You know, since we are just getting started, let’s keep things simple. Tag a friend in the comments who you think should be tuning in and taking Mrs. Wheeler’s Design 101 lessons! I’ll be checking and giving grades on participation!

 

Welcome to our first Design 101 class. This month’s theme is back to basics, so today we are going to look at a few symbols that you probably use but don’t know. OK yes, I could see how that sounds confusing… I’ll explain!

There are a lot of universal symbols in different software like Word, PowerPoint, Google Docs that designers also see in Adobe programs.  Insert bold Image For example, most of you know to click the capital B to make your text bold. What about all those other symbols?! 

Some of these new tools will help you create cleaner and more impressive documents. You will also be a little more comfortable if you decide to explore any Adobe programs! Let’s just dive right in

PARAGRAPH ALIGNMENT

Which way is your paragraph facing? To the left?! To the right?!

There are a few small symbols that to the untrained eye look just like some horizontal lines. These lines tell you which side of the document/margin your paragraph will start, or align to. 

Left, Right, Center. When the lines are all even, that is called justified. This means that both sides of the paragraph are in a nice straight line!

INCREASE AND DECREASE INDENT

How many times have you gotten in a battle with your bullet points?! It indents too far and you can’t format it back…we have all been there. Well, lucky for us this symbol of an arrow and lines forces an indent in or out. Now you and your bullet points can be besties again.

FORMAT PAINTER

Jamie spends way too long making our google docs color coded. (to J) what! You do! Well, here I was thinking she spent too much time on it when she told me about the format painter symbol! This one is neato! You select the text format you want and simple highlight, or paint, over another line of text and it will apply all the formatting like magic!

SAVE

This one is for all the youngin’s out there. Most of you know what the save symbol LOOKS like but you know what it is based off of? Before CD in computers there were Floppy Disks! You could save a whopping 1.5 megabyte on a floppy disk (that is about 1.5 iPhone photos) I think it’s coolio that the save symbol is a little nod to computer history

CLEAR FORMATTING

You know when you copy text from a website and paste it in an email and it’s huge and you’re like uh no thank you. Next time this happens just click the T with a slash through it and it will clear any crazy formatting.