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All Day Breakfast

russell — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:11:24 +0000

InDesign Data Merge

russell — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:30:51 +0000

Perhaps you don’t know, perhaps you have always just used Microsoft Word for it – but you no longer have an excuse. Adobe InDesign does data merge (or ‘mail merge’ for all you Word users out there) and it seemed like a task and half to find a decent, straightforward, no-bull tutorial on the web for how to just use it – so here’s a basic step-by-step.

Layout your design

It’s pretty easy – just design your item (let’s say a name tag) like you would any other design. Put in some dummy text for now, no problems.

Create your data

You’ll need the information you’re going to use in a tab separated .txt file – you can do this by exporting it from Excel or Numbers. Put in column headings – InDesign needs them. Something tricky to note here, InDesign can Data Merge image files if you like – but their column heading needs to start with an @ symbol, and their content needs to be a relative path to the image file you’re going to merge. eg- “/images/variable-named-image-.jpg”.

Hook up your data

Pick your data file through the Automation -> Data Merge Panel -> Select Data Source link in InDesign. Then the panel will list out the values you can data merge – just drag these out into the appropriate text/image boxes in your file. And that’s it – you can preview values using the preview function on the Data Merge Panel, or just hit the Create Merged Document link and you’re done. Now that wasn’t so hard – and didn’t need a 10 page tutorial + video to explain.

Spelling Errors

russell — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:32:54 +0000

In the future, I predict we’ll end up with the majority of the population fitting into one of two categories:

1. People who can’t spell, but take the time to spell check and correct errors.
2. People who can’t spell and don’t care.

Top and Tail

russell — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:52:05 +0000

Functioning Form entry in regards to designing the big picture, and the small picture – not just one or the other. This is a great way of figure out UI design problems – start with what we’re trying to fix, sweat out some details and then worry about the rest later.

Firefox 3.5 – Fan-bloody-tastic

russell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:05:25 +0000

Finally some more support for box-shadow and some HTML5 is coming along for the ride. Always love a new browser that doesn’t suck.

Is building a house anything like building a website?

russell — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:42:44 +0000

We’re about to find out.

Free WiFi in Cafés… please.

russell — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:05:05 +0000

Really? I thought I was good – we had a deal, I came to your café, bought my coffee and even splashed out by getting something to eat too. So why oh why then dear café owner do you think I want to pay to use the internet too? I’m pretty sure you’re connected here anyway — you’ve got that old computer back there that you use to tweet while you’re waiting for customers. Just let me use your internet, seriously.

border-radius

russell — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 06:22:41 +0000

Archive this!

russell — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:41:06 +0000

Pro tip for all you ~~web designers~~ bloggers out there. If you’re going to start a blog, don’t show an Archives button until you know you’re going to have enough content to fill it. I’m not saying don’t allow for it in your design – but don’t think yourself so fantastic at blogging that you’ll have that homepage filled in a week. The only way your site could look more stale would be to put a Last updated message in the footer and an Under Construction sign in the Contact Us page.

Napkins Under Food

russell — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:15:27 +0000

I’ve lost count the amount of times that I’ve had to sit back at a restaurant or café and just thought to myself – Why?

For some reason, somewhere along the line, someone thought it was a brilliant idea to put a napkin underneath food when giving it to a customer – that person was wrong. Why someone would think that a napkin isn’t going to get stuck to the bottom of food is beyond my mere mortal brain capacity. Especially things like toasted sandwiches that have melting cheese, it’s just a recipe for disaster. I’ve even had this conversation with a hospitality teacher who said they didn’t know where it came from and they never ever teach students to do it.

So where did it come from? And can it please go back there now?