Setting default fonts and colors seems trivial, but can be a considerable time-savings if you work for an in-house design department where you’re always using the same corporate font and colors for virtually everything you do.
The ability to set default fonts and colors in new Adobe InDesign documents has been covered before, but I still see people asking about it, so I thought it worth mentioning here again.
To set the default colors:
- Open InDesign, but do NOT create or open a document
- Delete any colors from the Swatches panel you don’t want
- Create any amount of new colors in the Swatches panel
Any NEW documents you create will automatically have the new default font and colors already set. Unfortunately, existing documents will still use whatever default font and colors that were set when the document was created.
To set the default font:
- Open InDesign, but do NOT create or open a document
- Select the Text tool
- In the Control Bar across the top, select the Font drop-down menu and choose your default font. You could also use the Character panel if you choose.
Many InDesign users know you can set the default colors displayed in the Color panel by setting them without a document open. I’ve recently realized that you can do the same thing with Character Styles. Open InDesign, but don’t open a document (that part is important). Now go to your Character or Paragraph Styles panel and set all your preferred styles like font choice, point size, kerning settings, indents & spacing and a keyboard shortcut. Now just hit OK to commit the settings to InDesign’s memory. From now on, whenever you start up InDesign and/or create a new document, those Character styles will already be set up and available.