Intertwine Feature in InDesign

People have been oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over the Intertwine feature in Adobe Illustrator, but I’ve been creating this same effect in InDesign for years! OK, I admit that it’s more straightforward in Illustrator, but this InDesign trick — first shown to me by our Editor in Chief, Mike Rankin, at The InDesign Conference — is so easy that anyone can do it.

First, here’s a before and after of what I’m talking about… see how the objects are not intertwined in the first image (they’re just stacked up), and then they are in the second?

Here’s how you do this in InDesign:

First, zoom in on the section you’re working on:

Then draw a rectangle over the part you want to “intertwine”:

Now select the object in the back — in this case, the green circle— and copy it to the clipboard. Next, select the blank frame you just created and choose Edit > Paste Into:

You can see that the Paste Into feature “pin registers” the object so that it lands in exactly the same place. (More on Paste Into here.)

Of course, you need to be careful not to move that frame, or else you can see how the trick is done:

Obviously, grouping all the objects together would help.

Here’s the final result shown with Preview off, so you can see the three rectangles I made:

This intertwine effect is surprisingly easy, and takes no more than a minute to accomplish!