Headlines - InDesign Tutorial

- [Voiceover] The headline or head is the first thing to grab the reader's attention. Typically it will be in large type at the top of the page, but this doesn't have to be the case so long as it's clearly contrasted from the rest of the layout, a small head can also be effective. In some magazines, the style of the head is prescribed with all heads in the magazine having the same treatment. In others, it may be designed almost like a logo treatment to fit the subject matter. Typically, there will be a repetition of the headline in the style of the subhead and pull quotes. In general, sans serif typefaces are better suited to headlines than serif faces. The combination of sans for heads and subheads combined with serif for body text is very common. That said, any permutation of sans and serif, so long as there is sufficient constrast and clear hierarchy, is possible. Heads are usually left aligned or centered even if the body text is justified and never hyphenated. In my work in progress, I am now going to create the headline. I'll double click to insert my type cursor into my text, and press cmd or ctrl + 2 to jump to 200%. Three clicks will select the line, making sure that I'm in my Character Formats, I'll change the font to Acumin Pro Condensed Bold. This is available on Typekit. Before I can size my headline, I need to make it span all three columns. For a more elaborate headline, you may want to cut and paste the text into a separate text frame, but in this case I'm going to retain it as part of the same text frame as the body text. So I need to come to my paragraph formats and I'm gonna hold down my Option or Alt key and click on the Span icon, and then choose Span Columns, All. I'll now size the headline. I'll use keyboard shortcuts, cmd + shift or ctrl + shift + > and we can see that it spans all three columns. Now the size that I ultimately want to get to is 48 points with a leading value of 44 points. I'm using a negative leading value to bring the lines closer together and create more impact. On my paragraph formats now, I want to make this left aligned. I do not want to hyphenate it, although that's not going to affect this compound word that we have here, and then choose to not align it to the baseline grid. My headline is currently top heavy so I'm going to choose Balance Ragged Lines. I've chosen a bold sans serif typeface for impact and to enhance that impact further, I'm going to change the word spacing and letter spacing values. From my Control Panel menu, Justification. I'll make the desired Word Spacing 90% and reduce the Letter Spacing to -5. I'm now going to capture these settings as a paragraph style. On my Paragraph Styles panel, I will choose New Paragraph Style. Call it Headline. I have Apply Style to Selection checked. Currently this is going to be based on Body no indent, but so that I can start a new thread of styles, I'm going to change that to No Paragraph Style. One last consideration, I'll just come to my Selection tool and press w to hide my guides. When you work with large display type, you may need to adjust certain letter pairs with kerning, and in this case, I will double click to insert my cursor between the H and the E, and then holding down my opt or alt key and the left arrow just bring the E slightly closer to the H. I will do the same thing between the N and the E, and again between the O and L, and between the L and the D. So in my headline now in place, we're ready to go on, and in the next movie add the strapline.