Learn how to finalize the design of a postcard in InDesign, including the addition and stylization of text, alignment, and the use of the data merge feature. This guide will walk you through the process of creating an impressive, publication-ready postcard.
Key Insights
- The article provides a step-by-step guide on how to finalize text on a postcard in InDesign, with advice on creating a title, stylizing the font, spacing, and removing placeholder text.
- The guide also offers tips on how to match and align elements in the design for a more cohesive look, and how to preview the final design with an actual name.
- Finally, it explains the process of exporting the design using the data merge feature, with options to create a single record, a range, or all records, and alerts users about potential issues with overset text during exporting.
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In this video, we're going to be finalizing the back of our postcard. So let's begin first by working with our text on the left-hand side.
Right now, we just have Laura Mipsum. However, let's add a little more flair. We'll add a title to the top.
To do this, we'll click right on the top-left area of our text and hit ENTER. On this first line, feel free to create whatever title you'd prefer. You could type something like "You're Invited" or "New Services."
Or feel free to come up with whatever title you'd prefer. In this case, I'm going to type "Grand Opening." Next, we'll stylize our title.
We can highlight the text, and I'm going to go with Black Italic. In addition, I want a little more space between this top title and the bottom. So I'm going to go to "Space After" and just add a little gap.
Finally, I'll increase the size to 12. Next, I'm going to add two different paragraphs here. So I'll delete a line of text, and let's add a little bit of space between paragraphs.
I'll capitalize the next letter. This just gives us an opportunity to finalize this a little bit more and make it closer to publishing, even though we don't actually have the content. From here, I'll simply italicize this bottom section—going from regular to Italic.
Now, we want to delete the remaining Laura Mipsum. To do this, we can right-click and go to "Edit in Story Editor, " where we'll see the actual text that we have left. We can delete it, add a period, and close it out.
Finally, I'll click outside and hit W on the keyboard, and we can start to see what this looks like. Next, I think I want to make a change to this line here.
This line feels a little out of place since we now have more square lines. So with this line selected, I'll hit I on the keyboard for the Eyedropper Tool, and I'm simply going to click this other line here to copy the same styling.
And there we go. We've now matched it to the other lines. If we want to resize it, we can do so.
In this case, I'm going to align it so that it's centered with the text on the right-hand side here. I'm also going to align the text so it's centered within this text frame. All of these are small tweaks that we can make to allow our postcard to look a little bit better.
Feel free to make your own customizations. I'll hit W again to see how this looks. If we want to preview here, we can get a preview of it with an actual name.
Again, I'll hit W, and I like the way that this looks. In addition, for the address, I think we want to add attention. We'll double-click here within the text frame and add "Attn:"
We'll see that the text is now added to bring attention to each of these individuals. When we look at the format, we'll see we have plain text and the actual field that we’d add. All right, I think we're now ready for export.
So let's save our work by hitting CTRL + S. To export this now, we want to go back to our Data Merge and select "Create Merged Document." To do this, we'll click the icon right below the lines. From here, we can make changes to the merge we're creating.
We could create a single record or create a range—say we only wanted names 5 through 10. In this case, however, we're going to do all records.
Finally, we'll click OK. The first thing we'll notice is that we have this notification saying "No overset text was generated when merging records." This is a notification because sometimes, if the text you're importing doesn't actually fit within the area, it may be overset.
So InDesign wants to let you know—don’t worry about that—all of the text fit. This is especially helpful when you have two or three hundred different entries that you're exporting and InDesign has done the work to double-check them all for you. The second thing you'll notice is we now have a second tab in InDesign.
This is because it has created an entirely new InDesign file for all of our contacts. If we go to our first file, we’ll see that we have the original with the format. The second one is the Data Merge file.
Look at this—we can go to "Pages, " and we now have lots of pages. We have our front postcard page, and we have our back postcard page with the contact front and back. In total, we now have 22 different pages. Let’s look at these side by side.
We’ll close Data Merge, and if we select a Master—the Master for all of these pages—and go to Properties, we can select "Facing Pages." We will now see that we have the pages facing each other.
However, they don’t quite stack up because page one here is separate, and then pages two and three are isolated.
What I like to do in this case is simply create a new page. Right here, we now have our blank page, and I’m just going to drag that to the top—so that the rest of these all have the front of the postcard on the left and the back of the postcard on the right. As we look through these, we can see that they all have the appropriate names and are exported correctly.
Let’s now save our work by hitting CTRL + S on the keyboard to save.
We're going to save this as "Domus Postcard Data Merge, " and click Save. Great job!
We’ve now completed our postcard with the data merge of all the individuals.