Give Gradients a Chance

Behold the lowly gradient! Maligned by many, often garish, unsophisticated, avoided by suspicious pre-press operators, always the bridesmaid, never the bride. In the same way that setting type in Times Roman or Arial is like placing a big “Kick Me, I’m a Beginner” sign on your back, using gradients to jazz up your page is generally guaranteed to bring scorn and derision from sniggering colleagues. Yet when handled with dignity, respect, and (most importantly) understanding, the modest gradient can achieve an orchid-like level of graphic beauty not possible with traditional fills or solids. Sniggerers, follow me.

Simple Gradients: The Thin Man

A few years ago, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers pitched a collection of classic mysteries to Barnes & Noble under the Common Reader Mystery title. I was hired to design eight covers for the series, which included Dashiell Hammett’s classic The Thin Man (Figure 1). I started with a simple condensed typeface, Univers Thin Ultra Condensed, for the title and converted it to Outlines (Type > Create Outlines).

I wanted to manipulate the type further after I converted to outlines. I first released all compound paths by selecting the text frame with the Selection tool and choose Object > Compound Paths > Release. However, releasing the compound paths caused the counter of the “A” in “MAN” to fill in. To fix this problem, I selected the letter shape and the triangular counter and chose Pathfinder > Subtract. Then I simply dragged to select the points I wanted to stretch with the Direct Selection tool and

pulled them downward holding the Shift key to constrain the lines 90°. I made the angled reflecting lines manually with the Pen tool and then stroked the lines with a white to black gradient. I applied the same gradient to the fill of the author’s name.

Advanced Gradients: Trouble in Paradise

For a magazine article I designed about the dangers of toxic groundwater, I needed to create its accompanying illustration. Although I might have normally turned to Adobe Illustrator to create the flower illustration, I instead stayed inside InDesign and used its gradients and blending modes (Figure 2).

I started by drawing a simple multi-sided polygon with the Polygon tool, then moved to the Swatches palette to create gradients. Although you can make gradients directly in the Gradient palette, I advise working with the New Gradient Swatch dialog, which is available from the Swatches fly-out menu under New Gradient Swatch (Figure 3). This way, you’ll create actual swatches instead of what In Design calls Unnamed Colors. Gradients come in two flavors, linear and radial. I used radial for the illustration’s leaves and stem. To try it yourself, click on the Type drop down menu to choose the kind of radial (Figure 4). By default, all gradients begin life as white to black. In fact, a white (actually Paper) to black gradient pre-exists by default in all new InDesign documents, even though no such swatch appears in the Gradient list of the Swatches palette. To test this, select an empty frame with the Selection tool and type the period (.) key (Figure 5). The next menu, labeled Stop Color, remains grayed out until you click to select one of the two default stops (Paper and Black) at the bottom of the dialog. These are the little boxes beneath the gradient ramp in the dialog. Once you select a stop, you can apply color from any existing solid, tint, or mixed ink swatch, or you can mix it from scratch using the CMYK, RGB, or Lab sliders. Instead of dragging the sliders, I like to click on a spot on the ramp closest to the color I’m trying to create. Once you’re within spitting distance of your color, overall lightness or darkness is easily adjusted by holding the Shift key and dragging, which effectively locks the sliders relative to each other. Switching to the Lab sliders and moving only the L (Lightness) slider has a similar effect. Add more color stops to the gradient ramp by clicking beneath it. Each click places a new stop. As you add new stops, a gray diamond appears halfway between the stop you added and the existing stop. Dragging these diamond icons determines the location of the blend’s midpoint, indicated numerically in the Location field at bottom. The location marker can be dragged within 13% of either color, so don’t be disappointed if you can’t place the blend beyond 87%. Unfortunately, unlike Adobe Illustrator, you can’t copy color stops by dragging with the Option/ Alt key held down. You’ll have to recreate the color manually.

The Gradient Palette

While I prefer to work in the New Gradient Swatch dialog, some people like the Gradient palette (Figure 6). When working this way, you can drag and drop solid colors from the Swatches or Color palette onto the palette and onto existing color stops. The Gradient palette also includes a button to reverse the direction of the gradient, a preview of your gradient, plus a field to specify the gradient angle, all features absent in the New Gradient Swatch dialog.

The Gradient Tool

You can manually adjust gradient angles using the Gradient tool in the Toolbox. Dragging the tool controls not only the direction of the gradient, but also the position of its starting and end points relative to the object. You extend gradient starting and end points beyond the boundaries of the object simply by starting or ending your drag outside the object.

Gradients and Transparency

Transparency effects, such as blending modes, feathering, opacity changes, and drop shadows, can be applied to gradients just like other objects on your page. Unlike Photoshop, gradients that transition from opaque to transparent are not technically possible. The closest you can get to such an effect is to apply a blending mode such as Multiply to your gradient, which renders white pixels transparent. Of course, along with white changing, so too will any other colors in the gradient. To avoid non-white colors shifting because of blending modes, apply a feather to your frame. However, this workaround is unsatisfying because feathering a gradient changes the opacity of colors only at the edges of the object, not the entire object as in Photoshop. If you’re looking for transparency on only one edge of your frame, my suggestion is to mask the other edges by pasting your gradient into another frame using Edit > Paste Into (Figure 7).

Gradients and Text

In the Trouble in Paradise spread, I made extensive use of transparency by applying blending modes not just to the flower’s leaves and petals, but to gradient text, as well. Even within a single text frame, multiple ranges of gradient text can even exist alongside default black text and color text. Unless you want to apply your gradient to all the text in the frame, you’ll need to highlight the specific range of characters with the Type tool before applying the gradient fill. Once applied, you can adjust the gradient’s location and angle with the Gradient tool. For the Trouble in Paradise art, I used two overlapping yet slightly offset versions of the text, each filled with a different radial gradient (Figure 8). I applied a Multiply blend mode to the topmost text to produce an interesting color effect.

It’s important to know that when using gradients in text, InDesign sets the gradient’s endpoints relative to the bounding box of the gradient’s path or text frame. This means that if you resize the text frame or make other changes that cause text reflow, the characters are redistributed across the gradient, and the colors of individual characters change accordingly. To avoid this situation, either use the Gradient tool to reset the endpoints of the gradient or convert your text into outlines. I used another gradient in a travel magazine article (Figure 9). In the Lago di Garda page, I kept the headline as type in two separate frames and applied matching gray to blue/gray gradients to the text in each frame. Once I was satisfied with the gradient, I applied a Screen blending mode to both frames to allow the beautiful background image to show through.

Gradients and Strokes

Gradients on strokes?! That’s right. In the illustration from Trouble in Paradise I applied a stroke gradient to the flower’s stem, which helps emphasize its elegance (Figure 10). Even text can be stroked with a gradient. Whether you should do so is a matter of taste.

Gradients and Images You can achieve interesting visual effects by combining gradient frame fills and blending modes to frame content. To create Figure 11, I selected the frame with the Selection tool and applied a gradient fill. Because the fill is behind the image content, any blending mode applied to the content via the Direct Selection tool creates an unexpected result. When I demonstrate these effects, people invariably ask me if the image will print as it appears. The subtext is, “Shouldn’t this kind of thing be done in Photoshop?” The answer is yes, it prints, and no, this kind of effect doesn’t have to be done in Photoshop. Granted, Photoshop has greater variations and more granular controls. Regardless, I’ve gone to press many times with great success employing effects such as these built entirely in InDesign.