Typophile - A tutorial for good typography in InDesign - Setting up a baseline grid - Comments

thompson, it works great on

YOTS — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:53:52 -0700

thompson, it works great on 8.5x11.

I am going to start reading

thompson — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:08:37 -0700

I am going to start reading through this great post, but will this system work with 8.5x11 page sizes? does page size matter? Or is all this based on an A4 size?

Chasteauneuf, thanks for

milne.ross — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:08:11 -0700

Chasteauneuf, thanks for comments.

The program allows you to specify page format ratios, baseline increments, columns, rows, and margins and then outputs a string of text giving the resulting values for gutters, baseline margin from top, etc. Those extraordinarily long decimal numbers on a few of the slides on my site are the values (in mm) that the program outputs. These can be used to set up the document and grid in InDesign. The graphic on the left is just to provide a little visual clue about what all the values will end up looking like.

milne.ross, this looks

chasteauneuf — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:54:30 -0700

milne.ross, this looks amazing. Know nothing of Python myself but know developers and will definetely show them this. Great work! and you will be able to implement this into InDesign?

Jennifer, did seml answer

chasteauneuf — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:53:19 -0700

Jennifer, did seml answer your question here?
I dont think you can get it to read one part in mm and one in pts, but you can type it in manually? In this instance, as I am using it in reference to the type size, I type it in as pt...and InDesign recognises this. As seml says, InDesign understands this and you can even specify measurements by adding % and also just typing +10 or something.

This is a great thread. I

milne.ross — Wed, 6 Aug 2008 10:10:02 -0700

This is a great thread. I was dealing with similar issues recently when designing a book and decided to write a little Python program to do the job for me. Admittedly, it has a lot of shortcomings as it was built for a very specific task. That being said, I’ve since used it to set up grids for other print projects and it works well-enough.

You can see a bit of it on my website www.sincerelyross.com/ (under Grid Generator)

It does essentially what is described above and is also based first and foremost around the choice of leading (thus typeface and size). One difference at this point is that it is not as concerned with the x-height, though I can see from Grid’s comment why this might be a valuable thing to incorportate. It started out as a means to create totally proportional grids and page formats (according to Van de Graaf and Tschichold’s analysis of traditional page models) though I have since added the ability to specify things like margins, page format, etc manually.

I’ll try to post back as it develops. I’m sure I’ll have a lot more questions as important decisions arise.

Cheers!

Jennifer, you may work

seml — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:04:38 -0700

Jennifer, you may work inside InDesign using whatever units you want, just by writing them. (example, in the top you’ve got the units you set in the preferences menu, but you can work in the boxes directly, or even make calculations with it. Draw a square 10x10mm. Them go to the “h” box (height) and type “10+25%”. You’ll get a 10x12,5mm rectangle, because you told InDesign to calculate 25% of the hight and add it. That works in every unit, namely points in the bodies of typefaces and leading.)
Imagine you set a 10/13pt text as a base text to build your baseline. For captions, deducted from it, you can calculate a leading ratio for the body of the caption, like 6/13-25%pt. This will result in a caption text 6/9.75pt and you be sure to align the grid in every four lines.
Summary: write down the units you want in the boxes: pt, mm, cm, p
calculate by association 12+25%,12*1,25pt (multiply by 1,25, which is equal to add 25%), 12/2 (divide by 2), etc. You will see how helpfull it is.
Hope it helps...

Quick question for

Jennifer — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:01:28 -0700

Quick question for chasteauneuf:

I’m having a go at this, and I’m curious to know what you have Units and Increments set to in preferences.
In the step where you specify Grid start and increments, you have it starting in mm and increments in pts, which I can’t seem to get Indesign to let me do.

if I have units set to mm, indesign not only forces me to specify increments in mm, but doesn’t calculate in mm what i’ve asked for in points. Am I making sense? How did you get around this?

thanks!

Just one observation,

seml — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:32:28 -0700

Just one observation, personal though. You’ve used helvetica neu for example, but you must be sure to calculate the best leading considering the x-height of the typeface. In terms of readibility, I think that Helvetiva in copy size should be extra leaded, 10/13pt for instance, since it has a tall x-height. The other rules are deductable but the relationships should be based in the baseline. Good intro though. I find it monstruous to work without a baseline grid. Obsession? ;)

eriks Excellent analogy

dogg — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:41:08 -0700

eriks

Excellent analogy comparing a building to a baseline grid. Very Bauhaus. Nice tip on gutter spacing as well.

DOGG : : :

The most important thing is

eriks — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:41:33 -0700

The most important thing is to find a common multiple, whether using base 3 or something else. Always start with the text size, but if you need smaller captions, footnotes etc, you need smaller steps than 12pt. If your captions would be 7/8pt, you could use a 4pt baseline grid, if you need 7/9pt, a 3pt baseline is good.

The smaller you get, however, the more difficult it gets for the reader to discern the inherent discipline a grid brings. Based on multiples of 3pt, headlines have a lot of flexibility, more than you’d want for a newspaper. If you work in metric, remember that 3pt is just over 1mm – a grid unit that Müller-Brockmann et al would have considered to fussy. Sometimes it is easier to work with metric grids, especially as the page size would also be metric.

Unfortunately for us European mm-heads, both Indesign and Quark quietly convert metric input for leading (which isn’t leading, but line-spacing) back to points and you end up with strange decimals in the menu. But you can ignore them.

The size of your baseline grid can help lining up type (and images), but it can also be a style issue. If your grid is coarser, increments will be more noticeable and the grid will become a design feature. working with a small common unit of line-spacing is like constructing a building with bricks: while they are too small to count, all the features (windows, doors, transoms, steps) of the facade are multiples of a brick, the baseline of the building, as it were. That gives it an honest, quiet authority that we seem to respond to. This also works with other materials, but like a coarser baseline grid, building with larger concrete slabs or glass panels would become more of a style than using those small bricks.

The space between columns also depends on the way you set text. If you justifiy (which i wouldn’t do for narrow columns with less than 35 characters) the type, the channels need to show more white than for unjustified text where only a few lines will ever make full measure. I never draw space between columns, but indent my text from the right, so i can adjust that space between columns individually. That way, i can also cheat and sometimes widen a column by a fraction in order to bring over the occasional word – widow or orphan. So far, nobody has noticed that little trick in any of the work i have done.

YOTS thank you for that info

xstefanx — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:19:19 -0700

YOTS thank you for that info on the text frame options for custom baseline grid. i was trying to figure out how to put text on the baseline grid upside down. this works great. :)

Thanks for the info, YOTS.

jt_the_ninja — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 05:07:51 -0700

Thanks for the info, YOTS. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. I’m managing to work with a 4pt grid (all of my leadings are multiples of 8), but for future reference, that will certainly come in handy.

Peace,
JT

Just being trying out the

chasteauneuf — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:28:44 -0700

Just being trying out the 3pt system and worked a treat for a text heavy invite.
thanks for the explanation Grid. Makes sense so far I think, but want to spend some time trying it properly. Cheers guys.
Rog

Great little article.

Weeman — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:44:56 -0700

Great little article.

A tutorial for good typography in InDesign - Setting up a baseline grid

chasteauneuf — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:31:24 -0700

Good clean typography is a fundemental skill of any designer. Most designers believe they have good typography but in my experience it is something which is developed through time and experience. I think we all begin our design lives with a desire to be outrageously creative, and only as we mature, begin realise that simplicity and structure is just as, if not more important. In this article, I will go through some simple steps to acheive good clean well structured typography in Adobe Indesign. The first step is to choose your typefont. In this case I have chosen a simple standard font of Helvetica Neue. I have set it up at 10pt size and 12pt leading. It is important to consider legibility at this point. I try not to go below 9pt for any brochure or printed material, but if the document is to be viewed digitally such as a pdf, it is worth doing it larger. Next choose how many columns you want the page to be. Here you must consider aesthetics and legibility. Columns are important as they help give the page more structure, but also make a printed document easier to read. Studies show that 8-10 words per line is the most legible and I have tried to reflect this by choosing a 4 column layout. Also, consider border dimensions and the space between the columns. It is common for the space between columns to be half of the border length. In my example I have chosen a 10mm border and 5mm between the columns. Already we see that the page is taking shape. As I have already said, I believe structure is the key to good typography, and these four columns and borders will provide the structure for the entire document. If it is a brochure it will help bring consistency to the whole thing. Images and quotes could should all submit to this grid. [img:4-column-grid_4039.jpg] [img:text-4-col_6327.jpg] So we have set up a grid vertically, the next step will be to set up a horizontal or baseline grid, which all our text will stick to. This is a key factor to good typography and InDesign is a great bit of software as it has all the tools to makew this process simple. We have already chosen our leading (12pt) so we will set up a grid to reflect this. Go to the top bar menu InDesign>Preferences>Grid. This menu box should display. [img:grid-setup_5138.jpg] Start the grid at 10mm in accordance with your borders. Type into the Increment Every box, 12pt in accordance with your type leading. Press OK. The grid is now set up, to make it visible, go to the top bar menu again, View>Grids and Guides>Show baseline Grid. You will now see guides running across the page horizontally at the same leading as your type. Now make your type stick to the grid. Bring up the paragraph display box, Window>Type and Tables>Paragraph. Select your type box and click on the Align to baseline grid button in the bottom right hand corner. All type lines should now stick perfectly to your grid lines. All further type we will insert from now on will also be made to align to this grid. Now we will add a heading. The key here is to set the leading up that it will align nicely to our already set up baseline grid. I have set my title at 95pt with a leading of 72pt. Basically I have made the leading to be a multiple of the 12pt our baseline grid is already set up to. This way each line can naturally line up with a line of the body text. The title size also allows it to sit nicely and not overlap at all. If the tops of letters such as h is hitting a lower curve of a g it can reduce legibility and also make it ugly. Don’t forget to click the Align to baseline grid button on the paragraph formating box again. Also select a text wrap so the text will not overlap the heading but flow round it. It should look something like this. [img:add-title_5591.jpg] I shall now add an introduction paragraph in the exact same way. This time I will select 24pt leading, again a multiple of our 12pt grid. Align it to the grid and it should look something like this… [img:last_3511.jpg] As you can see, everything is aligning perfectly giving the page a neat structured feel. In most cases I try to keep the alignment consistent, but in this case I have been a bit creative and made the intro and title right aligned to stick to the body text paragraph and give a crisp centre line. [img:finish_4372.jpg] So thats it, I have waffled on long enough. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.Typography is a massive subject, and this article just includes some of the things that have helped me. Please let me know if it has helped you at all. What can I do to make it better?