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When I use InDesign the text box automaticly selects Times New roman as the typeface.

can I change this so it automaticly selects my brands typeface.

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2 Answers 2

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Something like this?

to quote from the link:

You can make any active font the default font in the document by first making sure that's nothing's selected in your document (Command-Shift-A/Ctrl-Shift-A), then choosing the font you want from the Type > Font submenu or in the Character palette. All new text frames you create from then on in the document will use your new default font.

If you change the default font without any documents open, that will be your new default font for all new InDesign documents you create.

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  • 4
    Note that in order for this to be effective for all new documents, you must close InDesign and reopen it. The change is not saved until ID is closed. Jan 17, 2012 at 5:53
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Not to detract from lawndartcatcher's answer, which is correct, there are a couple of important caveats with regard to changing the default font. The big one is, don't ever change the [Basic Paragraph] style to your other font. If someone else opens your document in their copy of InDesign, all your "[Basic Paragraph]" text will be converted to their [Basic Paragraph] font.

It's also far too easy to slip into the very bad habit of not using paragraph and character styles for everything in your documents.

A less fragile and more flexible solution is to maintain a complete style sheet for your brand, with paragraph and character styles for body copy, headlines, subheads, emphasis, etc., and always work from that. You absolutely should be using Paragraph, Character and Object Styles anyway, and Table Styles if you use tables, so this should be no big chore. If you're not using styles, you're giving yourself a lot of extra work for no gain.

You can do this in any document, or work from an old one. Just be sure that everything that has a standard appearance has its own style. If you like, you can then strip out all the text and save the "blank" document as a template, which can be very useful, but isn't essential.

Load your style sheet into any new document by going to the Paragraph Styles flyout menu and selecting "Load All Text Styles." Navigate to your "master" document (or any document that uses those styles) and click Okay/Choose.

The advantages of this approach are huge. You will have named all your standard styles, you guarantee consistency across all documents, and you can create a new document at lightning speed. For in-house designers who work with more than one brand, or even if there is a different house style for internal documents than the one used for marketing, each set of styles is always at hand. A designer with multiple clients must work this way, or go crazy.

To establish "Body Copy" (let's say) as your default text style in any given document, just click on it in the Paragraph Styles panel while you have no text frame selected. You could still use the same trick lawndartcatcher mentions, but it will leave your document with a lot of unstyled paragraphs, and, well, it just pains me to think of anybody working that way.

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  • Very good points. I have a master document that I can never find ;D but there is no way in InDesign to have that set paragraph styles etc to be "integrated", and so automatically will be there when opening a new document?
    – benteh
    Dec 26, 2013 at 2:15

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