plusminus±

Jesse Cain on Macbeth

russell — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:27:56 +0000

Via The Age. Also check out Her Majesty’s Theatre where he works.

My Inner Brown Bear, Melbourne Zoo

russell — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:00:37 +0000

]]>

Tynt, the Copy/Paste Jerks

russell — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:25:53 +0000

The Empty Birdhouse at Café Beaz

russell — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:42:37 +0000

]]>

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.