Participant

Question

Need help figuring out custom order workflow, new to AI

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
August 2, 2019
4 replies
531 views

Hello, I am new to Illustrator, I've been using CorelDraw for years but very excited to make the transition. I am in the process of familiarizing myself with AI. I am totally stuck with trying to figure out the workflow for our business, as we are coming into the holiday season and I need to get a creation/production workflow down before orders start coming in for the holidays.

A few things to note:

- I run a large shop on Etsy that sells personalized printed products that we print in house.

- 95% of our products are personalized with a name, quote, and/or date.

- Our current workflow in Corel is dragging the design into the printable area, replacing a name, then exporting the entire workspace with all of our orders to a single multi-page PDF before sending to the printer.

- I have hundreds of original files for each sku, but work out of a document that we refer to as our workspace, dragging designs into the printable area and doing simple name replacements.

- Currently running on PC, but soon making the switch to Mac.

A sample product would be a canvas zippered cosmetic bag, with a floral image with a name above it. Using this example, I would need to know how to quickly be able to edit the name (or whatever text is in the personalized area) of the image and move onto the next order. We usually have them grouped by sku, so we might do a batch of 50 orders with 15 different skus; we batch the skus together so that we can copy and paste the design onto several pages in Corel and then just double click into the text and change the name, then export it all for printing.

So to sum it up, the main part of our design stays the same, and we just replace names/dates then export for printing. But I do need to be able to move the floral image up or down based off of what font is used (we use a lot of script fonts).

Here is our Etsy shop so you can get a better idea of what we do:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MoonwakeDesignsCo

Thank you SO much in advance for any information/help that you can provide. Looking forward to your ideas.

-Charissa

This topic has been closed for replies.

barbara_a7746676

Community Expert

Come to think of it, you could do something similar using Illustrator. See instructions Merge data to create data-driven graphics through templates and variables in Illustrator

Monika Gause

Community Expert

The only question here is:

will setting up the data source maybe take longer than just pasting in the names?

barbara_a7746676

Community Expert

Your workflow would remain much the same in Illustrator as CorelDraw. However, you may consider looking into using InDesign in conjunction with Illustrator.

After creating the design (minus the text) in Illustrator, place it in InDesign.

In InDesign, set up a text field for the names. Use the InDesign data merge feature to quickly replace the name field with as many names as you need. Each name with the design can be on a separate page.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

When transferring your designs from CorelDRAW to Illustrator, remember that you can export Illustrator files from CorelDRAW and that it does a pretty decent job writing AI files.

One of the issues with porting your files might actually be typesetting. Spacing and kerning will likely get lost in the transfer, but you might get the text across in one piece when using the AI export.

M

MoonwakeDesignsAuthor

Participant

Thanks Monika! Any ideas for a bulk export file conversion tool? I've got hundreds of files that I'll need to convert to AI

Peter Villevoye

Community Expert

It seems to me that the two key aspects are:

"quickly be able to edit the name (or whatever text is in the personalized area) of the image"

"be able to move the floral image up or down based off of what font is used (we use a lot of script fonts)"

This can't be too difficult or different in Illustrator !

If you have a sample artwork file for us to see how an original design is constructed, we might be able to point out some difficulties or oddities. But I don't suspect much trouble. It's all just a matter of getting used to the slightly different commands and dialogues. Like driving a new car for the first time. There might even be some room for improvement or increased efficiency.

I believe the Melika and Bombshell fonts are working extra shifts in your shop ;-)

M

MoonwakeDesignsAuthor

Participant

Hi Peter, thank you for your response. I'm attaching a sample of how we have our "workspace" document set up with some designs.

As you can see, we just essentially copy the templates to the printable area (note the 40 open pages) and export the document.

Do you have any additional recommendations after seeing the photo?

Peter Villevoye

Community Expert

Well, it looks like a very pragmatic workflow, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The collection of designs seems a bit incoherent to me, but I bet you have your criteria for that (like "Orders").

I don't know CorelDraw very well, but I think its Multipage feature is not quite like Illustrator's Artboards.

In the screen below I mimicked a setup with your design in one Illustrator document, consisting of multiple Artboards. These serve as pages (or screens, when working for non-print media), which can be created, positioned, spread, named, and arranged in their sequence very easily, and output to PDF in a jiffy. Maybe this gives you something to think about.

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