Tips, tricks and tutorials for web design and graphic design.

You can use any character of any font available to you in InDesign as a bullet point. If that isn’t enough, you can also use the vector graphic of your choice. Here’s how.

Add bullet points to your text in InDesign. I am using CS4, but this probably works in other versions.

Bullet points can be added two different ways.

1. Select the text.
2. Go to the options flyout menu on the paragraphs panel.
3. Choose Numbering and Bullets.
4. Select Bullets from the drop down menu in the dialog box.

-or-

1. Select the text.
2. Go to the paragraph styles panel.
3. From the options flyout menu of the paragraph styles panel, select NEW STYLE.
4. Name your new style
5. When the dialog box opens, select Bullets and Numbering from the list at the left.
6. Select Bullets from the style drop down menu.

The benefit of adding bullet points as a paragraph style is that you can reuse the bullet style with a click.

Note: Only change bullets to graphics when you are finished editing the text. This process changes bullets to text instead of bulleted lists, so they will not be editable as bullets. You can still edit them as text with tabs.

Get your graphic for the bullets.

1. Bring your vector image into InDesign. I am copying and pasting from Illustrator, but you can also place (file -> place) in InDesign.
2. Size it to the size you need for the bullets.
3. Copy your vector image to the clipboard.
4. Select the bulleted text.
5. Under Type -> Bulleted & Numbered Lists -> Convert Bullets to Text.

Change the bullet to a graphic.

1. Select the bulleted list.
2. Go under Edit -> Find/Change.
3. In the dialog box, make sure you are in the TEXT tab.
4. Click the flyout menu button to the right of the Find What drop down list.
5. Select Symbols -> Bullet Character.

1. Click the flyout menu button to the right of the Change To drop down list.
2. Select Other -> Clipboard Contents, Unformatted.
3. Click Change All.

Your bullet points are now graphics!