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Adobe InDesign CC – Advanced Training

Mastering Your Fonts In Adobe InDesign CC

Daniel Walter Scott || VIDEO: 7 of 74

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Introduction



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Okay, things you didn't know about your Font menu. I'm going to grab the Type tool, drag out a Type box, paste some stuff in. I can't see it because I've got my Preview on, switch it back to Normal. Hit the 'W' key. Then we'll make this a little bigger, so we can all see it using one of the shortcuts I use all the time. It's, select all the text, and hold down 'Command Shift' and then the greater than '>' key, or the full stop, period '.' key. The comma ',' key next to it goes down, and that goes up. If you're on a PC, that is 'Control Shift', and use those same two keys.

So I've got my text, actually I'm going to select that with the whole box. Now I go back to my Type tool and up the top here, I'm going to drop this down. There's been some additions to InDesign that people haven't noticed. And one of my favorites is, let's say I pick 'Lust' for this, and I go back in there, see this wavy line there? Somehow, magically, if I click on this, InDesign will cut down the fonts on your machine, the ones you have installed, and try and find ones that are very similar. You can see, pretty amazing. Like it's picked the other Lust ones, but it's also picked ones that you can see here, Carina Pro. Very similar. It's just really handy, if you're like "Oh I like this font, but I wish I had something similar, but different." You got to make sure you turn it off again otherwise your font list is pretty small.

Another thing to help speed up is that, let's say you're working in a company and you use these same fonts over and over again. Instead of having to scroll through your list to find them all you can hit this little star '*' system. Let's say that I use Roboto a lot, Roboto Slab, and I've been using Lust. Let's say I need Helvetica as well. So down here, somewhere, Helvetica. There it is there, into the star one. What's really nice about once you start them is that, say you're working on your document, let's say, now, I can go back into my Font menu and I can just turn on-- see this option here, and it just has my stars. So instead of having that ginomous list I can click on here, and just go to my Type tool, and say "Actually I just want one of these guys." You can pick from the drop down list as well, to pick my 'Thin' option. So super handy, but remember, you can turn it off otherwise your font list will go on forever. Be just these five.

Another option, I don't use it very much, you can show just the Typekit ones. These ones that are being downloaded from Typekit. Often this will kind of indicate the ones that are bit more special because you've spent some time downloading them, can be useful. But the super useful one is this filter. Now for me, I keep many-- every time I get a new MacBook Pro, I'm like "Okay, this time I'm going to go through and put all my fonts into some sort of groups." Hand writing, Display, Slab Serif, all that sort of stuff. It never happens. But now InDesign has added magic in this filter here. You can go through, and somehow, for the fonts in your machine it went through and went, "Let's look at these Script fonts," and it put them all in one big group. I don't know how it did it, but it's magic.

Same thing at the top here, I've got my Slab Serifs all together. All my hand written fonts. Just needs to be one for-- I feel like I got a lot of fonts that are like animal shaped like letters, cactuses, or Christmas decorations. It's decorative, but it has none of my characters fonts. Let's go back to hand written fonts, and I want this one to be-- I'm going to use 'Felt Marker', actually I really don't like Felt Marker, I'm going to use 'Market OT'. Just like the rest of them, you got to turn them on otherwise you'll be stuck with this list. So turn it off, go back to 'All Classes'. And we're back to our full list.

All right, I hope you found something awesome in that little font drop down list. I know, I use it a lot, especially 'Favorites'. Let's get on to the next bit of font greatness.