This is an overview of some of the basic elements of InDesign’s character palette. We will cover selecting a typeface (font) and weight, size, leading, kerning and tracking. The character palette has more capabilities, but we will discuss these in another post.
Note: You may not see the bottom four options and the language option in your character palette. You can show/hide this section of the character palette in the drop down menu by clicking the arrow in the top right corner of the palette and selecting ‘Show Options’ or ‘Hide Options’. Either way won’t matter for this tutorial, as we are just working with the highlighted sections.
This one is easy! Here you can select any typeface that you wish to use that is installed on your computer.
Another easy one. Here you can select the weight of your typeface eg. ‘Regular’, ‘Bold’, ‘Light’.
Select the size of your text. Type sizes are expressed in points (pt) by default but if you want to get tricky you can type in another measurement such as 10mm and InDesign will give you text that is approximately 10mm high. Unfortunately this method isn’t accurate or consistent across typefaces so if you need text that is 10mm high it is best to use your rulers and adjust the size to fit.
Leading is the space between the rows or lines of text. It is pronounced lead (like the lead in your pencil) -ing, not lead (like you lead your dog when you go for a walk) -ing. Web designers would know this as ‘line height’. The leading is also measured in points (pt).
InDesign automatically sets the leading to the minimum appropriate for comfortable reading of body copy. Text at 10pt has automatic leading of 12pt. The difference between the two increases and decreases with the size of the text, but as a rule your leading should be no less than 2pts larger than the text. For example 12pt text should have leading of 14pt or more. However, every rule can be broken where appropriate, and this rule mainly applies to body copy. If you are using caps, for example, you can have leading of 12pt on 12pt text and still be able to read it very comfortably.
Have you ever noticed that the large gap between a capital W and a capital A looks wrong? What about the space between two 1s like in the number 11? This is why kerning is fantastic! It allows us to adjust the space between individual letters.
To kern between letters place your cursor between the two letters you wish to kern and adjust the values in the palette. To set the kerning to optical or metrics select all of the text and set the kerning to optical or metrics the palette.
In InDesign kerning is automatically set to ‘metric’. Changing it to ‘optical’ will give you the spacing that the typeface designer has set between each individual letter. Yes, that means the designer of that particular typeface sat down and worked out the space needed between a and a, a and b, a and c, a and d and so on. Then b and a, b and b, b and c and so on, all the way through the entire alphabet.
For display text I usually start by setting the kerning to ‘optical’ and adjusting it manually from there. For body copy this isn’t so important and I usually set it to ‘optical’ and leave it at that and I know many designers that just leave body copy set to ‘metric’.
Kerning is extremely important in display text, such as headings and logotype – it can mean the difference between a professional looking design and a “my neighbour’s friend’s son made this on the computer” one. Kerning is an art and it takes time and practice to really ‘see’ the spacing correctly. I was taught to imagine a balloon squished between the letters. The balloons between each pair of letters should all be the same size (holding the same about of air).
I can write a post just about kerning and provide some helpful graphics. If you would like to see this please request it!
Tracking allows us to change the spacing between all letters. Web designers will know this as ‘letter spacing’. The difference between tracking and kerning can sometimes be confusing for new designers and design students. I remember it being so easy to mix the names up. Tracking = spacing between all letters. Kerning = spacing between individual letters.
I’ll be writing another post about the other features of the character palette at a later date, but this will be plenty to get you started.
For this tutorial I used InDesign CS6. This is the most current version of InDesign at the time of this post.