Graphic Design Exercises

InDesign: En Dashes, Em Dashes, Hyphens, and Kerning

 

Objective

To know when to use hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes. To learn how to manually kern type. To continue to develop layout skills in InDesign.

We will be creating the back of a postcard:

sample card

 

Procedure
  1. open the InDesign document you created in the previous exercise (Kandinsky postcard)
  2. download the Word document museum_details.doc; add a second page to your postcard and place (command-D) the Word file; with the cursor loaded, drag a text box to fill the left side of the postcard defined by the margin guides
  3. save as yourname-X5.indd
  4. double-click on the block to bring up the text cursor, then command-A to select all the text; set it 10/15 Futura Light to match the front of the card; center it (command-shift-C)
  5. now we will fix the typographic errors found in almost all Word docs:
  • in the second line, select the space, en dash, space and change it to an em dash (option-shift-hyphen on your Mac keyboard)
  • in the third and fifth lines, remove the superscripting on the ordinals; select the letters and click the superscript icon in the toolbar, or use command-shift-plus on your keyboard
  • in the third line, delete the spaces before and after the en dash
  • select all the hyphens in the Museum Hours and change them to en dashes (option-hyphen)
  1. a more elegant way to display time is to remove the periods in "a.m." and "p.m." and change them to small caps; do it once for each, then copy and paste
  2. let's add some hierarchy to the information: Make "Kandinsky" bold, all caps, 24 point; triple-click the second line and make it 13/18; make the dates bold; make "Museum Hours" bold; reduce the block of hours, including the heading, to 8/13
  3. using the solid arrow, click the block of text and drag the top handle down until the text is centered vertically in the space (you will want a little more white space below then above to feel visually centered)
  4. zoom in on the text and notice that there is too much space around the "1"s; select all and change kerning to "Optical"; that helps a lot
  5. place your cursor between "May" and "10th"; use option-left arrow to manually kern that space further (option-right arrow adds kerning); fine tune any other letter pairs as you see fit
  6. using the text tool, drag a box about 6 picas square starting at the upper right corner defined by the margin guides; cut and paste this information: "Non-Profit Org. <br> U.S. Postage <br> PAID <br> Permit No. 750 <br> New York, NY"; center it and set it 8/12 Futura Medium
  7. use the solid arrow tool to select the box and add a .5 pt black rule; use command-B to bring up the text frame options and add 0p9 inset spacing at the top
  8. use W to preview the card and make final adjustments if necessary
  9. print out a copy for your binder; export to pdf and drop file in Angel for grading