This article provides an in-depth guide on how to create a firm profile using InDesign. It covers topics such as copying text, formatting titles and bullets, aligning text frames, adding a quote, and inserting an image.
Key Insights
- The article details steps on how to import and format text in Adobe InDesign. It includes instructions on adding a text frame, pasting copied information, and adjusting paragraph and text styles for optimal presentation.
- When creating bullet lists, the article provides a comprehensive guide on how to format bullets. It also suggests adjusting the space between each bullet point for a cleaner look, as well as creating a distinct paragraph style for bullets.
- The article also explains how to add a quote with its own callout box for emphasis, align text frames using a guide, and insert an image. Tips include adding a name to the quote, italicizing the text, and formatting the callout box for better visibility.
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In this video, we're going to continue working on our Firm Profile, working on page 5. If we open up our Request for Proposal, we can look through the various elements that are necessary for our Firm Profile. In this case, we have to show that we have 10 years of experience, and we also need information such as how many people in total are employed, and other attributes about the company.
So let's begin working on this, continuing where we left off from our Web Materials document. We'll open up our Web Materials document, and from here, we'll see that we have Firm Profile information. Let's now copy our Parks and Dwell Team information, as we'll want to add this first.
We'll highlight it and hit CTRL+C on the keyboard to copy, and let's go back into InDesign, and we'll just add a text frame to add this material. We'll click and drag a text frame about this big, and let's hit CTRL+V to paste this information. As we can see here, all of this information comes in as the default font, or as our basic paragraph.
Next, let's copy the Services information that we need. We'll highlight Services and all of these bullets, and hit CTRL+C on the keyboard to copy, and again, going back into InDesign, let's add a new text frame, and we'll simply hit CTRL+V to paste these materials. While we have the text here, we do need to do a bit of formatting.
So let's begin first with our titles. We'll highlight these titles, and let's go over to our Text Styles and Paragraph Styles, and we'll select In-Text Title. We'll do the same thing for Services here, selecting In-Text Title, and now we need to edit our actual bullets.
As we can see here, when we pasted these into InDesign, they didn't come as bullets, and so we're going to need to make them formatted as bullets. To do this, we'll go over to our Properties panel, and if we scroll down, we'll see that we have the option for Bullets and Numbering, and let's select Bullets. Here we can see that we have some nice bullets, and we'll highlight the same Services, and again hit Bullets, and now if we utilize our Selection tool and click outside, hitting W, we can see what this looks like.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the look of this. It looks like there's way too much space between each bullet point, and so if we hit W on the keyboard, let's make some changes. We'll start with the first left-hand Parks Team information, and let's simply increase the size of this.
We'll bump it up to 16. I like the look of this. Again, if we hit W on the keyboard, I still think there might just be too much space between our bullets, and this is because it's sticking to our baseline.
So in this case, let's leave our title tied to the baseline. However, for our bullets, let's highlight these. We'll go down to the bottom and unalign them from the baseline grid.
In this case, they'll then be spaced automatically based on the font size, which we'll make 16, and hit ENTER. Here we can see that we now have our font, and we'll simply make it Regular. Next, let's copy this Paragraph Style so that we have it for all of our other bullet forms.
We can come to the right-hand side, and we're going to simply click the plus for new Paragraph Style, and for this one, we're going to type in Bullets and hit ENTER. From here, we can now highlight the bullets on the right-hand side, and click our drop-down from our Paragraph Styles, and select Bullets as well. Here we can see that they're no longer tied to the baseline grid.
However, our titles still are. Next, let's simply minimize the size of our text frame here, and we'll drag it to about this size, and let's line them up with the ruler. On the left-hand side, we had it at four and three-quarters inches where our right text started, so let's do the same thing on the right-hand side, and we'll add a guide, and it'll come out to 13 and a quarter inches.
We'll release right there, and we'll drag our text frame over, aligning it on that right side, and this looks good. For our left side, we're also going to add a quote from the Principal. To do this, let's open up our Type tool, and let's create a frame for our quote and release, and now we need to open up the quote from our Principal, so we'll open up this document, and here we have an email transcript with the Principal. They've provided us this quote right here, so let's highlight it, and hit CTRL+C on the keyboard to copy, and we'll go back into InDesign to paste it in our text frame.
Next, we're going to need to format this text. First, we'll start by removing the quotes, and next, let's italicize it, since it is a quote. We'll come to the right-hand side, and we'll select Italic, and next, we need to add the name of the actual Principal, so we'll hit ENTER at the end, and we'll add the name, Miles Butler, Principal.
From here, let's bold our name here, so it's Bold Italic, and let's create a callout box as well, and this will essentially just be a box right behind it to bring a little more attention to it. We'll create it roughly the same size here, and release, and now let's send it to the back, hitting CTRL+Shift+[. From here, let's set up one more guide, and we'll drag our guide from the left-hand side, and let's have this guide extend the same distance at four and a quarter from the left page.
Instead, going on the right, I'll extend to 12 and three-quarters, and we'll release, and from here, we can hit V on the keyboard, and let's adjust both the text frame and our shape behind to both align with the right side of this guide. Finally, to edit this, let's add some padding or some extra space between the text and the shape. To do this, we're going to need to extend our text frame down below a bit more, and then we'll right-click and select Text Frame Options.
From here, we can inset some spacing, and we'll click up. We'll leave it at 0.187 and click OK, and now we need to adjust the shape behind to match. If we select our text, we need to select the box behind by right-clicking and going to Select Next Object Below.
Here with our rectangle selected, let's come all the way down to the bottom of our text frame. As an additional change, let's also curve the edge of our rectangle. We'll again right-click and go to Select Next Object Below, and with our rectangle selected, let's first remove the stroke in our Properties panel, and let's round out some of the corners.
We can do this by selecting the bottom left corner and making it rounded, and the top right corner making it rounded, and then we're going to round this all the way up to 0.5, just like the image on our cover. Let's click OK. As one additional change, the name right here, Miles, is a little bit close to the edge, so let's double-click inside our text frame and hit TAB to move that over.
As one final addition, let's add a photo. We can do this using the Rectangle Frame tool, and let's start it right here and simply drag up and over, and we'll release it right about there with two baseline grids between the bottom of the box and our image, and feel free to add whatever image you'd prefer. I'm going to add this top-right image here.
Click inside, right-clicking, and go into Fitting > Fill Frame Proportionally. Let's save our work, hitting CTRL+S on the keyboard to save, and in the next video we'll begin working on page six. See you there!