Working in Adobe CC, there are so many secret shortcuts and design hacks that can speed up the way you create. These are some of my favorites!
Center-aligning type within a text frame
- [Command + B] pulls up the Text frame menu.
- Vertical Justification allows you to align your text to the top, center, justified, or bottom of the text frame.
Rotating a single spread or page in a document
- Navigate to pages panel
- Right-click the page you want to rotate
- Page Attributes > Rotate Spread View > choose rotation method
Linking and editing placed external media
Within InDesign, you can place .psd’s, .ai files, other .indd files, PDFs, jpegs, pngs, and more. If you place (link) an asset in your InDesign document and then want to change the original parent file without having to replace it, follow these steps:
- Initially when placing parent files, either drag the file from your Finder window into InDesign or go to File > Place (Command + D). DO NOT copy + paste any external media into InDesign if you want to edit it later outside of InDesign.
- To edit your placed link:
- Select the link you want to edit
- Navigate to your links panel
- Select the pencil icon (Edit Original) – this will pull up the file in the program designated for that file type.
Create Paragraph Styles for your entire design document
To create consistency and speed up your workflow, you can create paragraph styles at the beginning of your design process, and use the styles over and over again throughout your design.
- Open Paragraph Styles Panel: Window > Styles > Paragraph Styles
- Style a textbox with the type size, color, font, leading, tracking, and justification you want
- Select text box that is styled (not highlighted, just selected)
- Select the “Create New Style” (Folded Paper Icon) at the bottom of the Paragraph Styles panel
- Double click the new style in the Paragraph Styles Panel Rename the new style
Make bounding boxes (for text or images) fit the element placed within them
When an image or text is cut off in InDesign, the bounding box is smaller than the element within the bounding box. To fix this issue:
- Double click any of the white four corners of the bounding box, and the box will automatically snap to the size of the containing element
