Lab 15 Reflection

     In our 15th lab for our VD course we were yet again introduced to a new program, Adobe Indesign. Indesign is very similar to Illustrator except Indesign is used more to design magazines and posters rather than make art.
     The only new tool we used in this lab was the Convert Direction Tool, associated with the Pen tool which we also used. Other tools used were the Rectangle Tool and Text Tool This lab was more foucused on text editing. Not neccisarily changing the shape of text by creating outlines but editing fonts and sizes of bodies of text and their placemant and positioning.

     The first thing we did was a review from Illustrator. We were to create a black banana shape using 2 curve and corner points. To make the points we used the Pen tool and to curve 2 of the points we used the Convert Direction tool. The color was changed to black in the Properties bar.
     After that review we wrapped fully justified text around a rectangle. First we put some text in a text box and in the properties bar selected the fully justify option. Next we created a rectangle using the Rectngle Tool. We opened the Text Wrap panel from Window in the Menu Bar and with the rectangle selected we selected the option to wrap the text and set the offset on all sides to be 0.09 in. Then we moved our text on top of our the rectangle and

watched as the text wrapped around it.
     Our next task was to create 2 paragraphs with each having a header. We needed to use Paragraph Styles to define Headers from the Body paragraphs. We did this by opening the Paragrapgh Styles panel (Window/Styles/Paragraph Styles). Then we created a new style called Header copy and changed how we wanted the headers to look by altering some details in Basic Character Formats. The headers were selected and this style was applied. The same was done for the body paragraphs.

     The last task was to make a series of lines using '123 fido' with some slight altercations each line. The first 3 lines had ligatures turned on for them, meaning the letters were closer together/combined making them easier to read. The 123 in the first line was made lowercase and an infinity glyph was put at the end from Window/Tables and Types/Glyphs. The 123 in the second line was made to have tabular lining. This was done by checking tabular lining from Window/Types and Tables/Character/Open Type/Tabular lining. From the same panel the 123 in the third line was made to have proportional lining. The symbols in the second and third line were selected from the same glyph panel from before. The fourth line has the word 'fido' tracked out and ligature was turned off.
     These skills are important to a web designer because these skills broaden the scope of what a wed designer can design. Indesign is almost like MS Word on steriods (still a gross oversimplification) so if a web designer seeks to make media which is primarily text based they can use Indesign. Indesign has alot of flexibility with text so using Indesign to design primarily text based media can help a web designer enhance their work instead of working under the limitations of the other programs.