June, 2007
In this tutorial you will learn how to use a Paragraph Rule to set up a simple title bar. You will also learn how to use that Paragraph Rule as a Paragraph Style so that you can apply it to other titles for a quick and easy way to keep your title bars consistent.
1. Open InDesign and go to menu File to open a new document. Set up the new document as letter size with two columns. Leave the default Gutter and change the Margins to .125 inches.
2. You will see a new document that looks like this.
3. On the Tool pallet select the Type Tool.
4. Starting in the top left corner of the inside guide create a text box the entire area of the left column.
5. Your document should now look like the image below with a text box in the left column.
6. Change to the selection tool (V) and with the Alt key held down select and drag the text box into the right column. This will duplicate the text box and give you two separate boxes in the two columns.
7. Now you have two text boxes you can fill with text.
8. We need to link the two text boxes so that the fill text will flow from the right column into the left column. To do this we will click on the small box just above the bottom right corner of the left text box. You will see your cursor change to a special character. Click on the right text box with the left mouse button.
9. You will see the small box in the bottom right of the left text box turn into a box with an arrow head in it.
10. With the type tool click in the left text box. Go to the Type menu and select Fill with Placeholder Text.
11. You will see both columns fill up with text so that it looks similar to the image below.
12. About half way down in the left text box separate out a small piece of text by placing enters before and after that piece of text.
13. Highlight the text and type in "THIS IS A TITLE BAR" to replace the fill text.
14. With that new text highlighted go to the Window menu and then Type & Tables to select Paragraph.
15. This will pop up the Paragraph pallet.
16. In the fly out menu of the Paragraph pallet you will need to select Paragraph Rules.
17. This will pop up the Paragraph Rules pallet.
18. First thing you need to do is click on the rule. You will find this check box right next to the top left drop down menu. I chose to leave the top left drop down on Rule Above. You can use either but your measurements will be different if you chose Rule Below. Next I changed the Weight to 20 pt and the color to Cyan. The last setting we need to change is the Offset which I changed to negative .08 inches. You will have to play with setting in order to get the rule behind the text so the text is centered on it. To see how your setting will apply just check on the Preview box that is in the bottom left corner.
19. If you want the rule to be shorter you can change the left and right indent measurements. I chose to change the setting of each to be .75 inches. You can see how this now makes the rule length shorter but still a bit longer than the text.
20. So there you have a Title Bar using a Paragraph Rule. Now you may be wondering why I would chose to use the Paragraph Rule to do this instead of just a box. The reason I like to use this method is it allows me to set it up as a Paragraph Style and then I can apply it to other title text for a quick title bar that is similar to the others.
21. To set up the Paragraph Style you will need to highlight the text you applied the Paragraph Rule to.
22. Now go to the Window menu then Types & Tables and select Paragraph Styles.
23. The Paragraph Styles pallet will pop up.
24. In the fly out menu you can select New Style (make sure your title bar text is highlighted when doing this).
25. Now you can name this style something that is easy to remember for when you want to apply the style to a new title bar. I named it Title Bar.
26. When you OK you will see the new style that you named is added to your Paragraph Style.
27. Now we will need to set up the text for our next title bar. To do this we will follow the same procedure we did to separate out a bit of text from the fill text for the first one. This type we will change the text to read "THIS TITLE BAR TWO."
28. With the new text highlighted you will click on the new Paragraph Style you named in the pallet. Now the second title bar is set up. Super easy and super quick!
29. As you can see in the image below, both title bars are the same. Keeping the consistency you require when working on a some type of article or press release. You can set up several different title bars, different colors if you so desire and save each as a different style. Making it super easy to convert text into the title bar you want.
Download the original source files from this tutorial in Zip format Here
Copyright (c) 2007,
