InDesign© Plugins

What is a Column Flow?

Creating headers or footers which span multiple columns is a very difficult task in InDesign. This is because all column settings are set by the text frame. Creating different column settings requires creating a new text frame each time that the number of columns change. The text frames must then be manually positioned.

Column Flow attempts to simplify this process by allowing the setting the number of columns within paragraph styles. Each style applied in the story must have the number of columns defined.

The method Column Flow uses to set the number of columns is by adding a number prefix to the style name. All the styles must start with either a “1” or a “2”. Column Flow can append the number to the style name the first time you invoke the plug-in.

Once properly set up, Column Flow will flow the text and add / remove text frames as necessary to properly flow the text. It can flow text one page at a time. It can flow an entire story. It can even flow an entire document composed of many stories.

To further insure proper positioning of the text frames, text blocks can be automatically aligned to the baseline grid, and specific paragraph styles can be defined as headers. (So they will always appear above the following text block.)

 

 

Below are some samples of documents laid out using Column Flow.

 

 

The following illustration shows the ability to create column-straddle headers. As shown, they can be applied even between runs of text.

 

 

Column Flow can be used in conjunction with Proper VJ to further improve the balanced look of the columns. The Running Headers on the top of the page were created using Running Headers.

 

 

The following illustration shows a number of In-Tools plug-ins all used on the same page. It shows the use of Column Flow to create straddle heads, as well as separately balancing two different blocks of multi-column text.