InDesign Tips: How to Outline Fonts

Adobe InDesign, the industry standard in layout and design software, offers a wealth of tools for designers. Whether you're laying out a flyer for your next garage sale, or an ad for a magazine, InDesign has the tools you need to make an incredible product that you can be proud of.

One of the greatest features in InDesign is its seamless workflow with the rest of the Adobe suite of products. Coming from a family which includes such versatile software like Photoshop and Illustrator, InDesign is unparalleled in its ease and flexibility.

Among the many features that InDesign has to offer its users is the incredible way it handles fonts. In this tutorial we'll take a look at how you can use the Create Outlines feature to add brand new dimensions to whatever font face you're using.

To begin, open a new document in InDesign by going to File, New, Document. Specify the page size, margins and columns of your new document and then click on okay.

With your new blank document open, you'll want to add text to your document by selecting the Text tool from the menu bar on the right hand side of the InDesign window. Draw your text box and type whatever you would like in whatever type style you choose.

Once your done with your type it's time to create your outlines. In order to do this, you'll need to choose your Selection Tool from the menu bar. The Selection Tool is the dark arrow on the top left hand side of the menu. With the Selection Tool, click on the text box containing your type and then in the top menu go to Type, Create Outlines.

Once you've created the outlines of your type you'll see that text box is transformed into small blue lines outlining the type. Essentially what you have just done is told the program to not see the type as being part of a font face, but instead to see it as a graphic element. Doing this allows you several options that you wouldn't have had if the type had been left as a basic font.