Using InDesign for Web Design Projects - Default Font Color Settings

  Categorized under: InDesign-How-To

If you set InDesign’s Default Color settings right as soon as the application starts, it will remember the settings for all other projects you open. Since I mostly work with Internet projects, I prefer my fonts and colors to be set right from the get go.

Here’s how to set the Indesign color preferences for your document. Before I start any project I usually do this.

This is the panel. You can also get to the panel from InDesigns File / Windows Menu as well:

1. Double-click the Paragraph Styles. On the right-hand side you’ll see Character Color

2. So If you click the black color selector box you’ll get a prompt to change the colors. I’ve changed my colors to a dark grey as you can see in the image below. I will be using this as the default color for any text I add later.

3. Once I’ve found my default color for Indesign, I now change the color mode from CMYK to Web by selecting it from the drop-down menu.

The lovely thing about Indesign is it automatically updates color to Hexadecimal plus the ability to update one swatch and see the entire document get updated! We can edit this swatch later, but now click the “Add” button.

4. After clicking “Add”, you should see the Swatch show up in your Color Palette Menu, so you’ll be able to edit it once this part is done. Now click “OK”.

5. At this point you have to select the color you just added within the Paragraph Style Options. Look for the color, select it and click ok.

6. If you create a new document now it will have these new settings. But be aware that any old Indesign documents will still retain their own preferences.

7. Now that you have the color added if you Right-Click the color swatch then Indesign gives the option to update the color, and clicking ‘Preview’, you get to see updates LIVE!

Hope this helps with setting up color within Indesign.

— Zeus ::)
Feb 09, 2010