How To Add Paragraph Borders & Shading In Adobe InDesign CC

Hi there, in this video we're going to put lines around paragraphs, and put ugly corner effects on it as well, just because. Now why is it great? It's because when I hit 'Paste', look, it comes along, it gets bigger and smaller, and if I select this one, I've turned it into a Paragraph Style, so I get to reuse it over and over again. Gets better. There's a few other options here, we do lines around the outside, we also do some shading, another naff corner that I've added. Page 3, we need to do this as well. You can see, if I add more, this little side thing happens. It's just an adjustment of that shading, and the last bit of shading awesomeness. Let's have a little look, runs off the page. So let's go and look now how to make these borders and shading in Adobe InDesign.

So to add our borders around the outside we are going to select a Paragraph, actually just have your cursor flashing anywhere in the first paragraph. Mine's quite a big first paragraph. Not sure why I like that. Because it's Lorem Ipsum, a placeholder text, I can just kind of break it there. So I'm going to use just this first chunk here. Cursor flashing anywhere inside of it, and along the top here, doesn't matter whether you're on Character or Paragraph, all the way on this side is the Hamburger menu, click on that one. And hiding in here is one called 'Paragraph Borders and Shading'. This is the one that's going to add our magic. Let's make sure our preview's on. And let's turn border on, we'll start with borders. It's pretty easy, border around the outside, you're going to have to add some Padding around this, so watch this.

So you're going to be using, down here, the Offset. So if I increase the offset, because they're all linked they're going to go out all different directions. So, make it bigger. I'm going to have to play around with Space After. I can't control that now, but that's kind of what I want to do. And you can unlink these, and play around, like say the right hand side, maybe, and a little bit. So that controls how far away from the paragraph it is. I'm going to pick a color from my list, I'm going to use 'MF Pink'. And I'm going to play around with one of these borders. Up to you, I'm going to use the bottom right, so I'm going to unlink them because I just want the bottom right. You can kind of see that icon there, indicates bottom right. I might have to play around with them. I'm going to use 'Fancy'. Nothing really happens, we're going to increase the Pixel number. You can see, on my Option over here, it's getting just a little bit bigger. So, that is it, that lines around the outside, using borders.

Let's finish up this Paragraph Style and look at some of the other options. I'm going to click 'OK'. Now you can see, the space here, it needs to be changed. So there's a couple of things we're going to do with for First Paragraph. I'm going to select it all, then I'm going to say, actually I'd like my character color to be the MF Pink as well. And I want the Space After to be more, so I'm going to go to my Character. I'm going to go Paragraph actually, and I'm going to increase this up. Can you see, it's just pushing that bottom paragraph away. So I'm going to set this as the Paragraph Style. So I'm going to go to 'New Style'. I'm going to double click 'Paragraph Style 1'. This one is going to be called 'MF First Paragraph', I might just call it 'First Para'.

Now, when you are working with Paragraph Styles there's this thing called 'Based On'. So what it's doing is it's using the Paragraph Style that have already had it as it's kind of base, and on top of that it's going to add some stuff. Basically what it's going to do is add the pink, the border around the outside, and the space after, but it's relying on the font from MF Interactive Body Copy. Now that happens by default, and that often gets people lost when they later on delete one Paragraph Style and that affects other ones. So when you know what you're doing, it's great. It's kind of, you're basing it on top of another one, that can get confusing.

Normally, unless you're working on a really big document, I would just have, based on no Paragraph Style. So it's just a stand-alone, does everything itself and includes the font, includes the color. Don't have to worry when I delete-- Paragraph Style, is it connected to another Paragraph Style what's going to happen, what are the consequences? So I just kind of leave every time, based on no Paragraph Style. Let's click 'OK'. Now because it's part of the Paragraph Style, let's say, this paragraph here, the cursor flashing inside, let's just test it, 'My First Paragraph', you can see, does the same thing. Adds a line around the outside. So I'm going to undo that.

Let’s look at doing one of the other options. So I'm go up to page 2, zoom out, I'm going to hit 'W' key so I'm not previewing. Grab the Type tool, drag out a Text box. Fill it with placeholder text. Select it all, and because I've got my Interactive Body Copy it should be able to easily apply it. Great! So cursor flashing in this first paragraph, and let's look at Shading. So the border is obviously the line around the outside. So cursor flashing in the first paragraph, up to our Stripy Line, I've got my Type tool selected. And in here, I'm going to go to 'Paragraph Borders and Shading'. And it's Shading in this case that I'm going to use. What I'll do is turn Shading 'on', make sure the preview is on. By default it's at 20% black, I'm going to switch that out for 'MF Pink' at '100%'. Again, I'm going to play around with the Offsets until I get something I like. I'm going to play around with that bottom corner again, unlink it. I'll use 'Rounded' corner down the bottom. Let's move it out of the way so we can see.

I'm going to increase this up so it's kind of like, I don't know. It's a popular thing to do. Great! Let's click 'OK', and we'll make a Paragraph Style out of this one. Actually we'll just change the font color. Awesome! So that's how to do the shading of a paragraph. I might also just, to make it look a little nicer, just do my Space After. Just to push that first paragraph afterwards, down a bit. Now another thing people do is, there's another kind of use. If I go to page 3, let's have another little go at doing shading. So on page 3, I'm going to grab my Type tool, I'm going to grab the Type box, fill it with placeholder text. Select it all, and I've enclosed my Paragraph Styles. I'm going to open them up. And, Body Copy. It's kind of an ugly first paragraph there, so I'm going to make my own.

So with my cursor flashing in the first paragraph we're going to do one that just kind of lines up on the side here. So what we'll do is we'll go to-- make sure you're in your Type tool, you've clicked in your first paragraph, go to the Hamburger menu. And we're going to go to 'Paragraph Borders & Shading'. And what we'll do is, we'll do 'Shading', turn it on. We're going to use a huge negative on the offsets. So let's break the link, on the right hand side, I want to go down. You can get it to do a negative, I want to keep going negative. Now, what you'll notice is that it goes down 1 pixel. Remember that shortcut we did earlier? If you hold down 'Shift', and click it, it goes down in big chunks of 10. Hopefully now, can you start to see? It's going down on that side there. You might just type it in, I'm clicking away. I might go up on the left, a couple, and down even further, and it's just like a visual side marker now, not kind of covering it.

So you might use this instead of doing that whole paragraph. I'm going to use the 'Yellow' and I'm going to set it to '100%', I'm going to click 'OK'. What's really nice about this, and I guess we have a really-- you could have drawn a box next to it. If I add more text, let's say I copy this and just paste it a couple of times. Can you see, it comes along for the ride. The Paragraph Style is nice and updatable and kind of adjusts to fit the first paragraph no matter how big or small it is. Click on the Black Arrow, hit 'W', and you can see there, just a nice clear indication of the first paragraph, or it might be a quote, or a factorial, some sort of pricing data, or something you have as part of your copy. You can use this as kind of your cue to find that on the page.

There's only one more option, page 4, I should have copied and pasted this Paragraph Text but I'm not, you're going to watch me one more time. In there, 'Fill with Placeholder Text', and select it all. Click Body Copy, and let's have our cursor flashing in this first paragraph here. We're going to get this to kind of run off the side, it looks kind of cool. You can do it for Titles or first paragraphs. So we're going to have our cursor flashing, let's go to our Hamburger menu. Let's look at 'Paragraph Borders & Shading', let's go to 'Shading'. Let's click on 'Shading'. And let's pick 'Green'. Crank it up to '100%'. And down here where it says 'Offsets', we're going to break that link. And the right, we'll keep, fine, it's the left we're going to get into negatives now. I'm going to hold 'Shift', so it runs off, actually not negatives, positives, but holding Shift sort of runs off to the edge here.

It's just that, I guess, they're a nice way of-- just a nice thing to have, it kind of runs off the edge, just a nice visual thing. I'm going to have a little bit Offset at the top, and the bottom. And probably a little bit to the right as well. Let's click 'OK', and I'm going to switch off the Font color. 'Character', type, 'Paper'. It's just that kind of effect. Close it down. All right, so those are three different options. We did borders to start with, then we've just done variations of the shading to give you different looks. And the benefit is, is that you can add it as part of your Style, and when that paragraph gets bigger or smaller, it adjusts to match.

All right, that is it for this video. Let's go and do some more paragraph awesomeness next.