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Indesign data merge bottom justify6/11/2023 Don’t worry about the artboard size for the new file. Make sure that layer, and the “Customer Artwork Layer” are unlocked:ĭrag the Illustrator Selection Tool to select the front cover Entrapment Insert Area and all of your front cover graphics:Ĭopy the selection to the clipboard, create a new (blank) file, then paste the selection into the new file. We start by going to the Illustrator file we created earlier, and making visible the “Entrapment Insert Layer”. Start by creating three PDF background files: One each for the front, back and spine. (We’ll always send a proof, so you will be able to verify that nothing was lost in translation.) Getting Ready For Variable Text – Creating Intermediate PDF Files Send us your comma-separated list of names, and we will do the rest. Use the “Package” function in either InDesign or Illustrator. We then save the spreadsheet as a comma separated file in order to eventually load it into InDesign: If You Want, You Can Stop HereĪt this point, if you like, you can stop and we will take over. Note that we have two columns, and a header in row number one: Whichever program you use, you need to save out the list as a “comma separated file” for eventual importing into InDesign. We use Google Sheets for this, but you can also use Microsoft Excel. We need to load the copy that will be fed into the InDesign data merge feature into a spreadsheet. That will allow us to work with it downstream. The first, with placeholder text included, and the second, with the placeholder text removed. If you use something that is not inside the Adobe Creative Suite, though, be sure to save out two PDF copies. We have customers who use Photoshop, Corel Draw, Illustrator, InDesign…any program is fine. This is just to verify design and placement.Īlso note that it doesn’t make any difference what program you use to create the background. Note that even though this is the background, we included placeholder text showing where the names will be added later. In our example, the background artwork looks like this: The graphics on your binder break down into two sections: The common area (or background), and the variable text (or foreground). Use which ever one you are more comfortable with. It doesn’t matter which program you use at this stage. We offer these templates in both InDesign and Illustrator formats. The basic binder template looks like this: Each player will be given their own, unique binder. We also list template files for each product on the individual product pages, such as our Full Color Vinyl Binders With Variable Copy here.įor our purposes in this article, we will be using a 2″ full color vinyl binder being used for team playbooks. You can find template files for all of our custom binder styles and sizes here. Getting Started – Find The Correct TemplateĪs with any custom binder project, we start with the correct template file. If you want to skip all the setup information and go right to InDesign data merge, jump ahead to the good stuff here. This is a long article, and we go through a lot of setup before getting to the actual InDesign variable text stuff. The tools used are Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, and Google Sheets. In this article, we step through the workflow we use in order to set up the print files for these projects. These custom binder applications all have one thing in common: The text printed on the binder changes from one binder to the next. We do variable text custom binder projects for athletic teams, presentation binders for proposals, and training program binders. InDesign calls this feature “data merge”. Variable text means that certain text elements change from one custom binder to the next, such as names or numbers. SpeedBinder uses Adobe InDesign to set up the variable text graphics on custom binder artwork.
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