InDesign task – Formatting tabular content

In this task, I was asked to create 2 ideas for a one-page A4 timetable, which belongs to the podcast ‘Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams’. During this task, I learned a lot about using tables in InDesign, since this is my first time using this feature.

1. Design ideas and design process

Idea 1

Figure 1: Timetable idea 1

These timetable ideas carry a strong contrast of colour ( Dark grey & light blue), creating a strong charity in terms of objects and background. The text is clear, with a strong hierarchy system that tells the user which part should they read first, for example, the date and the title of the podcast.

Idea 2

Figure 2: timetable idea 2

This idea is similar to idea 1, which used a similar typeface, but a different style of table and colour. The contrast is even higher with black and white while using a more structured and clear table system.

Progress of idea 2:

Figure 3: step 1- Create a black blackground

For the first step, I created a black background for the timetable, The reason why I used black as the background colour is because the official website of this podcast also uses this colour.

Figure 4: Step 2 – Create a table with 2 columns and 6 rows

A table was added, with 2 columns and 6 rows. This table is added through ‘Table’ > ‘Insert table’ (Keung. L 2023)
. For the style of this table, I changed the colour to white, in order to create contrast between the black background, making it looks more clear.

Figure 5: Step 3- Add new paragraph styles and add space between different lines though adding space-in ‘space-before’.

A new paragraph style is added for the title of the podcast, the producer, and the radio station. Spaces are added between the title of the podcast with the ratio station, though adding 3mm of space in ‘space before’ in the paragraph style of the radio station (BBC Radio4)

Figure 6: Step 4 –
Adding title for dfferent episodes

Various titles are added for the cells of the table. Including the title of the episode, information of the episode, time length, and date. The date was larger and bolder than other styles since clarity could only be achieved by a logical organization, with the adoption of different type sizes, weights, and space. (Tschihold, 1928, p.70). The bigger typeface for the date can let the user know when will the podcast they want to listen to is live.

Figure 7: Create various paragraph style for details

Space between the information of the podcast with the time length is also added though adding space in ‘space before

Figure 8: Step 6 – Copy the same styles to every other texts and cells in the timetable

Finally, I filled every cell with the text provided.

2. Software tutorials

The first tutorial I used is tutorial that taught me some of the major things in creating a table with table style. It showed how to set up a table with ‘table’ while showing how to change the colour, thickness, and structure of the tables. After I watched this tutorial, I learned how to set up a table with any style I want, for example hanging the table to blue, or changing the thickness of the lines of the rows. Also, using tales to structure the different texts is very useful and it makes the text to be more structured and clear.

This tutorial taught me different skills compared to the last one. It mainly taught me how to use paragraph style and rules in InDesign. With the features taught in this video, I am able to structure my text with a paragraph style, which saved me a lot of time from changing the spaces of the text word by word. Also, I learned how to give space to the text with paragraph rules, which can avoid using the tab button or space button multiple times.

3. Design resources and articles

Article 1

https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-table-in-indesign–cms-41210

This is an article that I found really useful for a beginner to learn how to use tables in the most simple way. Compare to the youtube tutorials in the previous paragraph, this article let me know what are the benefits of using a table in InDesign, instead of grouping them with grids. It also let me know how to set up a table in the most simple and basic way.

Article 2

Tschichold,J. 1928, The new typography : a handbook for modern designers / Jan Tschichold ; translated by Ruari McLean, with an introduction by Robin Kinross, Berkeley : University of California Press, 1995

This is actually a book I found in the library, instead of an online article. The reason why I put this book here is that this book taught me how to group text in a way, that allows the user to know the important things in the fastest way. For example, it taught me to increase the contrast in text, in order to make those texts more eye-catching to the users.

4. Learning throughout the module

I have improved different skills throughout this module, which helped me a lot in other projects in other modules. For example, I improved my skills in formatting text in InDesign and using ‘table’ in InDesign in order to put different text and information in order. This allow me to know more about typography, and allow me to get used to using InDesign. I have also improved my skills in creating logos/monograms and stickers in illustrator. Before this module, I barely used illustrator and I always struggle to create shapes there. After various tasks in this module, I successfully created some logos and monograms which are vector based. I also learned a lot more about photoshop. Before this module, I found it hard to cut out complex images like human hair. But after this module, I am confident that I can cut out any images, with no white edges around them. I also learned the basic of using After Effects to create animations