Transcripts
1. Intro: That's camera 1, camera 2, audio
[APPLAUSE] [MUSIC]. In this fast-paced world, it is essential that
we are able to use all the tools available to us
as efficiently as possible. InDesign data merge functions give you the ability to create hundreds of variations of your designs in a
matter of minutes. By utilizing key scripts, you can export a hundreds of
personalized designs with functional file naming
in a matter of seconds. Learn to efficiently create high-volume business
cards, email signatures, letterheads, ID
cards, look books, QR codes, and so much more. The point is, this tool has so many applications that is not only something graphic
designers should know, it's a practical
tool to help you accomplish many of your
high-volume tasks. Hey guys, my name is
Kyle Aaron Parson. I'm a freelance graphic designer and illustrator from Edmonton, Canada, as well as being a top teacher here
on Skillshare. Over my career, I've worked with many clients to develop logos, posters, and brands styles. One thing that is incredibly
important in the world of design is the ability
to work efficiently. Why repeat a task that
can easily be automated? This is what we'll go
over in today's class. The data merge function in Adobe InDesign is
a game changer for producing high-volume
designs that require a variable information. This allows each design to
have it's own personal touch. Throughout this class,
we will learn how to practically use this tool
to create business cards, ID cards, and a simple bio page. However, the applications of this process are truly endless. By using this technique, you will save hours
of laborious work re-inputting information
over and over again. This will allow you more time
to focus on the design at hand or time for the things that you are
truly passionate about. After taking this class, you'll have a tool-set
that allow you to take on bigger projects
for bigger clients and level up your portfolio. Although having an understanding of InDesign is beneficial, this class is perfect
for beginners as well as more intermediate users. If you're ready to learn
high-volume design, I will see you in class. [MUSIC]
2. Welcome to Class!: [MUSIC] Welcome to
class. The project for this class is to use the Data Merge tool
in Adobe InDesign to create a high-volume design. This can be a set
of business cards, ID cards, or a simple lookbook. Really, it can be
anything you want. You'll need access to Adobe InDesign as
well as to download the project assets
that we will be using to follow along
within the class. You'll find an Excel
spreadsheet with the variable information
we will use, and you will also find a
picture pack as well as the InDesign class project files to quickly apply
what you've learned. Some previous knowledge of Adobe InDesign is
definitely an asset. However, this class is part of a practical graphic
design series. If you'd like a more
guided introduction to InDesign to learn the basic functionality of the program, or you want to learn about the design theory that will
train your creative eye, definitely check out my other practical
graphic design classes here on Skillshare. In the first couple of classes, we will learn different forms
of high-volume designs, as well as how to manage
your information so you can get the most out of
this awesome design tool. After that, we'll learn
how easy it is to apply variable information
onto an existing design, as well as some
key export options that will speed up your
workflow immensely. After that, we will go through some troubleshooting
techniques and finally, a few more applications
such as applying variable images and QR codes. Let's jump right in and explore the endless possibilities of this game-changing
tool in InDesign.
3. What is Data Merge?: [MUSIC] So what
exactly does the data merge function allow you to do? The data merge
function allows you to create placeholders within your design and
allows you to replace that placeholder with
predetermined information. It allows you to cycle through the information
as well as export a document with
all the variations that could be created with
your information set. The possibilities of this
tool are truly endless. A few examples are
business cards, email signatures,
letter heads, postage, personalized cards,
event passes, trading cards,
yearbooks, brochures, and so much more. The point is that this tool has so many applications
that it is not only something that graphic
designers should know, it is a practical tool to help accomplish many
high-volume tasks. Think about a bride who wants to send out personalized thank you cards to the hundreds of
guests who attend her wedding. Think about the small business
owner who wants to add a personal touch to his newsletter for
his loyal customers. All these things can
be incredibly easy to do when you learn this
awesome tool in InDesign. I hope you can see
by now how excited I am about this
awesome design tool. Let's jump right
into the next class and learn how to organize our information to
get the most out of our high-volume designs.
4. Organizing Your Information: [MUSIC]. In this class, let us learn how we can gather and organize our information to utilize
this feature in InDesign. Although you can use a
simple text editor like Notepad to organize
your information, it is way more efficient to use an Excel spreadsheet or even
better, a Google Sheets. Why Google Sheets? Well, because if you are
tasked with the job of collecting the information
from multiple people, you can easily share the Google Sheets with
them and they can easily add their own information and it will update in real-time. However, I'll be using an
Excel document for this class. If you want to organize
your information in Google sheets or
even on Notepad, you can go right ahead. As long as the information
is laid out correctly, it doesn't matter too much
about the program you use. In order to properly use
the data merge tool, your information should be
laid out in a specific way. You'll give each section of information its own
unique column on the sheet and place the title of that column in the first row. The first row will be the title of the information
in that column. In the column that
says First Name, you'll want to put
all the first names, and that goes for all the
information in each column. It's pretty straightforward. Whatever information
you want to have separated should
have its own column. An example is the first name and last name could be
separated because you may want to only use the
first name or only use the last name on occasion
in your documents. Now you can fill in
all the information, keeping the information that is related in the correct row. An example is, all of Joe Cool's information like
his email, phone number, address, and favorite animal is in row Number 2 of
the spreadsheet. Now for some fun, I
want you to open up the nameless Excel spreadsheet from the project files and add your name and information
in the bottom row so that you can create a
personalized class project. Now it doesn't have to be
your actual information if you want to create a made-up
persona for yourself, definitely go right
ahead and do that. [NOISE] Now that we
know how to set up our information in our
Excel spreadsheet, in the next class we will
understand the key file type to be able to use our information
with the data merge tool.
5. Saving Your Information: [MUSIC] One key thing
that you need to do before you can
use your information in InDesign is you must save
your Excel spreadsheet as a CSV file or a
comma-separated values file. This will allow your
information to properly communicate with the
InDesign software. To understand how our
information will be received, let's see how we organize our
information in a.TXT file. Here we can see
that the first line will be the title
of the information. Each section is separated
by a tab or a comma. Though the information isn't as structured as it is in
an Excel spreadsheet, the information will be
read the same regardless. Where there is a
linebreak that creates a new row of
information and where there is a tab or a comma in that row that will mark the information in
the specific column. Obviously, there's
more room for error and it is harder to
manage your information. But if you wanted to, you could format
your information with a simple text
editor like this. Saving your Excel spreadsheet as a.csv will allow
your information to be broken down into this simple format in
order to process it. Once this information
is organized you can easily apply it to an assortment of
different design needs, as we will cover in this class. In our next class, we will apply this
information to create multiple custom business
cards in a matter of minutes. To prepare for the next class, make sure you have the
Class Assets downloaded and open up the file [MUSIC]
Business Card Example. I will see you in class.
6. Applying Variable Text: [MUSIC] In this class,
we'll learn how to use the data merge function to apply variable information
onto an existing design. Let's jump right in. I have opened here at the
business card example InDesign file. On the business card, we want to apply the name of the person, the title of the person, his email address, and maybe
also the phone number. Let's see how we can do that. Before we start, we want to
have a few windows open. You can see here, I have the character panel
and the paragraph panel. I have some swatches here, the color panel, stroke, we're not really
going to use that right now. The layers panel we
won't use and the pages, as you can see, we have one page here, that's all
we're going to need. If you don't see the
windows that I have open, you can always go to window
and you can find it here, types and table of
characters and paragraph, as well as a few different
ones through color, you can find the swatches. More importantly, we want to
find the data merge utility. If we go down to utilities, we can find the data merge. We could get an click on the
Data merge here and we can drag it over to our side. Now we can dock it
with everything else. Now we can open up and we
can select a data source. Now one way we can add
the information in InDesign is simply by
creating a text box. Now one-by-one, if we wanted to, we can go in and we can type in the person's name and
type in the title. That's all well and good. But if you have hundreds of
different names and titles, actually this will be
really repetitive to have to input all these
information manually. We're just going to undo that. What we're going to
do is we're going to go to the data merge utility, and we're going to go to the dropdown menu and
select the data source. Once we select the data source, we got to find in our files, the nameless that we have
in our project resources. We have an Excel spreadsheet
comma separated values file. I'm going to click on that
and I'm going to open. Now you can see it populated all the information we had
in the Excel spreadsheet. The word in the first column is the title of the information. Now you can see we have a
prefix, we have the first name, last name, email, phone number, address, title, and so forth. All we have to do
now is we can create a text box and you can
see that it has a t here. It means that this information
will be converted to text. What I can do is I can go
into my data merge tool and I can find the
information that I wanted to apply to my text box. I want the first name
and the last name. You can see here that
it already applied. Now if I hit preview in
my data emerge tool, it will actually show
me an example of what it will look like with
all that information applied. I want a space in between, I'll space it out. As well as I want another
line to have my title. I'm going to put my title there, but I don't want
my title as big. I'm going to go to my
character panel and I'm going to make adjustments
to this title. That's looking better. Now, maybe I want it to have
a different weight, maybe medium, and
that's looking good. Now what I want is I want to make some repetition
in my design. I want to use this yellow circle actually right after the title. I want it to always
be right after it. What I could do is I
can use on my keyboard, make a tiny ellipse. Let's zoom in here. I can use the eyedropper
to pick that yellow. Now, I want it to be right
after manager, just like that. However, if I were to
change this information, let's change it to Steve
Awesome, assistant manager. You can see that this dot
does not follow the text. One thing that's really
cool about InDesign is you can actually apply shapes or images into a text box itself.
How do I do that? I'm just going to
go Control x or Command x on unmark to cut it. Then I'm going to put my cursor right after
the assistant manager, with this space and
Control v or Command v. Now you can see I have
my yellow dot there. If I cycled through
my information, you can see that the
yellow dot goes with it. Maybe if I want to make
adjustments to this yellow dot, I can double-click into it and make it a little
smaller, just like that. That's looking really
cool, really good. Now the next thing that
I want to do is I want to create a second text box. I want to have some
more information, but I don't want this
information to be as big, so I'm going to shrink it
down maybe to six points. I'm going to go into my
data merge and I'm going to find my phone number. Hit enter, email, hit enter and address. That's looking pretty good. I want to change the font to, let's see, that. Maybe shrink it
down just one more. Then I bring it down there.
That's looking good. I want to change the
color of my text, maybe to the
gradient green here. Now if I hit w on my keyboard, I can actually preview
what this looks like. I go to my data merge
and I can cycle through all the information
and you can see that it's changing
automatically. Now there's a few things here that we have to look out for. The spacing within
here is not working. I might want to stretch
out my text frame to see all my information. However, in a future class, I want to show you how to
troubleshoot and some of your options to deal with
these overset texts. Now that our business
card is ready and set up, we want to see how
we can export it for print as well as for web, as well as use key
scripts in order to organize our files with
a proper naming system. Guys, I'll see you
in the next class.
7. Exporting For Print: [MUSIC] In this class,
we'll learn how to export your files for print, as well as use a script to
create efficient file naming. Let's jump into InDesign. We're in our business
card example.indd file. What we want to do is we
want to export this as a PDF to send to the printers. One way you can do
this is you can go to the Data Merge Tool and
you can export to PDF. Now you can decide
whether you want to do all the records
within the document. You can do a specific record, a single record number 19, or maybe 16, or whatever
number you want. You can do a range of values. You can decide
only I want number 1-5 because those are the managers or
something like that. You can do a single record
or multiple records, but we will learn
about that later. It says generate oversized texts report with document creation. If you have overset text, it'll actually prompt you
if these things happen. We don't need to deal
with that right now, but we'll deal with that later. There's a few different
options here, but we won't deal with
that at the moment. Now we'll hit "Okay", and we'll go up to our export to PDF menu and we'll decide a
high-quality print is good. We want to export as pages since we don't
even have spreads. We can create separate
PDF files for each page. Joe cool_01 PDF example. We won't do that. We can embed page thumbnails,
stuff like that. We can go into compression. We can adjust these
information marks and bleeds. Maybe we want to use the bleed settings because we're going to send
it to the printer. Output, nothing like that. What we're going to do
is we're going to get one file with all
our images on it. We're going to hit "Export" and we're going
to see what that does. Business Card
Example class assets and it already
exists, that's okay. We'll save over it and we'll
see what that looks like. Now if we go into our files, we go to business card example, it opens up and we
can see here we have our business card
and we can cycle through and we can see all
our different business cards. I set it 1-5, so I might want to adjust that. Let's re-export this and do all records hit
"Okay", hit, "Export". Business card example, yes. Now we can see our
file and there we go. Now we have all our records
within one document and we can send that to
the printer and they can print it out accordingly. Now, what we want
to do is we can try and save this export. We can do export to PDF
and create separate PDF. Let us see what that does. Let's go to export
business card example, and we'll hit "Save". Now we want to business
card example v2. Now what's going to happen
is it's going to export each page as its own PDF. Let us see what happens there. Now you can see that there
is a business card example, v2, v1, something like that. We can open up each one individually and we'll have
each one on its own PDF. However, what if I
want it to be named? The name of the person, not business card example v1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. I'm going to actually delete all those because we
don't want them like that. In order to have an efficient
file naming system, we have to use a key script. Through this script.
It actually allows us to use the first
name, last name, or whatever information
we have and apply that to the title
of the saved PDF. Let us see how we can do that. Jumping back into InDesign. Now to access our scripts, we go to Window,
Utilities, and Scripts. [NOISE] You can see here
in my user scripts, I have one available
to me already. I'm going to remove
that and show you how you can add it to yours. Now we click on the users, we can right-click and we
want to reveal and explorer. Now it'll open up
the explorer panel and you can see
scripts panel here. We're going to
double-click into that, and this is where we want to
paste in our user scripts. In our Class Assets folder, we have an export
script for InDesign. You can use the one for PC or
there's a Mac one as well. I'm going to copy the one for PC and I'm going to paste it into my scripts panel folder. Now if I jump back
into InDesign, you can see that I have my
script available to me now. Now to use this script, all I have to do is I will save my document and I'll
double-click into my script. It'll open up a pop-up menu and you can see that there's a few things that we need to address. First, we need to select a
folder where it should go. I'm going to go
to my desktop and the Class Assets folder and
I'm going to hit "Okay". We have to select a type of
PDF we want to export to. I want high-quality PDF. Now there are the
fields in database. These are all the things that
we have available to us. I'm going to click on the first name and I'm
going to hit "Add" because I want my PDF to be
named after the first name, as well as the last name, so first name, last name. This is going to be how
my information will be displayed in my file
folder naming system. I'm going to hit "Okay". Now it'll run through
its process and it'll export each version of our
design as its individual PDF. Let's jump into our file
and see how that worked. If we go to our
Class Assets folder, we can see that there's
a folder called Results. If we double-click into it
now you can see here we have all our files named according to the person in which
whom they belong. If we go to Joe Cool's, you can see that we have Joe
Cool's business card here. We can go into
Patty Proper and we can see her is
there and so forth. That's really cool how
you can easily and efficiently export your
designs for print. In our next class, [MUSIC] we will
understand how we can export them for web.
8. Exporting For Web: [MUSIC] In this class,
we'll learn how to efficiently export your documents for the
web using PNG or JPEG. Let's jump into InDesign
and see how we can do this. In some cases, we may want to utilize our information for web. However, sometimes we
don't want to have a PDF, we want to have a JPEG or a PNG. How we can do that, we can
do a little workaround. The data merge function
really works with PDF. However, we want to be
able to incorporate PNGs. One way we can do this is
we can go into each one, we can select the preview. We can go to File, we can go to Export, and we can go to Export as a
PNG and now we can save it as Joe Cool and there we go. All pages yes, because there's only one, 72 is for web and RGB
and we'll hit Okay. We can jump into our
folder and we can see Joe Cool is there and
it is a nice little PNG. It has a transparent background
so you can't really see, that'll be awesome for
a email signature. But what if we want to
do this a little faster? What if we have 100 or
200 personalized emails, signatures, you don't
want to go in and export each one
individually like that. You want to work a little more efficiently so let's
see how we can do that. What we can do is we can go into our dropdown menu and we can
create a merged document. When we create a
merged document, it'll actually merge
all the variations of your designs into
one InDesign file. We're going to create merged document all records
and we're going to hit Okay. Now what's going to happen
is it's going to create a new InDesign document, with all our email signatures on a different page so
that's really cool. Now one thing we can do here
is we can go into File, Export, Export as PNG. I'm going to just create
a new folder called Exports and I'm going to open that folder
and I'm going to save, all pages, 72 and export. Now if we jump into our file, go to our exports. Now we have all our
email signatures saved within an instant all as PNGs. The one downside to
this is that they won't have a proper naming
system like we did with the PDFs and I
really haven't found a workaround in order to do that yet so if you
have any suggestions, you can leave it in
the discussions panel I would really love to hear it. However, this is my workaround for exporting them quickly as a PNG or JPEG or whatever
file type you want. One other benefit to
this method to create merge document is you
have the ability to go in and change
individual components on all your design. If you wanted specifically
Patty Proper to, instead of having
a green gradient, maybe she is just to have a
blue background like that. You can change that
to an individual part of a design and it won't
affect all the others. If you want to go in and
tweak these little things, you can definitely do it through the merged document option. In our next class,
we'll learn how to troubleshoot a couple
of our text issues.
9. Trouble Shooting Text: [MUSIC] Let's see how
we can troubleshoot some of our text issues as well as make it as
automated as possible. Let's jump into InDesign. We have our business card example open here and
you can see that I have my name text as well as my title in
one text box here. I only want my text to
go up to this line here. Now, if I cycle
through all my texts, you can see I get to
a point where I have a few texts that are
a little too big, like this one and this one. What I can do here as Number 1, I want to adjust this
so they are like that. You can see here that I have
some overset text here. If I had hundreds of variations, I don't want to
individually go through and manually look for
all of these things. If I were to export
to PDF right now, and I could do all
records, I go "Okay", "Export", "Business
Card Example", "Sure". Now you can see there is
overset text on these pages 1. There's an overset
text report and it shows me that Page
18, six characters, two words for this and
pages and these for words. There's some stuff
going on here. This report shows me
the issues that I have in my document
after it was exported. Most of it's good, but Page
18 and 19 are not very good. I have to close that
and see what's wrong. If I were to go to 18, [NOISE] you can see that
there's overset text. Now, what if I wanted to
automatically do this? Create this text box so
it actually increases in size or decreases in size
according to what's in there. Let's see how we can do that. If we go over to our
properties panel, we can go down to our
text frame options. If we go to our text frame
options and click "Options", we can actually go
to the auto size. We can actually decide whether we want to
auto size the height, the width, the height and width, or the height and width
keep proportions. I don't want to adjust the width of it because
my width is set. I want to adjust the height only and I'm
going to hit "Okay". Now you can see that
when I did that, it actually adjusted the
height to fit all my text, but you can see that it's moved up compared
to the last one. We have to make
another adjustment. Let's go back to our
properties and go back to our text frame options. Now let's go to
auto size and you can see here it expands
from the center, but we don't want it to
expand from the center. We want the top of it
always to stay in place. We're going to click
on the top part here. We're going to hit "Okay". Now using the text
frame options, you can see that as we
scroll through the options, it adjusts automatically and
we don't get that error. Now if we go to
export our document, we can export all records. Export, export, export. Now you can see that
there is no overset text generated while merging records. This is great to see and
awesome. That's really cool. We can auto size
things like that. If the opposite were true
and we wanted to adjust the width instead of the height and keep
everything on one line, we don't want it in this case. But as an example, if we want everything
in one line, we can go to the
text frame options, go to auto size, and we're going to go to width
only and no line breaks. Now, this will push it
out without allowing the text to drop down a line so we'll hit "Okay" and
see what that does. You can see we have one issue is that it
expanded from the center. Let's go back and put
it to the left side. We're going to hit "Preview". We ought to undo it first. Now let's go from here. Auto size, width only, left side, no line
breaks, and hit "Okay". We adjusted the width
of the text box without forcing that line break. That's really useful
in certain cases, especially if you wanted
to have an address line specifically on one line and it's not broken up
or something like that. Try and use the auto
size function in your text frame options
to automatically troubleshoot some of
those overset texts that may occur in
your documents. Now that we know how to
use the Data Merge tool, know how to export
our documents, as well as know how
to troubleshoot some of our text issues, when we jump into
the next class, we will learn how to utilize
the images as well as QR codes in our
variable information. [MUSIC] I'll see you in class.
10. Applying Variable Images: [MUSIC] In this class,
we'll learn how to use the data merge function to apply variable images as well as QR
codes. Let's jump right in. What I have open here
is the ID card example, in design file, and we can see that we have
some information already set up and we have this
simple ID card. Now, what we're going to do is we're going
to actually add an image here as well as
a QR code at the bottom, so we want to see
how we can do that. First of all, we want to click and select our data source and we want our name list so
we're going to hit "Okay", and now we have all
our information here. If we hit Preview, some of it is already
auto populated. So we have our name,
we have our title, we have this and that
and now we want to create an area for our image. In order to do that, we
can create a simple frame, rectangle frame and
we're just going to make a square and we're
going to place it right over top
of Joe Cool's name, right in the center,
and this is where we will have our image, maybe a little higher like that. Cool. Now what you can
see here is on the side, you can see that
all of these are texts so even if I
wanted to add a picture, I couldn't add a
picture because that's actually text and
I don't want that, so I'm going to undo that and I want to place
a picture here. In order to use images in
your data merge function, you have to organize
your information slightly different in
your Excel spreadsheet. So let's open up the
Excel spreadsheet and see what adjustments
need to be made. So I've opened up our name list and we can see that we have an area that we're going
to utilize for pictures. In order to use images in
our data merge function, we have to reference the source material
or the source image, there's a specific way
we need to do that. In our Excel spreadsheet
what we need to do is we have to
reference something. We have to say that
we are going to be referencing this
file for this line. In order to do that, we
have to put the at sign. The at sign signals the
data merge function that this is at a specific
location in our files, but in Excel, at is actually a function
that can be used. We can't just put at
in our Excel document, what we need to do is first, instead of at, we need to put a single quotation
mark before it. This will cancel out the functionality of
the add symbol in the Excel spreadsheet and a little just function to serve our purposes in the data merge, and I'm going to
delete that one thing. Now you can see here is canceled out and all it is is pictures. But still we don't have
any information there yet. How do we get our information? We need to actually
reference the file. If we go into our files, we can see that interclass
assets, we have pictures, we're going to double-click
into it and we have a bunch of profile pictures. We need to reference the path of all these images and put them
into our Excel spreadsheet. So each file has
a specific path. This PC, local C, users, ksquared, one drive, desktop, class assets, and pictures. We want to select all of them. Click on the first image, hold Shift and select
the last image, and up at the top here, under home, you
can see Copy path. I'm not too sure
where it is on Mac, but it's somewhere similar, we have to find
Copy path and we'll copy all the paths and we'll go into our
Excel spreadsheet. Now on the second line
under our pictures, we're going to just hit Control
V and it will paste in. Now you can see that
the path of each of these images is posted
into each of these lines. Now, we're going to save this document and
we're going to exit out and now we're going to go into our Data Merge
and update data source. Now we can see what
happened is that T that was under pictures
has turned into an image. Now if we hit Preview and
we click on our Frame, and we click the Picture, you can see that it is actually displaying the
picture itself and we can scroll through and it has all the different
images in there. This is really, really cool. One thing that we need
to think about is sometimes our images may
not fit accordingly, sometimes we might
want the image to be adjusted a little bit. What we can do is we can go into Content Placement Options and there we have our
image placement. We can hit Image proportionally, fit images to frame, that might work, so
let's see how that does. We don't want that, that
doesn't work very well. We hit "Preview" and turn
Preview on, turn Preview off. Now our content placement, let's try Content-Aware Fit, and let's see what
that looks like. That works a little better. I find that the
Content-Aware Fit works probably the best. If we adjust it and adjust it, it usually fits it really well. So we're going to undo that. I think I wanted a little bit higher right in the
center right there, and I'm going to turn
my Preview off and on. Perfect. Now if I hit "W", you can see that they're
looking really good honestly already and I can go scroll through and see all the images. One thing that we can do is
we can have a little bit of creative freedom in how
we frame our images. We can go over to the stroke
and fill and we can add a stroke to this
and we can increase the size of the stroke and
that might look pretty good, and also what we can do
is we can go to object, we can go to Corner Options, and we can decide if we want
to round the corners or not. We can preview. We
want to change to rounded and I think I
wanted it a little rounded. You can also change
it to a fancy, could change it to inset, bevel. But I like the round and
I'm going to hit "Okay", maybe reduce the stroke size a bit and that's pretty cool. Another thing that you
can do is you can add a little bit of effect
on it so we can go Objects Effect and we can put a drop shadow and hit "Preview" to see
what that looks like. It's a little too strong, maybe adjust that to 25, preview that and maybe
it's too far away, and hit "Okay", and
now we can zoom in and can see how that looks. It's looking really good,
Bobby Chill, awesome. That's how we can apply
images in our designs. Two key things you want to be aware of when you're
using images in your Data Merge is you need
to reference the data source. In your Excel spreadsheet, you have to have that at symbol. But in order for that at
symbol to actually work with the data merge and not with
the Excel spreadsheet, you have to put a
single quotation mark before the at symbol
so it cancels out that function in Excel spreadsheet so it
doesn't have some weird error. The second thing
is that you want to make sure that
your content is fitting correctly
so you can go into your Content Placement Options, and the Content-Aware Fit
usually works best however, you may need to use
the other ones in different circumstances
so play around with it. Now what we're going to do is we're going to
learn how to add a simple QR code to our designs. Let's jump back into there. Now, we have this option
for QR code and right now, if we do a frame, if we make a simple frame
down at the corner here, and we want to fill
it with a QR code, now nothing happens because
this is actually text and we don't want texts
so if we increase this, we can see what it
is, it's a website. Now, we want to make
a QR code out of this so how do we do that? Let's jump into our
Excel spreadsheet and see what we can adjust. If we jump into our name list, we just have to make
one adjustment to make this whole thing work
and all that is, is just we put the at
symbol before our title of pictures to reference that
we're using a file source, actually the QR code, all we have to do before
our title is put a hashtag. When we put a hashtag, it's saying this information in this column is going to be translated as a QR code and
it's really that simple. Now, I'm going to
save this document, I'm going to close out
and I'm going to go back in and I'm going to
update my data source. Now you can see my
data source was updated and the QR code
is no longer a text, it is a QR code. Now if we recreate the frame and we apply our
QR code and hit "Preview", we can see that a QR code is automatically generated
and this is really cool, and I can adjust it
accordingly, resize it. Now you have a functional
QR code on your ID card. That's really cool. Now I'm just going to
scan it and open it up and it took me right to my Skillshare class on Work
Smart in Adobe Illustrator, so that's [LAUGHTER]
really cool. All right guys.
Make sure you use Content-Aware Fit
for your QR code and it's really that simple, we use a hashtag to reference
that this data is going to be translated into a QR code and really you can put
any information in there; you can put a website, you can put the product information, product numbers,
stuff like that. In the next class, we'll
learn how to create a simple bio page that takes multiple versions
of your information, lays it out in a grid in a single page. [MUSIC]
I'll see you in class.
11. Multiple Record Layout: [MUSIC] In this class,
we'll learn how to use the multiple record
layout to lay out a simple bio page so
that we can lay out our variable information in
a grid throughout the page. Let's jump right in. I have opened the company
bio page example, and in this example you
can see that I have variable information
laid out here. One thing to note is that
I'm using a single-page. Actually the multiple
record layout. To use the multiple
record layout here is only available if you're
using a single page. If I were to create another page and I go
into my merged document, Data Merge, and create
merge document. Actually this multiple
record layout is actually grayed out
because I can't use it. The reason why is because what we're doing here is we're
creating basically a base, a base grid or a base page
to layout our information. This is what's going
to be repeated. If I have any other
information on this page, it will also be repeated. What we have to do is build up our base of what we
want to have repeated. Let's say if you're
doing a catalog with the information of a
product and the QR code, all you want on that page is
the product and the QR code. You want it to size accordingly so that you can lay
out in a grid later. In this case, what I have
is the name of the person, the title of the person, and their favorite animal. Now what I'm going to
do is I'm going to make a little bit
of adjustments. Because when I was
working with this, I found that if I were
to go through this, some of my names are really long and they jumped
to the next line. But I want to keep them within this framework here
because I don't want them to expand past the grid that I've created or else there will
be complications. If sometimes it goes out
here and sometimes here, it'll actually mess
with the grid that I'm making and I really
don't want that. What I'm going to do
is I'm going to make a simple adjustment and place the image at the top and
the text underneath. Just like that. Give
that a little bit of space and move that there. That's all I'm going
to do for that. Now if I scroll through, you can see what
it will look like. Cool. Now how do we make
a multiple record layout? I've set it up in a grid, and the grid is
going to start at this corner point
here and it's going to either go from
rows or from columns. We can decide how much
space we want between them. Let us see how do we do that. Let's go to our Data Merge drop-down, create
merged document. Now you can see we can
choose multiple records, all records, and we can decide the formation
of our design. Let's preview the multiple record layout to see
what it looks like. Now you can see exactly
what's going to happen. I can adjust the
distance between the columns just like that. The distance between the
rows, just like that. I want at least nine of them on the page, so I'm
going to keep it like that. I want to stretch
it out as far as it can go without canceling. If it goes outside the margins, it'll be pushed underneath
so we don't want that. I'm going to reduce that just slightly and that
should be good. It looks great. Now again, this is the base of your design. In order to utilize this grid system with
all our information, we actually have to create
a new InDesign file. In that InDesign file, we'll have all the information
laid out and then we can format it a little bit to
create a simple bio page. Let's go okay. You can see here at the
bottom before we hit Okay. You can see here it's
going to create page 1, page 2, and page 3. There will be three
pages created. This is why when
you're creating it, you don't want multiple pages, you're just having one
page and it'll force more pages depending on how much information
you have and hit Okay. There was no overset text
and that's looking great. Now what I can do is I have three different pages
here of information. I can decide to add or
subtract pages at will. Now that this is a
merged document, I'm going to create a new page. Actually I'm going
to put it up at the top. Just like that. I'm going to format it a
little bit and make this like a title page and these are
going to be the bio pages. I'm going to open up my ID card, and I'm going to take
some of the elements from this ID card and I'm
going to bring it over to my bio page up here. I'm just going to use
some of these elements. [MUSIC] Make a simple title page and now what I can
do is in my pages, I can actually make
a parent page. I can actually create
a new parent page. I'm going to say this bio page. [NOISE] It's not going to be based on anything.I wanted to have two pages and
I'm going to hit Okay. Now in this parent page, I'm going to paste
in those graphics. [MUSIC] Now, I made a simple bio page. If I go to pages, and if I click into
my bio page here. Now what I'm going to do is
I'm going to simply apply, click on these three pages and I'm going to
apply parent pages. I'm going to apply
parents B-Bio to. Now what's going to happen
is it's going to apply that simple bio page onto
all of these designs. Now, if I hit Preview, you can see that I made a simple bio page with all my information,
all my characters. If I wanted to, I can
go into this page and I can add some text of some kind as information about the practical graphic design team or
something like that. Yeah, but that's pretty much it. You can lay out your
information and like this and you can use this for multiple different things. You can make an inventory
list of items with all their QR codes and the
images and the descriptions. The descriptions, and
the information that you put in your Excel spreadsheet
can be quite elaborate. You can put whole paragraphs
if you wanted to and change that information so it
can be more of a directory. Really the potential of the data merge function in
Adobe InDesign is incredible. You can do so much with it and we're just scratching
the surface. But now that you have
an understanding of how you can utilize the different parts of the data merge
function in InDesign, really, there's so
much that you can do. I definitely want you
to play around with it, explore the possibilities of it, and create something new, something different from it. I really want to see
what you guys create. I'll see you in the next class.
12. Final Project and Recap: [MUSIC] I really look forward to seeing
what you guys create. Throughout this class,
we've learned many things. We have learned how to you use variable information with
the data merge tool. We've learned how to use images within our
variable information, as well as how to
apply QR codes. Throughout this class, we've
learned how to address certain issues
like overset text, as well as how to format our images into
the correct size. We've also learned how to create a multiple-record layout to
display a simple bio page. All these things
can be applied in so many different
ways and I look forward to seeing what
you guys do with it. For your class project, please submit whatever
you guys create, whether it's a simple
business card, ID card, or a lookbook, or if you
applied it in a different way. If you have your
own business card, try applying the variable
information to that. Try creating something
new and different. You can also export all your
information as PNGs and then use that in your
multiple record layout and display it in
the project panel. I really look forward to
seeing everything you guys create and I'll see
you in the next class.
13. Thank you!: [MUSIC] I want to thank you so much for taking this class. I hope you can apply
what you've learned in your own work and even
in your day to day life. There are so many uses
for this tool in design and now you have
a foundation and understanding that will
allow you to tackle bigger projects and save
yourself so much time. I really encourage you to create your own class project and
share it here on Skillshare. You can take what
I've provided in the project resources
and change the colors, the text, the images and design
something unique to you. Then export your work and
upload it in the project panel. I can't wait to see
what you create. I really hope you were able to learn something
through this class. However, I know that I'm
lacking and I may not have explained something
as best as I could have, so if you have any questions regarding anything
taught in the class, please reach out in the Discussions panel and I'll get back to you
as soon as I can. I would love to hear what
you thought of the class. After the class, please consider
leaving a short review. Let other students know
what you liked most so that they can be encouraged
to learn as well. I'm always looking
forward to create more classes for you
here on Skillshare. If you'd like to be notified
when a new class launches, definitely follow me
here on Skillshare. If you want to learn more about graphic design and continue
your creative journey, definitely check out some of my other classes
here on Skillshare. Thanks again. I really
look forward to traveling with you along
your creative journey. See you next time. [MUSIC]
Kyle Aaron Parson, Graphic Designer and Illustrator
