Creating Fillable Forms

Carl Shank • October 15, 2023

Creating Fillable Forms — Everyone uses a form, whether it is a doctor's form, or an insurance form, or a credit form or a school registration form. Form creating is both an art and science. You want a form to be readable, convey the required information and be understandable. We also want forms, if they are online, to be fillable, with fields that invite the applicant to simply click and type in the information requested. Three programs that I use to create forms are the Adobe InDesign layout program, Acrobat, and Google Forms. Each has their strengths and weaknesses.


InDesign Form Making — InDesign provides a path in the program for creating forms in their Button and Forms library. This is found in Windows > Interactive > Buttons and Forms which has form elements that you can use in designing your form. You can add simple form elements such as text fields, radio buttons, check boxes or signatures. You can also add actions to submit the form by email or print.


Solid strokes and fills to the form fields, on/off hover states for buttons, check boxes and radio buttons can be added.  You can specify font and font sizes in text input fields. You can then export this simple form to Adobe Acrobat for additional editing. See Adobe's Help Index on forms for more information.


What is not told is that you must actually create the form and then add the buttons and field boxes and so forth. Here a very helpful tool is to use InDesign Form Templates, which professional designers have provided for our use. These are beautifully constructed forms that can be opened in Adobe Illustrator and used in programs like InDesign. I have included four downloaded forms below to show you the capabilities of such designed elements.


The advantages of using a high end program like InDesign are many for form creation. Like any other professional layout program, InDesign has all the bells and whistles that you need to design a form of your liking. Its myriad font selections, color selections, design elements and so forth will help you create an attractive and eye-catching form that is unlike many of the standard line forms you have seen. Many people also use Adobe Illustrator for form creation as well. The Form templates offered by Brand Packs are visually compelling and created for everything from registration forms to medical forms. Note the examples below.


The disadvantages are also to be noted. InDesign and the Forms Templates are not cheap. The InDesign program itself comes usually as part of the package of Creative Cloud from Adobe and costs over $50 per month for a subscription, which is the only way the current InDesign program is available. You cannot buy a current stand-alone InDesign program. The last stand alone program was in the CS series, InDesign CS 6, which is not available from Adobe any more. Form Templates created for Adobe Creative Cloud are also available for a price, brand packs.com offer seventeen outstanding InDesign compatible forms. They are available in the Adobe Stock program for a monthly fee of $30 – $200 per month, which includes not merely forms but all of the Adobe assets. One time users can retrieve five professionally made forms for $50 up to 150 forms and other assets for whopping price of $1,200. This fee is in addition to the regular Creative Cloud program fee. Additionally, extra type styles which may not be available from Adobe or in the default program can be costly, since using these fonts come with licenses for which often you pay a fee.


Acrobat Forms —  One of the most used programs for creating forms is Adobe Acrobat. Editable PDF forms are available using Acrobat to securely secure data from customers and clients, vendors and more. Using Acrobat's "tool bar," fillable form fields, text fields, drop down menus, checkboxes and signature fields are available. You can either download a paper form from your scanner or from a file on your computer. Acrobat then adds fillable form fields which you can then distribute. (See Sample Below)


The steps are fairly easy —

  1. Open Acrobat:
    Click on the “Tools” tab and select “Prepare Form.”
  2. Select a file or scan a document:
    Acrobat will automatically analyze your document and add form fields.
  3. Add new form fields:
    Use the top toolbar and adjust the layout using tools in the right pane.
  4. Save your fillable PDF:
    You can also share it with others or click Distribute to collect responses automatically.

See https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/create-form.html for more help.


However, unlike InDesign's or Illustrator's many layout elements, Acrobat depends on forms that have been already created for those professional touches.


Google Forms — Certainly, one of the easiest and cheapest way to create and use a form is through Google Forms, available at forms.google.com or your Google Drive. Many users have Google Drive enabled on their computers. There are a few Form Templates offered. (See Illustration below).

  1. Step 1: Go to forms.google.com or Google Drive.
  2. Step 2: Select a template.
  3. Step 3: Change the title of your form.
  4. Step 4: Adjust questions and answers.
  5. Step 5: Customize the Google Form theme.
  6. Step 6: Preview your form.

Google notes that you can add a header image and customize the color scheme and fonts used. Google offers this advice — "When you're done, simply click the Send button, and choose to send it via email (either a link to the form or the entire form embedded in an email), copy a link to share manually, or embed the form as HTML on your site. When the responses start trickling in, you can see them in a list of aggregated data or individually, along with a collection of charts appropriate to the question type. If you're a spreadsheet wizard, you can take this data to Google Sheets and look for deeper connections there.


In addition to that Sheets integration, you can also pre-fill a form to save your respondents some time, collaborate with others on your form, and browse a collection of add-ons on the Google Workspace Marketplace. Bonus: if your respondents are Google users, their progress will be saved on any given form for a month, so they can click away and come back to it later." (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6281888?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop#zippy=%2Ccreate-a-form-from-google-drive)


Takeaways. As an avid InDesign user and  typographer I tend toward using that platform for designing and using forms. Just to note that many of my colleagues use Adobe Illustrator, and that is all fine.  I like the creative freedom, the outstanding visual appeal possible and the end results seen and appreciated. I understand, however, the cost may be prohibitive for some, and busy office professionals may simply want a quick and easy form for their company. Google Forms cannot be beat with Adobe Acrobat coming in a close second. Take a look at the included forms below to get some ideas. If you would like CARE Typography to design your next form, let us know at cshanktype@gmail.com. We would be happy to quote you a price and offer a quick no-hassle turnaround.




Successful Layout & Design

Advances in Typography: A Historical Sketch (Part 2)

By Carl Shank • November 20, 2025
Industrial Revolution and Display Typography (1800–1870) I have recently viewed the broadcasts of Great Canal Journeys, a narrated insight into Britain’s canals and waterways by two married and retired actors. They have been responsible for the restoration of a number of Britain’s canal systems. They noted that the Industrial Revolution in that country brought about the almost demise of the canals for moving products across the continent. The railroads took over much of the movement of goods from one place to another. In much the same way, typography and printing were forever transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Britannica notes that “the Industrial Revolution changed the course of printing and typography not only by mechanizing a handicraft but also by greatly increasing the market for its wares. Inventors in the nineteenth century, in order to produce enough reading matter for a constantly growing and ever more literate population, had to solve a series of problems in paper production, composition, printing, and binding.”

Advances in Typography (1500–1900): A Historical Sketch (Part 1)

By Carl Shank • November 18, 2025
Advances in Typography (1500–1900) A Historical Sketch (Part 1) Early Renaissance (1500–1550) We had noted in the Blog “What Happened After Gutenberg: 1460–1640” (November 8, 2025) that movable type spread across Europe beyond its German roots. Gothic Blackletter type, though still used for religious and legal documents, began to give way to Venetian old style humanist faces. Influenced by humanist handwriting and calligraphy, Aldus Manutius and Francesco Griffo developed italic type for compact books. National printing centers became established in Venice, Italy, Paris and Lyon, France, Basel, Germany and Antwerp in the Netherlands The transition from Gothic to Italic typefaces was part of the broader evolution of typography that took place during the Renaissance period, driven by shifts in cultural, aesthetic, and technological factors. The Renaissance, beginning in Italy in the fourteenth century, marked a revival of classical antiquity and a move toward humanism. This brought a renewed interest in the legible, flowing scripts of Roman and Greek antiquity, which were more readable and aesthetically simple compared to Gothic lettering. The development of the printing press (ca. 1440) by Johannes Gutenberg created a need for more versatile and legible typefaces. The emerging humanist values aligned with a preference for typefaces that resembled the clear, round, and graceful writing of ancient Roman scripts.\ The Italic typeface was introduced by Aldus Manutius in Venice around 1501. Italic type is a cursive font based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with Blackletter (See Blog Jan 16, 2025 Blackletter Type and Universities) and roman type, italic has served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Italics takes notable influences from hand drawn calligraphy, with italic letters normally slanted slightly to the right. Upper case letters may have typographic swashes, flourishes inspired by ornate calligraphy. The name “italic” comes from their Italian use, to replace documents traditionally written in a hand-written style called chancery hand. Notice also the small “end point bowls” on some of the letters, where the ink pen stopped for a second. While modern italics are often more condensed than roman types, historian Harry Carter describes Manutius' italic as about the same width as roman type. To replicate handwriting, Griffo cut at least sixty-five tied letters (ligatures) in the Aldine Dante and Virgil of 1501. Italic typefaces of the following century used varying but reduced numbers of ligatures. Manutius sought to create more compressed elegant typefaces that could fit more text on a page, catering to the rising demand for smaller, portable books. Italic was based on the handwriting of Niccolò de’ Niccoli, a Renaissance scholar and calligrapher. Italic typefaces are defined by their slanted, cursive-like appearance, with letters that have a flowing, dynamic quality. It allowed for more text to be fitted on the page and mimicked the handwriting style of humanist scholars, like the handwriting of Petrarch. The common italic “slope” was introduced in the sixteenth century — “The first printer known to have used them was Johann or Johannes Singriener in Vienna in 1524, and the practice spread to Germany, France and Belgium. Particularly influential in the switch to sloped capitals as a general practice was Robert Granjon, a prolific and extremely precise French punchcutter particularly renowned for his skill in cutting italics. Vervliet comments that among punchcutters in France "the main name associated with the change is Granjon's.” (Wikipedia on Italic Type) The insertion of an italic typeface alongside a roman face would wait until later to distinguish portions of a book not properly belonging to the work, such as introductions, prefaces, indexes, and notes; the text itself being in Roman. Later, it was used in the text for quotations ; and finally served the double part of emphasizing certain words. Italic type was not only more elegant than the Gothic but also more efficient in terms of space. It became the preferred choice for printed texts that emphasized classical learning, philosophy, poetry, and humanist literature. Italic was initially used for entire texts but later became more common for emphasis alongside Roman type.
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