André Mora
h
Do you see that little ‘h’ tucked into the corner of the frame? Look closely, zoom in. This is from the newly redesigned — spectacularly redesigned — Billboard magazine. This tiny mistake could’ve been prevented by using an often overlooked preference. (Like much of InDesign, helpful preferences, OpenType choices, etc, are buried.)
Now I don’t bring this up to embarrass the designer. Believe me, I dread finding errors with each new issue I produce of Seattle Met. The tinier, the worse it is. But nothing gets me down like a mistake that is mostly a result of software — subjective, regrettable design decisions are a separate beast.
But back to the preference. Preferences > Type > Type Tool Converts Frames to Text Frames. Turn that off and leave it that way. Now you won’t accidentally convert boxes and find yourself typing in them by accident. If you do need to convert a box that was previously drawn for decoration, do it manually in the Object menu (Object > Content) or control+click (Content).
The picture also shows a fundamental problem with InDesign's handling of boxes. A box, when set to Color > Empty, is not selectable except by clicking and dragging from the frame itself. Great! Except, if Type Tool Converts Frames to Text Frames is on, then the Type tool will “see” the empty box and convert it to a text box. (Yes, I’m calling them boxes and not frames because I think it makes more sense. Frames, in real life, are technically containers, but when we speak of frames, are we not mainly talking about the wood around the glass and art? So, I call them all boxes, I call a box with a stroke a frame, rather than an “empty frame with a stroke serving as a frame on the page.”)
Anyway, it boils down to the fact that InDesign’s Type tool can see the box better than the Selection tool can. That's why you should go change that preference and avoid converting boxes which are sometimes not even seen on screen! That could have been what happened here. Billboard is a large format magazine and if the empty box was converted and the ‘h’ typed while the designer was zoomed in to the bottom of the page, well, then you get this … fetus. That’s my new term for these stray beginnings of words; someday he might grow up to be an orphan. An h can dream.
h
Do you see that little ‘h’ tucked into the corner of the frame? Look closely, zoom in. This is from the newly redesigned — spectacularly redesigned — Billboard magazine. This tiny mistake could’ve been prevented by using an often overlooked preference. (Like much of InDesign, helpful preferences, OpenType choices, etc, are buried.)
Now I don’t bring this up to embarrass the designer. Believe me, I dread finding errors with each new issue I produce of Seattle Met. The tinier, the worse it is. But nothing gets me down like a mistake that is mostly a result of software — subjective, regrettable design decisions are a separate beast.
But back to the preference. Preferences > Type > Type Tool Converts Frames to Text Frames. Turn that off and leave it that way. Now you won’t accidentally convert boxes and find yourself typing in them by accident. If you do need to convert a box that was previously drawn for decoration, do it manually in the Object menu (Object > Content) or control+click (Content).
The picture also shows a fundamental problem with InDesign's handling of boxes. A box, when set to Color > Empty, is not selectable except by clicking and dragging from the frame itself. Great! Except, if Type Tool Converts Frames to Text Frames is on, then the Type tool will “see” the empty box and convert it to a text box. (Yes, I’m calling them boxes and not frames because I think it makes more sense. Frames, in real life, are technically containers, but when we speak of frames, are we not mainly talking about the wood around the glass and art? So, I call them all boxes, I call a box with a stroke a frame, rather than an “empty frame with a stroke serving as a frame on the page.”)
Anyway, it boils down to the fact that InDesign’s Type tool can see the box better than the Selection tool can. That's why you should go change that preference and avoid converting boxes which are sometimes not even seen on screen! That could have been what happened here. Billboard is a large format magazine and if the empty box was converted and the ‘h’ typed while the designer was zoomed in to the bottom of the page, well, then you get this … fetus. That’s my new term for these stray beginnings of words; someday he might grow up to be an orphan. An h can dream.