Illy for logo but letterhead in Word

[nicksims]

I've read some ideas in searches about ai. file sinto Word. Looking for some recent opinions.

I have CS2 and Word 2003 with WinXP Pro.

The logo that we've created is an ai. file. Part of this was brought in from Photoshop so we have one small raster element. If need be, we can recreate this in Illy.

The end result is to have a Word template so anybody in the office can open a letterhead template and type their letter (or fax sheet, memo, etc...)

I would also like to keep an element of the logo as a watermark in the middle of the page.

For the watermark I saved the element I needed as a .wmf file and let Word create the watermark so we can type over it.

The watermark part was easy, but the main logo at the top of the page has a pms color which I am hoping to retain.

So is it realistic to think I can bring this pms color logo into Word? What is the best way? Export as a .png? .wmf? or an enhanced metafile?

Should I go about this a different way? There will be quite a few other uses for this so I would like to figure out some smart methods.

I know I could print the letterhead from Illy and have it all preprinted, but that won't really work for most of us in the office.

Thanks for the opinions.

Nick

 

[itchybug]

Nick:

I doubt you'll realistically be able to retain a pms color in your letterhead when used in Word. The color may be close, but not quite a cigar.

One easy and pretty versatile way I have found to place items into MS Office applications is to create an autoshape, then going to the Fill Effects options and choosing a picture for the fill. Before doing this, you save your letterhead as any number of bitmap formats, and use it as the fill picture for the autoshape. Hope that's clear enough, I'm tired.

The nice part about doing it like this, is that you can manipulate the autoshape any way you want, and quickly replace the picture that's filling it without losing all the formatting (this also really helps in an app like Powerpoint, to preserve transitions and effects when changing pictures).

Bert

 

[dropkickmurphy]

When output to PS and distilled on the Mac EPS retained the spot colour. WMF and EMF will convert to RGB. Placed PDFs appear to rasterize as Indexed RGB lol Word 2004 on the mac seemed to like EPSs with Tiff/Opaque previews.

And to bastardize the topic even more… check this out. I almost shot coffee across my desk the day I saw this one..

PANTONE® OFFICECOLOR ASSISTANT™

http://pantone.com/pages/products/product.aspx?pid=59&ca=3

Uhhh office.. Bork bork bork



Cheers,
Dropkick Murphy
______________________________________________
Alcohol & Tobacco Quality Assurance Specialist

http://www.bancomicsans.com

 

[nicksims]

Dropkickmurphy,

I looked at the site and had to call them.

This add-in is not to be used when importing a file. It is strictly for use when creating the graphic from scratch within Office. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Nope. Not going that route. At least it isn't that expensive.
Thank you.

Bert,

Thanks. I'll try your suggestions.

I'm just a bit surprised that there isn't a common process. I would have guessed that there are many out there that have designed a logo in illy or photoshop, and eventually needed to bring it into Word for documents. After all, we would like to print the logo on letterhead, fax cover sheets, memo's... directly from Word.

Nick

 

[dropkickmurphy]

Yeah, only within Office itself but its still funny to think. Hell has frozen over. It would technically possible (Not that I would do it) to export your logo to WMF/EMF and then you can edit it right in word and colour each object and tag it with your spot colours with that plug. Though WMF and EMF export bastardize any beziers. Also what happens to the colour tags once someone without the plug open it, print it, resave it.. god only knows.

Thought I heard that EMF can handle beziers? Is it AI’s export, office or the format that makes it into blocky polylines? Is there a way to convert something from illustrator to EMF with smooth(er) curves? Does Freehand or Corel Draw(gag) do better conversion to EMF or a smoother conversion? Just for the sake of knowing. Maybe someone in here knows.

In the end I personally wouldnt recommend anyone using office to make stuff that needs spot colours even if they had a plugin that would let them What next.. the packaging cad plugin for PowerPoint and NURBS modeling for Word art haha

“I don’t understand… it looked good on my screen”

haha


Cheers,
Dropkick Murphy
______________________________________________
Alcohol & Tobacco Quality Assurance Specialist

http://www.bancomicsans.com

 

[Eggles]

>>The logo that we've created is an ai. file. Part of this was brought in from Photoshop so we have one small raster element.<<

Export the logo as a PNG. Before doing so, (1) convert it to RGB (see why below) and (2) make it approx the size it will be used in the letterhead. Choose a resolution of about 200 dpi and you can also choose to have a transparent background for the vector component. By choosing 200 dpi, you keep the quality of the printed output acceptable on a typical office printer (300dpi is usually way overkill) and the file size relatively small. By making it the right size before export, you can prevent people having to resize it and so compromise resolution.


>>the main logo at the top of the page has a pms color which I am hoping to retain.<<

ARE YOU SERIOUS!!!??? What are these letters going to be printed on? An offset press??? You can only print PMS colours by using the specific PMS ink, and I doubt if your average office printer is able to do that. Convert the PMS colour to RGB in Illustrator - it's as close as an office printer will get, and it's the only colour mode Office apps understand.

>>I would also like to keep an element of the logo as a watermark in the middle of the page.<<

Do this in Illustrator - resize the logo to the size required, convert to RGB, ramp down the transparency to 10-15-20% (you'll have to do a few tests depending on the intensity of colour in the original) and export as a PNG.

To get the logos into Word, insert>Picture into a header/footer area, which can be whatever size you want to accommodate the image(s). It sometimes to helps to set up a borderless table to get graphics to sit where you want them to in Word.

WMF files are a waste of time - they are big and complicated, but if you get the size right to start with before export to PNG, there is no need to retain the logo as vector. WMFs will often prevent youj making a PDF from the Word file.

Don't forget to make a B&W version of the logo for the fax cover sheet template.

I often have to make graphics available to Word/Excel/Powerpoint users in my workplace, and trial and error has resulted in the 200 dpi RGB PNG as the best solution.

 

[nicksims]

Well we found a method- I wouldn't have expected it though.

Powerpoint was used. The ai. file was copied and pasted into Powerpoint. then that file was brought into Word within a header.

We didn't really do anything else. This isn't going to an offset printer. We are printing on either a big Minolta laser or a resin printer (which does a great job for color matching). So far, it looks good.

We don't use Powerpoint so I guess we just got lucky.

As for using the PMS color? We had chosen this PMS color for a few reasons and used it elsewhere so we wanted to be consistent. I know we could have tried to match it closely but at the time we didn't want a color that was "pretty close."

Thank you all for your input.

Nick

 

[apepp]

...i've had success with saving illustrator files (spot and cmyk data) to eps and also images from photoshop to eps cmyk, then import to file via word (although this was Word 11 (2004), print to pdf or to postscript and distill to pdf...

Andrew