Names, Names, Lots of Names

[wolstencroft]

Ive also posted this in the Corel Draw forums as a solution with Illustrator or Corel will help.

Ive hunted around the net for a possible solution for this but cant find it anywhere.


Im a graphic artist for a printing company and lately for some reason we are getting huge orders for name badges.

I have an order to do on Monday for 180 individual name badges.
Then later in the week another order for over 500!

Normally, the amount of name badges are small quantities, so theyre no bother to type out individually.



How I normally operate is I use Adobe Illustrator CS2 for artwork generation, then import the work into Corel Draw 12 for laying up and, in this case, add all the individual names to the badges. Then export, then rip to print.


Now. . .
Is there a way, in Illustrator or Corel, to have a generic name badge layout with the artwork I require, then import a name list of some format and have each name automatically added to its own name badge?

I have both the 180 names and the over 500 names listed in xml documents.

Im really not looking forward to doing these names individually.


And secondary to this. . .
If importing is possible, how about fonts, justifications, fitting long names to the required space, etc.


Many reagrds

 

[apepp]

...have you looked into indesign's data merge feature?

1. Create your data records as ordinary tab-delimited text. If you want FirstName to be bold and LastName to be italic, put them in separate fields, as they would typically be in a spreadsheet or database. In the DataMerge palette, import the data.

2. On a MasterPage in InD, create one text object. Click your text cursor inside the text object. DoubleClick the FirstName field in the Merge palette. It comes into the text object as a field placeholder. Style it as you wish. Then do the same for LastName in the same text object.

3. In the DataMerge palette's flyout are commands to create instances/pages for all the records.

...have you looked into XData? This is a plugin for Indesign and Quark that also handles enormous amounts of data in combination with master pages...

...indesign supports xml import but i have yet to use xml...

...XData works with tab-delimited text too, you can open xml into excel spreadsheet and then export to tab de-limited text...

Andrew