Adobe InDesign CC

Creating Frames and Shapes

We draw shapes in InDesign to either be decorative or hold images or text. Interestingly, InDesign offers two sets of nearly identical tools to do this: Shape tools and so-called Frame tools. I write “so-called” because the shapes we make with either set of tools can be used as frames. Shapes we draw with the Frame tools are born with no fill and no stroke, as they’re intended as placeholders, but we may add color to them later. The Shape tools have whatever appearance we’ve set as our default—that is, any fill, stroke, effect, or setting that we set with nothing selected. However, these can be made as naked as ...