have a “copy style” feature, so it’s not immediately intuitive how you can apply these to your own objects. First, make sure your text has more or less the same fill and stroke as the original. Then select the object that has the effect applied to it and drag the “fx” icon from the Effects panel on top of your new frame. That copies the effect!
Thanks goes to Leigh Ribak of Proficient Audio Systems for his help with the Metal effect (using gradient-filled text, a gray stroke, and a small bevel)!
Remember, folks, the best way to learn this program is to play with it and take it to the extremes, even if you aren’t going to use your playful results in a real-world setting. Enjoy!
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I’m astonished about the possible effects which can be done now right in ID. You’re totally right when you say “play with it”. Thanks a lot for the hint!
Wow, this reminds me of when I was learning photoshop, and everyone went crazy with the filters. I hope that indesigner’s don’t fall into the trap most photoshop novices do. It’s funny because indesigner’s would say the same about me when I got my hands on the type functionality of indesign… overusing the tools available for the sake of it.
Great resource none the less!
Steveoco, I completely agree with you — one must be careful with these things. But believe me, when you’re sitting on a cross-country flight, playing with transparency effects can be addictive! ;)
By the way, I’m deeply grateful that no one has pointed out the error in my post above regarding copying the effects to other objects. The most obvious method for doing this is to create object styles for each one.
I have to admit, I had the same immediate response as Steveoco… the “I used that filter because I could” effect with Photoshop filters.
I’m glad they added the capability, but I’d like to see some more examples of things that don’t look like the “because I could” effects, things that I might actually use. More tasteful applications. In CS2, I use transparency effects regularly for textures (architectural drawings multiplied over colored backgrounds) and screened images. Are there ways to use the new effects to do things like that?
Just walk down the magazine section in any store and it becomes very apparent that a magazine has just switched to InDesign. EVERYTHING has a drop shadow on it.
Eventually that goes away. I noticed Macy’s ads had a lot of use of dropshadows awhile back and that seems to have ended.
Yes, I’ve noticed as well. I’m trying to stick to a self-imposed moratorium on applying any gradients and/or drop shadows for the year 2007.
I wonder how Rampage is going to handle these transparencies when I rip them for output. I usually have to crank up the transparency flatener 1200 and wait. Anyone in prepress have problems yet?
Wow. I hope nobody actually uses those efffects. They are horrible.
Most places won’t use them because the retouching houses will have to rebuild them in Photoshop anyhow, driving the cost up.
I agree that they’re not exactly elegant, but what makes you think they won’t print?
I remember hearing the same nonsense when ID 2.0 was released.
David, I agree that they’re pretty outlandish and I’ve never said I was a designer! ;) But the idea that they’d have to be redone in Photoshop is completely untrue. They print great.
In fact, you could sort of say that they were done with Photoshop because Adobe basically built a chunk of the Photoshop engine into InDesign. But remember that it’s all editable without having to switch applications–that saves time and frustration.
how i can learn indesgin good
Ah guys, very harsh on Mr. Blatner there. He said they are just for fun and where they lack elegance they inspire imagination. And as it is said, it is a chunk of Photoshop engine into InDesign, so, I can’t see any problems with any RIP, it’s the same as if you did it in Photoshop, but without switching Apps. Yes, everything that has changed to InDesign does have a drop shadow on it, cos it’s easy to do in InDesign, without creating photoshop files. Yes, it is horrid thing to do, but I remember the same with other programs, new tools means wanting to use the new tools, because it hadn’t been seen before, people do get carried away and it did become and eye-sore after a while, but it was cool at first.
As for these effects, it’s cool to see how they are created, how you use them and how you implement them is up to you. I’m sure Mr. Blatner will never use the one’s he’s put up there in his actual work, but he did say it was FUN. It’s nice to see.
Mohd,
If you’re talking about ID CS3, new training books will become available by August ’07. Mr Blatner may recommend a few.
Hi there,
Having used some of the new transparency fx in layout we encountered the first problems. The pdf is fine but the digital dummy we printed had text with very jaggy edges. Specially when placed over an object with fx’s apllied on it. (not on the text)
It reminded me of CS1 which couldn’t place text over a gradient object at first. The solution back then was to put all text on an extra Top Layer. Anyone else saw these things?
you can just drag the fx icon in the effects palette to your text block and it will apply the effects you did… if someone downloads your indd file.
pretty fun…. as everyone has said… when used tastefully.
Thanks for the information, I cant wait to read more of your posts.
Sir
Very nice trick its great
Thanks
Thank You for tut!