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Checkboxes
Posted by JamesM in
18 Oct 2012 — 10:22am
18 Oct 2012 — 10:22am
Sometimes I need to prepare a business form with checkboxes. Unfortunately if the page has a colored background, the color shows in the center of the box. If I prefer that the center of the box be white I have to use an awkward workaround like pasting the box in place as an inline graphic (I'm using InDesign).
Is there such a thing as a font in which the checkbox's center is white and knocks out the background?
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18 Oct 2012 — 10:44am
In Arial, you can find two squares (Unicode 25A0 and 25A1). Choose them and color the first one white; set kerning to -600. Voila! Of course, you can add black stroke to make the shape look as you want.
18 Oct 2012 — 12:01pm
Use the solid square from Zapf Dingbats (or other square of your choice), set it to white, then apply a black stroke of your desired thickness. No messing about with kerning required!
18 Oct 2012 — 12:51pm
Those are both clever ideas, thanks.
18 Oct 2012 — 1:21pm
.
19 Oct 2012 — 5:01am
Use the solid square [...], set it to white, then apply a black stroke
Sure, nothing easier. I was tired yesterday.
19 Oct 2012 — 5:35am
Also you can do that in Webdings... wooohoo
lowercase g, lowercase c -1000
19 Oct 2012 — 6:27pm
Thanks again to everyone for the suggestions. Now I know how to do it.
21 Oct 2012 — 4:12am
Don't use the kerning thing, it's a clunky solution. Simpler is better.
21 Oct 2012 — 10:13am
> Don't use the kerning thing, it's a clunky solution
Yep, I appreciate all the suggestions but the single-square one sounds like the best method.
22 Oct 2012 — 7:42am
Then, of course, you make it a GREP style so that every time you type a box it automatically gets colored and stroked.
22 Oct 2012 — 11:06am
And a two-colour vector image is a dumb solution?
22 Oct 2012 — 1:49pm
The problem with vector images is that normally in InDesign they don't reflow if the text changes. If you've got an order form with 30 checkboxes as images and the leading changes, you've got to manually go back and reposition each one. A workaround is to paste each image into the text as an inline image, and then it'll reflow, but I've always found inline images to be tricky to work with, so if there's a way to insert a checkbox as regular text it's what I'd prefer to do.
22 Oct 2012 — 3:43pm
The font Symbojet comes with some combining full-shape glyphs with a zero-width, made to fit exactly to the purpose you describe, in connection to other (frame-like) glyphs.
22 Oct 2012 — 4:43pm
Thanks Andreas, I'll check it out.
23 Oct 2012 — 1:45am
It's always best to do as much as possible natively in InDesign, so Joshua's GREP style suggestion above is a great one.
As long as you use a dingbats font common to Mac and PC there's no reason to start obtaining other fonts specifically for this. Which isn't good news for those selling fonts but your life will be considerably easier.
I'm harping on about this I know, but you don't get any points for choosing more complex solutions, the reader just sees the box.
23 Oct 2012 — 5:03am
@JamesM – Well, bugger.