At the time of writing this article, an old design trend has resurfaced – the block shadow. In the following slideshow are some examples of the block shadow in use from a fast food chain, mobile phone provider and hardware franchise.
In my mind, it reminds me of the old Microsoft Word ‘wordart’ from the 1990s.
Just for fun, the late scripter Theunis de Jong (aka Jongware) made a script for Adobe InDesign called ‘extrude’ that would create this effect in InDesign. For the script to work on the type shown in the example below, it had to be converted to outlines, so did not work on live type.
The post about the script is here but the download links to the script are no longer available.
With this in mind, it is worth noting that InDesign’s effects panel was last updated in April 2007 with the release of CS3 – this introduced Gradient Feather, Directional Feather, Bevel and Emboss, Satin, Inner Shadow, Inner and Outer Glow (user interface shown below).
As trends change with the times, I can say that it has been some time since I’ve used the drop shadow or bevel/emboss features… but it would be great to jump on the block-shadow bandwagon – perhaps now is a good time to add some new effects such as the block shadow?
Making block shadows today
Given that there is no simple ‘block shadow’ button or effect throughout the CC apps, there are three techniques/workarounds that are commonly used – in Adobe Illustrator – to create block shadows:
- Blend tool. This is best explained by Dave Clayton over at the Creative Pro Youtube channel.
- Transform effect. This is best explained by Laura Coyle over on her Youtube channel – this can be applied individually; as a graphic style; or as a layer style as shown in the video.
- 3D effects. This is best explained by Monika Gause over at the Vektorgarten Youtube channel.
These three techniques have the advantage of applying the effect to live type, but the first two methods suffer in other ways, namely the creation of dozens – or hundreds – of objects that will inflate a filesize when exported to PDF. The carousel shows a block shadow example below, and then the respective wireframes using the blend tool and the transform effect.
AG Block Shadow for the win
A better solution that was mentioned – and demonstrated in Dave Clayton’s video linked earlier was an Illustrator plug-in from Astute Graphics, specifically the Stylism plug-in.
Once again the effect can be applied to live type, but upon PDF export the wireframe is minimal.
This plug-in is one of 21 that are available with the Astute Graphics subscription, so check out their site to find out more.
A surprise contender
While researching this post, I had learned that Corel Draw had a dedicated block shadow button, and user directions that allowed easy control of the depth, direction, colour and other features of the block shadow that – once again, can be applied to live type, and has a minimal wireframe upon PDF export.
However, investing and learning a whole new application in order to use one feature isn’t something that most people are likely to do.
Let the uservoice know
Regular readers of this blog will be aware that there is a website dedicated to receiving bug notifications and feature requests for Adobe InDesign – this the InDesign.Uservoice. Similarly, Illustrator has one too, and also has a request for the block shadow feature.