Creating and Applying Styles

The first step in creating a style is to build an object with the formatting attributes you want saved in the style. Figure 31.1 on the previous page shows the colorful ampersand that has appeared in other chapters. It’s set at 400 point Dauphin, with a blue-to-yellow angled fountain fill. If you think that you might want to create other characters like this one, then it is your “prototype” for creating a style, in this case, a text style.

Don’t worry if you’re not certain about all the formatting—you can always make changes later. After the prototype is formatted, you’re ready to save the style:

1.  Right-click on the object and select Styles Ø Save Style Properties. The Save Style As dialog appears.

2.  Enter a style name and choose which attributes are to be saved as part of the style.

Notice that we unchecked Outline—we might want to apply this style to some ornate text that has its own outline. We want to be able to apply all of the other formats of the style to the text, but not lose the outline we’d already created for it.

	TIP You can also create a style with drag-and-drop. If the Styles docker is open while you create the prototype, drag the object into the docker. The new style will join the list and be given a generic name. Click the name twice to rename it to something better. When you use this method for style creation, the style contains all possible attributes.

Now to apply the style to a new element:

3.  Create a new string of artistic text. It starts out like all others—as drab 24 point AvantGarde.

4.  With the new string of text selected, you have four choices for applying it:

•  Double-click the style in the docker.

•  Right-click the style and choose Apply Style.

•  Drag it and drop it onto the text (for this choice, you do not need to select it first).

•  Right-click the text, go to Styles Ø Apply, and choose the desired style from the flyout.

There should be a fifth choice—use the Styles drop-down menu. But to our chagrin, Corel opted not to place Styles on the Standard toolbar or any of the property bars, except the one that appears when your cursor is in the text (showing once again a lopsided emphasis on paragraph text activities). Three chapters from now, that will be one of the first things we’ll do as we redesign the interface. Please remind us in case we forget...

Styles can be saved in templates, and we’ll discuss the advantages of that strategy soon. For now, just remember that you don’t need to save a new style in a template. If you don’t, then it lives only within the .cdr file in which you created it, but it does live.

WARNING When you use the context menu to save a new style, DRAW places the Default ________ Style name in the save field (Artistic, Paragraph, or Graphic). If you aren’t paying attention and you don’t enter a new name, you will have changed the default style, and any similar element that hasn’t been given a different style will immediately change. We wish that the Save Style dialog began with a blank field, but at least there is Undo.

The process for creating graphic styles and paragraph text styles is the same. In the following sections, you’ll find step-by-step instructions for creating graphic, artistic text, and paragraph text styles. Since the styles created with these instructions are used as examples as you work through the chapter, you may want to create them as you read each section.

	NOTE Creating a style saves the attributes of an object, but not the object itself. If you wanted, for instance, to save the entire ampersand, formatting and all, then you would turn to the Scrapbook (Tools Ø Scrapbook), not Styles.

Graphic Styles

Any attribute applied with the Fill or Outline tool can be saved in a graphic style. For instance, fountain fills, two-color pattern fills, arrowheads, and dashed lines can all be attributes in a graphic style.

Graphic styles are useful when all graphics in a project need to use a specific spot color. Suppose you’re creating a piece using black and Pantone 192 Red. When it comes time to output color separations to film, it can be a real mess if some objects use Pantone 192 Red and others use Pantone 185 Red (you’d get an extra separation for the 185 Red). Creating a graphic style with the desired Pantone color guarantees you’ll always apply the right color.

Furthermore, if you know that you’ll be using a second spot color, but you’re not sure which one, then you’ll be grateful for using styles. Name the style “Pantone Color,” assign the most likely color to it, and apply it to all appropriate objects. If the color gets changed down the road, you need only update the style to change all of the elements to the new color.

Artistic Text Styles

Styles that you create for artistic text can contain the following attributes:

Font Typeface, type size, and type styles such as bold and italic

Alignment Left, center, and right, plus full justification or forced justification

Spacing Between characters, words, and lines

Lines Underlines, overlines, and strikeout

Text effects Superscript, subscript, and capitalization

Each of these can be included or excluded from a text style.

We haven’t made much of an effort—here or back in Chapter 8, “Working with Text”—to hide our disdain for Corel’s decision to make the default text face be AvantGarde. During the beta-testing cycle, we asked publicly, “When is the last time that anyone here has ever used AvantGarde intentionally?” Nobody could remember.

So with every new version of DRAW, we waste no time changing the default for artistic text to something more useful, like FuturaBlack, ErasUltra, or...well, just about anything would be better! There are several ways to do this:

•  Format a string of text to your liking, and use the context menu to update Default Artistic Text.

•  Right-click on the style name in the docker, choose Properties, and click the Edit button next to Text (you’re at Tools Ø Options Ø Document Ø Styles).

•  Drag the correctly formatted text into the docker and rename New Artistic Text as Default Artistic Text, saying yes to the overwrite query.

However you do it, at this point you have defined a new artistic text default for this drawing only. To make it permanent for all drawings, right-click in the docker and choose Template Ø Save As Default for New Documents.

For a deeper discussion about defaults and permanent conditions, see the sidebar in Chapter 34 entitled “Making Things Permanent.”

TIP DRAW allows you to share attributes across style types. For instance, if you have created a rectangle and you want to give it the nice rainbow you created in an artistic text style, you can select the rectangle and apply the style, even though it was created for text. Similarly, you can apply a graphic style to a string of text to change its fill and outline. As long as the attributes are shared between the styles—like fill and outline—DRAW allows it. To do this, however, you must apply the style using the docker. The Apply command on the context menu only shows a list of styles for the type of object.