Here are some tutorials on making your own custom art brush in illustrator. These are just the beginning, the possibilities are truly endless.

TAPER BRUSH with a TWIST
1. Change the default colors to black outline and no fill. Draw a perfectly horizontal line using the line tool about 2 inches long (you can turn the grid on and snap to grid if you want) Change the stroke width to 6 pts.
2. Go to the EFFECT menu > DISTORT & TRANSFORM > TWIST and use an angle between 10 and 15 degrees.

3. Go to the OBJECT menu > PATH > OUTLINE STROKE to make a long rectangle from the line.
4. With the shape selected choose the delete anchor point tool and delete one of the corner points from the right hand side.
5. Drag the entire shape into the Brushes panel, select ART BRUSH as the type of brush. In the Art Brush Options panel change the colorization method to HUE SHIFT. This will allow you to change the color of the brush once it is applied to a stroke.

6. Draw a curved line out on the screen and apply the new taper brush with a twist by clicking on it in the brushes panel. Double click the stroke color icon on the tool bar and change the color of the art brush.

MESSY BRUSH
1. Change the default colors to black outline and no fill. Draw a perfectly horizontal line using the line tool about 2 inches long (you can turn the grid on and snap to grid if you want) Change the stroke width to 6 pts.
2. Go to the OBJECT menu > PATH > OUTLINE STROKE to make a long rectangle from the line.
3. Go to the EFFECT menu > DISTORT & TRANSFORM > ROUGHEN set the size to 1% and the detail 100/in. change the points to smooth.

Then go to the EFFECT menu > DISTORT & TRANSFORM > TWEAK, set the horizontal to 1% and vertical to 30%, uncheck Anchor Points.

4. Drag the entire shape into the Brushes panel, select ART BRUSH as the type of brush. In the Art Brush Options panel change the colorization method to HUE SHIFT. This will allow you to change the color of the brush once it is applied to a stroke.
5. Draw a curved line out on the screen and apply the new messy brush by clicking on it in the brushes panel. Double click the stroke color icon on the tool bar and change the color of the art brush.

YOUR NAME BRUSH
1. Type your name on the screen using whatever font you would like.
2. With the name selected go to the TYPE menu > CREATE OUTLINES (this will make outlines from the text, it will no longer be editable as type)

3. Drag the entire shape into the Brushes panel, select ART BRUSH as the type of brush. In the Art Brush Options panel change the direction to vertical (Arrow pointing up).

4. Draw a short vertical line starting from the bottom. Apply the new name brush by clicking on it in the brushes panel.

With the line segment with the name brush applied to go to the EFFECTS menu > DISTORT & TRANSFORM > TWIST and use a number between 15 and 25 degrees to make the text wavy.

Finding a tutorial for drawing a perfect heart was proving quite a challenge until I found this one. The steps below are based on Deke’s tutorial.
1. Turn on the Grid. VIEW menu > SHOW GRID and then turn on SNAP TO GRID under the VIEW menu as well.
2. Within a 1×1 major square draw a perfect circle – hold the SHIFT key down to achieve this.

3. Using the WHITE ARROW, select the bottom half of the circle and then hit the DELETE key on your keyboard.

4. Select the ARC tool (associated with the LINE tool)

and draw an arc from the bottom left of the semi-circle  to the bottom right side of the 1×1 major square below.

5. Select the bottom point of the arc with the WHITE ARROW and drag the handle 90 degrees clock-wise.

6. Select both both shapes with BLACK ARROW and select the REFLECT TOOL. With the ALT KEY held down drag center point to the bottom right of shape.

Release the alt key and the mouse button and select VERTICAL axis and COPY.

7. Select all of the objects with the BLACK ARROW and go to the OBJECT menu PATH submenu > JOIN (or ctrl/cmd + J)
8. Give the heart a fill color and a stroke color. Change the stroke width to 4 pts, make the corners round and align the stroke to the outside of the shape.

7.) Select the pull quote frame with the type tool to make it a text frame. Change the typeface to Taller Evolution, the size to 39pts and the leading to 44pts (11pts x 4), also check the all caps option for this typeface (the caps for this font are tall and slender). Make the text align to the baseline in the paragraph panel.

Fill the pull quote text frame with placeholder text. It won’t look very sexy yet, so we’ll make some adjustments.
8.) With the text frame selected open go to the OBJECT menu > TEXT FRAME OPTIONS. Change the inset spacing to 11pts so that we have a 1p10 white border around all of the text (this matches the gutter for the text columns)

Now it looks even worse, so lets make further adjustments.
9.) The problem we have is that the leading for the typeface (44pts = 4 baselines) at the height we specified (39pts) is way too loose, but if we set the leading to (33pts = 3 baselines) it will be too tight.  In Text Frame Options we have the ability to make a custom baseline grid for selected frames, so in order to accommodate our situation, we’ll change the baseline from 11pts to 5.5 pts to give ourselves a little more flexibility. This is an instance of where we can make the rules (the 11pt grid increment – and break the rules – dividing that in half)
1
Finally, select all of the text for the pull quote and change the leading from 44pts to 38pts – this will force the type to land on the custom 5.5pt baseline and will fill the pull quote box perfectly.

We’ll wrap up here for now. We still haven’t addressed the sexiest part of pull quotes yet – the actual quote marks – so we’ll continue in Sexy Pull Quotes pt.2

before and after bounding box reset

7. Scale the new quote mark to the height of the guides, make a copy and change the fill to black and the stroke to none.

8. Copy the new graphic and paste it as an anchored object into the pull quote box (this is one of the few times you will actually cut and paste graphics into InDesign). Scale the graphic down a little bit if it is messing up your text alignment. From here you can change its color as well.

9. To put in an end quote, select the graphic, copy it and paste it at the end of the text. You will need to rotate it 180 degrees to make it the correct orientation – this can be done using the rotation angle in the control panel up at the top of your screen. If you choose to scale it down, scale from a corner while holding down the shift key, then highlight it with the type tool and use the baseline shift to move it to align with the tops of the letters.

10. If you need to introduce some space in between the graphic and the text use the TYPE menu > INSERT WHITE SPACE > and select hair, sixth or thin space.

The final SEXY pull quote:

1. Considerations

2. Setting up the document
Create a new file – set the page size to letter (51p0 x 66p0) with 4 columns and the gutter (the space between columns) set to 1p6. The margins can be left at 3p0. [The unit of measurement we're using is in Picas. I Pica (1p0) = 12 pts, 6 Picas (6p0) = 1 inch.]
Once the new document opens, go to the LAYOUT menu > CREATE GUIDES and choose 4 rows with a gutter of 2p0. This will divide the page into 4 equal vertical spaces.

3. Choose your typeface, size and leading
Draw a text box that fills the entire live area (the space between the margins – pink lines.) With the box still selected go to the OBJECT menu > TEXT FRAME OPTIONS and change the number of columns to 4 and the gutter to 1p6 to match the document column grid.

Select a typeface – for this tutorial I am going to use Minion Pro, it’s pretty much the default font for InDesign and comes in a variety of styles. Set the the size to 10pts and the leading to 12. Fill the box with text – TYPE menu > FILL WITH PLACEHOLDER TEXT. Turn on the baseline grid  - VIEW menu>GRIDS & GUIDES > SHOW BASELINE GRID and take note that the bottoms of the letters do not sit on the grid. With the text box still selected go to the WINDOW menu > TYPE & TABLES > PARAGRAPH and select the align to baseline grid button on the bottom of the panel.

type not aligned to baseline

type aligned to baseline

By default, the baseline grid is set to 12pts so we didn’t have to change it. If we had chosen another size for leading we would go to the [MAC] INDESIGN menu > PREFERENCES > GRIDS or [PC] EDIT menu> PREFERENCES > GRIDS to change the spacing as well as where the grid begins on the page. We now want to ensure that all of the rest of the type sizes we choose use a multiple of our baseline (12pts) for their respective leading.

4. Create the headline and subheading
With the rectangular frame tool draw a box that is two columns wide by two rows high. With the box still selected go to the WINDOW menu > TEXT WRAP, choose the wrap around bounding box option with a distance of 2p0 from the bottom of the box. This will force the body text to conform to the shape of the headline box and provide extra space below.
Change the frame to a text box by going to the OBJECT menu > CONTENT > TEXT. Change the type style to bold, the size to 90pts and the leading to 84pts (7 x 12pts). In the paragraph panel align the type to the right and select the align to baseline grid option. Type “don’t break the grid” into the text box.

headline type aligned to body type

Use the rectangular frame to draw another box directly below the headline box that is two columns wide by one column high. It will take on the text wrap properties from before. Resize the new rectangular frame by dragging the center handle up one grid line. Change the type style to medium, the size to 30pts and the leading to 36pts(3 x 12pts). In the paragraph panel align the type to the right and select the align to baseline grid option. Fill with placeholder text.

That’s it, you’re done.

This tutorial will also be using 2 scenarios: you have the ability to print to PDF (Adobe PDF is listed as printer, or you have other software  – Cute PDF for PC is a good one – that provides that ability) OR you DO NOT have the ability to print to PDF – in most cases this will be the MAC OSX platform.

Scenario 1
1. Create the document using facing pages (starts on the right hand, followed by a left hand page facing a right hand page) your document MUST have pages that are multiples of 4.

Facing Pages

2. Go to FILE > PRINT BOOKLET. Select the pages you want to print, either ALL or a range and the type of booklet, this tutorial assumes we will be using 2-up saddle stitch.

3. Select PRINT SETTINGS. For the printer select Adobe PDF (or whatever your PDF printer is called) In the SETUP tab, select the 11×17 paper size and LANDSCAPE as the orientation. Keep the scale 100% for width and height, position the page CENTERED. Click OK

4. Select the PREVIEW button to ensure everything is OK. Scroll through the preview to check all pages.

CORRECT

INCORRECT - InDesign will provide a warning if the selected page size is too small

5. Click PRINT and InDesign will generate a PDF, this can be take to your printer.

The Imposed Document

Scenario 2 (most likely MAC OSX)
Follow steps 1 and 2 above
3. Select PRINT SETTINGS. For the printer select POSTSCRIPT FILE. For PPD select a COLOR printer connected to your system that supports TABLOID (11×17) paper

4. In the SETUP tab, select the 11×17 paper size and LANDSCAPE as the orientation. Keep the scale 100% for width and height, position the page CENTERED. Click OK
5. Select the PREVIEW button to ensure everything is OK. Scroll through the preview to check all pages.
6. Click PRINT and InDesign will prompt you to save the file with the extension of .ps – this is your postscript file.
7. Open Adobe Acrobat Professional and then open the .ps – use the All Files (*.*) option so that you can see the postscript file (*.ps)

8. Once the file is open, go to FILE > SAVE AS and save it as a PDF document, this can be taken to your printer.

the modified alpha channel to be used as a selection

2. Save the selection. SELECT menu > SAVE SELECTION. Name it if you want or use the default ALPHA 1. If you used calculations to make the Alpha channel you will not need to do this step as calculations made a new channel for you.

3. Load the selection. SELECT menu > LOAD SELECTION > choose your selection.

4. Make a new SOLID FILL ADJUSTMENT LAYER and select an appropriate color (this can be changed anytime)

5. Change the LAYER MODE to HUE. This will retain the color from the adjustment layer and the contrast from the original image. Change the color of the Adjustment Layer by double clicking the Color Fill thumbnail.

6. If you need to edit the selection, click on the Color Fill Layer Mask thumbnail to activate the mask as an alpha channel. Go to the CHANNELS panel, make the alpha channel visible (Color Fill 1 Mask) by clicking on the eyeball icon. You can now use any of the editing tools to modify the mask used for the color adjustment.

the Color Fill Mask made visible and editable

7. Select the RGB channel and uncheck the visibility icon to get back to normal editing.

the final dragon with the green replaced with blue

Just as trends can be reactions to what has come before,  aesthetics do likewise. Within the last 60 years or so the pendulum has swung back and forth so many times that what we are left with is simply responding to what we like. Our art and design work is a true reflection of us and not beholden to a universal defining principle imposed by outsider’s rules (an art school friend of mine and I called this non-ism-ism)

If we take this conversation back to grids (and I swear we’ll get to the InDesign stuff very soon) how do you rationalize your own aesthetic? What do you respond to – especially within a design context – that will give your work a sense of individuality that can be relayed back into standard design conventions? One way to begin thinking about this is to reflect on our own sense of proportion. What shape rectangles are you attracted to? What width line represents our idea best? What rectangular shape do you want to have as the driving force in your work? Another art school friend of mine used to make work – no matter what materials he was using  – that was always long and sinewy. For whatever reason this proportion made sense to him, perhaps because at the time he was similarly proportioned. Reflecting on this one core aspect will help establish the building blocks for our design work. We can build any underlying grid based on this basic motivation.
There are endless ways to split up a page via grids;  Golden section, rules of thirds, complex grids etc..  Every designer should investigate and use them; they are cool, they work and they create harmony. This following tutorials will talk about creating grids in InDesign and also about how to use a proportion of our own invention to establish a grid.
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1. We’ll start off with a new document and establish a series of columns to divide up the page. Since this tutorial is geared towards my editorial design (magazine) students, we’ll create a new document with a page broken into 12 columns. This amount of columns provides us with a high degree of flexibility; a page can be broken into 2, 3, 4 and 6 columns, we can make a two column main area with a separate side bar area, we can do asymmetrical pairings (7 and 5 columns for instance) etc… there are a great number of possibilities within this arrangement.

In the columns section, the gutter width refers to the amount of space between the columns. This can be tight or loose, or non existent (set to zero) depending on what your desired proportions are.

For now we’ll stick with the default margins of 3p0 (1/2 inch) but we will change them later to accommodate the way we want to break up the page horizontally.
The vertical column grid is not a rule that is set in stone, there are cases where 6 columns would suffice, or 9, or even 13 (if you wanted to give your layout some serious flexibility and asymmetry) In the early stages of the overall layout it is worth experimenting with blocks of placeholder text and solid blocks of color (instead of actual images) to determine what might work best.
2.  Setting up the horizontal grid. When we started the document we were only asked to determine the vertical sections, the horizontal sections are defined via the LAYOUT menu > CREATE GUIDES tool.

Within this tool we can define rows as well as columns. Setting up a horizontal grid will provide a sense of consistency, rhythm and proportion to your layout. The grid doesn’t have to be apparent in your final layout, but it gives the document some underlying structure as well as a framework to experiment within.
Here is where our desired proportions can come into play with the layout, if you are thinking long and tall, then perhaps fewer divisions is what you may want use, if you are thinking about squares, then perhaps maybe more divisions. The grid won’t lock you into these proportions – like the vertical grid there is a high degree of flexibility and variety – but it will provide opportunities throughout the layout to return to it.
For our first example we’ll define 6 rows with a gutter of 1p0.
3. The next thing to consider is the baseline grid. This grid will determine the leading (space between baselines of text) in your document.  The use of  the baseline grid keeps type in adjacent columns and between headlines, pull quotes, captions etc… aligned.  To view the baseline grid go to the VIEW menu > GRIDS & GUIDES > SHOW BASELINE GRID, this will bring up a horizontal grid of blue lines that are spaced apart at 12pts or 1p0 – this can be adjusted to any increment we desire via the PREFERENCES > GRIDS setting, but we’ll leave it alone for now. What you will notice is that the baselines do not match up with the horizontal guides we established in step 2.

We’ll make some adjustments to our document to this but first some math.

Hopefully that last sentence doesn’t scare you away. I am not a math person and have been known to mess up very simple equations. That said, InDesign allows you to do simple math right inside the program making it a godsend for those of us that start to get the jitters when we need to add or subtract.

4. Our goal is to somehow align the baseline grid with the horizontal grid. They are both the same width – 1p0 – and the document has roughly the same amount of baselines within each horizontal section – nine. In order to make this work, we’ll have to do some adjustments to the top and bottom margins.
5. For this particular document – one with 12pt baselines, 12pt gutters between horizontal sections and 6 sections the following simple math will take place. Take the number of sections (6) and multiply that by the amount of baselines desired within each section (in this case 9) this will give us 54. Then add the number of horizontal gutters (5) for a grand total of 59. Essentially what we want to do is divide the vertical working area (the space inside the margins) into 59 units, or in this case 59 picas or 59p0. When we look at the document the way it stands now – the overall height is 66p0 (11 inches) with a 3p0 margin at the top and bottom giving us a 60p0 working area. To accommodate our desired horizontal subdivisions we’ll distribute the extra 1p0 into the margins, in this case we’ll adjust the bottom margin to be 4p0.
(LAYOUT menu > MARGINS AND COLUMNS)

Then we’ll go into the LAYOUT menu > CREATE GUIDES again to delete the existing guides and place in some new ones.

Make sure to check Remove Existing Ruler Guides and also ensure the guides are fit to the margins.

What this means is that we can begin our layout and and rest assured that there will be some sort of uniformity in our document and that text and images will fit cleanly into our predetermined spaces (our proportions)

6. Here are some further considerations to make. First, for this particular document keep the leading for all text in increments of 12 OR if you want further possibilities, set the baseline grid to 3pts and use increments of 3 for the leading. Second, to keep the text aligned with the baseline grid you will have to ensure that the align to baseline grid option is checked on the paragraph panel for any text that you want to align to the grid.

Third, for all offsets in the paragraph rules settings, text wraps etc… try to keep to the same baseline distance – whatever it may be – this will further ensure uniformity in the document. Fourth – in regards to column gutter width -  it may prove difficult to read columns of text separated by a thin gutter. To remedy this, use the OBJECT menu > TEXT FRAME OPTIONS to divide a large text box into columns and to set a wider gutter width for those columns.
Also, remember, rules are meant to be broken, so establishing this grid structure is extremely worthwhile but the occasional surprise or deviation from it can make the overall document exciting and dynamic.

7. OK, one final example to finish off this post, this is the part where we’ll talk about InDesign math.  Let’s say we want to use a baseline of 14pts or 1p2 for the document and again want to divide the document into 6 horizontal sections. Set up a new document with all of the defaults intact; 3p0 for margins etc. Go to the InDesign menu on a MAC or the EDIT menu on a PC and choose PREFERENCES > GRIDS. In here we can change the baseline to 14pts. Also change the start to zero and relative to the top margin.

Then go to the LAYOUT menu > CREATE GUIDES and make 6 rows with a 1p2 gutter fitted to the margins. You will notice that nothing lines up at all. Again, count the number of baselines within one horizontal division (8 in this case) and multiply that by 6 (the number of sections) then add the number of gutters (5) for a grand total of 53. So, for the document we want 53 divisions at equal spacing of 1p2. At this point most of us will pause and scratch our head thinking to ourselves how do we do this multiplication? This is where InDesign math comes in to play. In your document make a rectangular shape of any size, with the object still selected go up to the measurements bar at the top of the screen and for the Height (H) value type in the following 53*1p2 (53 sections times 14 points) Indesign will then do the math for us resulting in 61p10. Then subtract 61p10 from 66p0 (the height of the page) – you can do this directly in the measurements box as well – to find the total amount of top and bottom margin space, in this case 4p2. Now we know that we can change the top margin to 2p0 and the bottom to 2p2 to accommodate our desired baseline and number of horizontal sections. Go to the LAYOUT menu > MARGINS AND COLUMNS to make this adjustment. Then go to the LAYOUT menu > CREATE GUIDES to delete the existing guides and make 6 new horizontal guides with 1p2 gutters.
It should be noted that there is nothing sacred about using a whole number for leading, there are certainly times when a leading of 0p11.5 or 0p10.25 would work – the math can all be done the same way within InDesign.

Questions, comments or corrections? Put them in the comments box below.

1. Prepare a graphic to use in your layout. Preferably the image will be a high contrast grayscale graphic (lots of black and white with minimal gray tones). This can be achieved using IMAGE menu > ADJUSTMENTS > LEVELS and bringing the black and white points towards the center or using IMAGE menu > ADJUSTMENTS > THRESHOLD and playing with the threshold slider.

2. Place or copy the graphic you want to use as your watermark into your layout. Move, rotate or scale the image to its desired location.

3. If you have placed the image, you will need to rasterize the image prior to the next step. LAYER menu > SMART OBJECT > RASTERIZE or LAYER menu > RASTERIZE> SMART OBJECT.
4. Fill the entire background of the layer holding the graphic with white. EDIT menu > FILL: use WHITE, blending BEHIND. This will put white pixels behind the graphic as if you painted on the backside of a piece of glass.

5. Select the entire layer  – SELECT menu > ALL or command/ctrl+A and cut it from the document – EDIT menu > CUT or command/ctrl+X. Delete the placed objects layer which will now be empty.
6. Go to the channels panel, make a new alpha channel and EDIT menu > PASTE or command/ctrl+V into the new channel.

7. Invert the channel  – IMAGE menu > ADJUSTMENTS > INVERT or command/ctrl+I. This will make a proper alpha channel where white represents editable areas and black will be protected areas.
8. Load the selection – SELECT menu > LOAD SELECTION: channel ALPHA 1 (or whatever you may have named it) You can also quick load the selection by command/ctrl clicking on the alpha channel thumbnail.

9. In the LAYERS panel make a new Solid Color Adjustment layer. This will allow you to dynamically change the color of the watermark throughout the editing process, it will also use the selection as a mask specifically for that adjustment layer. Use the eydropper tool to sample the background color and then adjust the color to make a low contrast watermark.

10. The EDIT menu > TRANSFORM tools can be used to further move, scale, rotate, skew, etc… the graphic.
11. Further color adjustment can be made by double clicking the solid fill thumbnail and adjusting the color.