ps. I just noticed my avatar is exactly what I'm trying to create. I'd love to be able to simply type the circles in, so that they behave like other text elements and flow with copy.

Not sure about how to do it in InDesign, but maybe:

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/larstornqvist/endast/
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/larstornqvist/knappast/
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/ingrimayne/tocin-rings/

Hi Joseph

You can set this quite easily with two adjacent characters in the same text frame; the first one is the black circle/bullet – try 'L' in Zapf Dingbats. The second one is the M, C, or E in whatever font you like (I tried Myriad), sized slightly smaller, coloured white and baseline shifted by a small increment – maybe half a point. Position the text cursor between the two, and either key shift-option-left arrow or enter a large negative value in the kerning field in the control palette (about -500). The second character will kern right back over the top of the first one.

I doubt you could define these two together as a character style, but you can certainly select them both, copy and paste them wherever you like. Alternatively you could create outlines from these characters, group them together, select, copy and paste as an inline graphic into any text frames.

Following the idea above, you could create a style for the circle, a style for the character, and use nested styles to make one paragraph style that would accomplish both. You could then paste this as an in-line text frame with an object style that contains the paragraph style. Does that make sense?

Ben, I think your approach has a lot of merit, although I don't have time to test it right now. With a paragraph style that uses nested character styles you could control the attributes of the circle and letter separately to achieve the desired effect.

Joshua, I think we're on the same track, but I don't think the inline text frame is needed.

I would consider modifying the font.

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/24c2/index.htm
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/24b8/index.htm
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/24ba/index.htm

Hey Ben, thanks for taking the time to reply... that's a good trick! I will be trying it out shortly. I'll need to explore inline graphics a bit as I rarely use them.

Joshua, funny you mentioned nested styles, as I was just watching a tutorial on the subject today by Nigel French. Currently I can grasp the concept of nested styles and use them for very basic applications, unfortunately what you suggested is over my head! Hopefully it will all make sense soon.

Cheers,

J

RiccardO... interesting solution! I don't think that will provide the styling control I need, but thanks anyway.

Hi,

Check out this font http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/dstype/acta-symbols/circles/
It has been built with ligatures, allowing to put letters and/or numbers inside two kind of circles.

There are regular codepoints available for the sorts you need: block 2460 for A-Z encircled positive (white), range 1F100 for A-Z in negative (default black, hence suitable for colouring).

[wanted to upload an image but it didn’t… ]

either
– use a font which contains the glyphs (e.g. Symbojet)
or
– modify a chosen font to contain them.

Then you can type the characters via glyph palette or: edit a custom keyboard layout to instantly hack them in.