Working with Vector Paths in InDesign

Olav Martin Kvern

A guide to understanding how vector paths work in InDesign

This article appeared in Issue 81 of InDesign Magazine.

Good and Evil. Darkness and Light. Chocolate and Vanilla. To these classic rivalries, let’s add another: Pixels and Vectors. Pixels—what you get when you use Photoshop’s brushes (for example)—now feel, somehow, more “natural,” or “intuitive,” because they can simulate traditional fine art tools and media. Vectors—what you get when you use InDesign’s drawing tools (the Pen, Rectangle, or Line tool, for example)—on the other hand, are often viewed as geometry. That’s mathematics—a field that many visual artists view as Evil.

My background is in illustration—I always wanted to grow up to be a children’s book or fantasy illustrator. I ended up working in various flavors of technical illustration (veterinary, medical, electronics, archaeological). My tools weren’t charcoal and brushes on canvas (remember that this is before the days of personal computers); they were Rapidograph pens on Mylar film. Being able to maintain a consistent stroke width while drawing with rules and French curves was a mark of superior skill.

It’s shouldn’t be surprising, then, that I lean toward the vector-drawing side of the argument. It’s the path that I’ve been following.

Vector Paths and Points

The world of vector drawing is made up of paths. A path is something like a connect-the-dots puzzle. Connect all the dots together in the right order, and you’ve made a picture. But paths are far more than a series of straight lines connecting dots—they also include curves of any complexity. More than that, paths also include formatting, such as stroke weight, color, or stroke styles. Just as you can use paragraph styles to improve your typesetting productivity, you can use object styles to streamline the process of formatting paths.

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