InDesign Shorts: Tip #8 – Align to Grid

InDesign Shorts is a recurring series to help everyone of all levels master the ins and outs of the program and become more efficient designers. Got a burning InDesign question? Drop a comment below or join the LinkedIn group for more.

Do you crave perfection in your InDesign layouts? If so, you might want to try aligning your text to the baseline grid in your document. Why? Aligning text to the baseline grid evenly distributes all of your text, aligning each line to the same background grid so every page has an added element of uniformity.

I personally don’t like using the align to grid option, because it restricts my ability to adjust the leading in a paragraph. (Psst… not sure what leading is? Check out this post on ‘Maximizing Your Page.’) I prefer to have total control over my paragraphs, especially when I’m working on a proposal with a restrictive page limit. That said, for brochures, flyers, white papers, or documents you do have total control over, the align to grid option can give your layout an extra element of polish and professionalism.

Turning the ‘align to grid’ option on or off is ridiculously easy. Simply open your Paragraphs menu (if you don’t have this in your sidebar menus, you can access it through the ‘Window’ menu) and look for two icons: one will have two columns of three stacked lines that are even with each other, and the other will have the same columns offset. The offset icon turns ‘align to grid’ off, while the even column icon turns this feature on.

Sometimes when you toggle the align to grid option on, your text will space out a little… wonky. (Yes, that’s the technical term.) It might look double spaced, or it might look crowded. There are two solutions for this. The first is to adjust the size of your text (and the leading). If you don’t want to do that, you can adjust the baseline grid itself. The baseline grid is ultimately just a bunch of horizontal grid lines, kind of like notebook paper. To edit it, open Edit > Preferences > Grids… Here you can adjust where the baseline grid starts (i.e. top of the page, or top of the margin) and how often the grid spaces. You can also adjust the color of the grid (this doesn’t print, unless you specifically tell the document to print it, so pick whatever color you want to work with).

You can toggle the baseline grid view on and off using the shortcut ctrl+alt+’ or manually toggle it from the View menu.

What do you think? Do you like the align to grid feature? When do you use it?