Setting Up Paragraph Styles

[Guest]

Hello,

I'm new to setting up paragraph styles. I'm creating a new template and I'm hoping to establish my fonts before I get to work on a new document. Can I do this, or do I need to set up paragraph styles once the document is already put together? 

I guess my question is: Do paragraph styles get set up before a document is put together, or after? 

Thanks for any help! 

[Mike Witherell · Accepted solution]

Either can work, but it makes sense to plan and build your paragraph styles near the beginning. It indicates you have a design plan.

[Guest]

That makes sense, thank you. So you want to have your entire draft mapped out before using paragraph styles it sounds like. 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Mike is correct, but that doesn't mean you can't add new styles as you go. Sometimes you don't realize you needed a particular style until you come across it in the design. 

[Guest]

This is where I was getting confused. Sometimes I'll have a design that's mostly mapped out, but I'll change my mind while in the design. It's hard for me to imagine setting up paragaph styles beforehand when the design often changes. 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I would not even start the project until I had a reasonable idea of what it is supposed to look like. Designing an entire project "on the fly" is not a very productive workflow, beyond a couple of sample pages.  That doesn't mean the client/boss won't "change your mind for you" but it does make it less likely. What I was referring to was coming across some format that you did not account for in your original design/setup. 

Make sure you learn about based-on parent pages, based- on type styles, and based-on object styles. Based on styles, or derivative styles, make it much easier to make global changes to the design, Also, only use Swatches for your colors, not the Color panel. 

[Migintosh]

That's the time you want to have already made your paragraph styles. Suppose you want to change your main font, and you already have pages of type styled. If you have paragraph styles applied, just change the font in the style, instead of going through all of the type in all of the pages and changing it over and over. Some text will likely reflow, so it's not just click it and forget it, but paragraph (and character) styles will be a great benefit if you use them right.