Affinity Publisher: style hierarchy

[Pyanepsion]

Hello everyone,

I'm thinking about structuring character and text styles.

I have created a base style that contains all the constants (character, typography, paragraph) from the standard body text. I then created each style as a dependency of this base, indicating each time only what varies (Normal, Heading n, Bulleted list n, Quote n, etc. where n indicates the level of each kind of style). [See column 1]

Is it wise to make each Style n dependent on Style 1 knowing that Style 2 can differ greatly from Style 1, and that Style 3 can differ greatly from Style 1 and Style 2, etc.? [See column 2]

There is another possibility: Style n depends on Style n-1, but I have not retained it, because I do not find what it could bring of positive to counterbalance the illegibility of the style list.

What advantages and disadvantages do you see in each method?

Thank you for your explanations.

[000]

Perfectly valid way of working. In my opinion, there is no right or wrong, just how you prefer setting things up -- whatever works for you.

On some projects, I work in a similar fashion, but usually have two or three different ,base' styles, e. g. the main font, headlines and header/footer.

[Pyanepsion]

The aim is to compare the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

The aim is to compare the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

I think it will depend heavily on your method of working, and on the changes that you typically make, and on how many style variations you have in each category. Edit: Also, on how different each variation is.

[Old Bruce]

I set absolutely everything I can in the Base and Headings Groups and just have everything Inherited in their child styles.

I break down my different group styles according to use and Font Family.

I may have a Group for the Bulk of the text and another for the Headings and a Third for Lists, or captions.

One project had the Bulk, First Paragraph and Last Paragraph. All the same font family, size and justification. Differences were Flow options, spacing before and after plus the First paragraph had a Drop Cap in it. If I had Numbered Lists or Bulleted Lists I may have included them in the Base Group if they used the same Serif Font font A as the Bulk Paragraph Style. Or I would have put them in a group of their own if they were sufficiently different. The Headings Group may be set up just for the convenience of having them in a group that can be hidden away in the list.

Base ->   - - - - - -  - - - - - - Serif Font font A

     Bulk Text->

          First Paragraph ->

               Drop Cap Character Style - - - - A unique font is the only change.

          Last Paragraph

     Caption 1 ->   - - - - - - - Different weight of same Serif Font font A

          Caption 2

Headings ->   - - - - - -  - - -Sans Serif Fonts

     Chapter Titles          font 1

     Section Names         font 2

     Page Headers ->      font 3

          Page Numbers  

=================================

In essence I want to have to change as little as possible in a new Paragraph style's definition, everything else should be inherited. Take the Bulk Paragraph Style for example, I may change absolutely nothing from the its Based on Base group style, I have it so I can change things later on and have those inherited by First Paragraph and Last Paragraph. I may change the justification from Ragged Right to Justified. I may alter the leading. I may alter the Flow. The thing is I do not want the two Caption styles to change, so they are separate from the Bulk Text but still based on the Base group. 

At a certain point I realize that the font I have chosen is not quite right so I switch to a different font family in the Base and the book's text and captions change to that family.

===============

Looking at your screenshot I think you may have a situation where the four Quotes could be in

Quote 1 -> Font A

   Quote 2 Font A Italic + other stuff...

Quote 3 -> Font B

   Quote 4 Font B Underlined + other stuff...

_________________________________________________________

Bottom line is there is no hard and fast, one size fits all rule. Different Projects will have different needs and that may result in different hierarchies.

The most important thing is descriptive names, not Jacket 1, Jacket 2,  etc Try Jacket Title or Jacket Author Bio or Jacket Publisher's Blurb.

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

The aim is to compare the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

Aside the mentioned individual habits: if you are in a process of still developing a layout and styles the linked definitions can appear efficient but also can disturb at a certain stage.

But for a template of a defined, final layout such hierarchical styles can't be a disadvantage. However, they do not prevent one from copying one of the linked styles as new and independent style or adding entirely individual styles at any time.

It is a bit like the flexibility of frame text versus art text or normal colour swatches vs. global swatches or cmyk vs. rgb … each of them has its reasons and linked consequences but also can appear as a limitation in certain situations. Then you might want to be able just to switch or toggle without loosing anything – which is not possible. In the latter aspect text styles are more flexible.

[Catshill]

I have a similar style set but my Base is a group style with all other styles including Body style below this.

One niggle is that I get heading+1 styles added by Publisher which upsets my clean Text style window. Normally this is down to using Assets that differ but I have not really worked out how to fix it reliably.