Easy Truly Personalized Return Address Labels in Adobe® Illustrator

Continued from Page Two

This is where space forces me to, regrettably, only whet your whistle. As I stated previously, Adobe Illustrator is the world's most advanced vector drawing program. It can-and using it I have-drawn everything from cartoons to posters, from detailed automobile schematics and cross sections to photorealistic portraits and stilllifes. If you can imagine it, you can draw it in Illustrator. It's fun, easy once you recognize the basic concepts of vector drawing (they're a breeze, really), and your artwork remains forever changeable without harm to the image (unlike pixel-based images in Photoshop).

In Figure 13 you can see very simple examples of original drawings in Illustrator used for return address labels. The first, the "We've Moved" announcement that would be excellent to alert friends, family, and others that your address has changed, was created entirely in Illustrator-even the grass. It took me about 20 minutes to draw everything and set the type. The other two are variations on the Halloween label with which I've been working. Instead of a plain black background, I created textures from the vector tools in Illustrator.

Preparing the First Label

1. First, perform any needed cleanup. If there are any bits of type or artwork within the label that you don't want to print, delete them-with the Selection Tool click on them and press the Delete key on your keyboard. If you make a mistake, accidentally deleting something you wanted to keep, press CTRL+Z/CMD+Z to undo the deletion.

2. Next, ensure that all parts of the design fallen entirely within the background rectangle. For example, in Figure 14 you can see that the bounding box-the imaginary container-of the text extends beyond the side of my background rectangle. That could cause me problems in semi-automatically positioning all the duplicates I'll use to fill up the page. Consequently, I have to fix the problem by either moving the whole object until it falls completely within the background rectangle, or resize it down to fit.

For either task I need the black arrow Selection Tool. To move the text object, I'll click somewhere on the letters themselves and drag until the whole thing is in the right position. To resize, I'll click and drag one of the white boxes on the side until the object is small enough to fit. If some of my text disappears-well, it's still there, just hidden, in what we call overset-then I know I need to find a solution that both keeps the text and keeps it within the background rectangle's area. That may mean resizing the text; it could also mean changing other parts of my design to accommodate the text.

3. Remember when we locked the background rectangle to keep it safe and out of our way? Now we need it again, so we need to unlock it. From the Edit menu select the Unlock All command to unlock the background rectangle.

4. Press CTRL+A/CMD+A to select all the objects in your label, including the background rectangle.

5. From the Window menu, open the Symbols panel, and, on the little flyout menu at the top of the Symbols panel, choose the New Symbol command (see Figure 15.) The New Symbol dialog will pop up. In it, type a meaningful name for your label-something like "Halloween Label" for example-and, if your version of Illustrator includes the option, set the Type to Graphic.

When you click OK a couple of things will happen. First, you'll have what appears to be a miniature version of your label within the Symbols panel. Next, the label on the artboard, which consisted of separate objects previously, has been consolidated into one object-a symbol.

A symbol is a special kind of object. The text, background rectangle, and all other parts of your design now live inside the Symbols panel. You can no longer fix typos in the text on the artboard or change the color of the background rectangle. You can still make such changes, which we'll get into below in the "Making Changes" section, but it takes a couple of extra steps in order to do that. More important is the fact that the real artwork has been moved to the Symbols panel, and what you see on the artboard is only a symbol instance, a reflection of the actual artwork now residing within the Symbols panel. The point and power of symbols is that, no matter how many copies you make, how many symbol instances you place on the page, they are all identical reflections of the original-if you change the original, all the instances change, too, without you having to edit all those copies manually.

Symbols are the secret to creating and editing designs like a label sheet without tearing out your hair.

6. Sometimes when symbols are created from multiple objects the overall dimensions increase-I'll skip the explanation, just trust me, it happens. So, even if you ensured that all the elements of your design fit well within the background rectangle, the bounding box of the symbol may be larger than the bounding box of all the objects. So, on a sticky note, please write down the X and Y coordinates of the top-left corner of the now selected symbol (on the Transform panel, remember).

1. Press CTRL+0/CMD+0 to zoom out to see the entire page in the document window.

2. For each additional label in the column, drag the symbol you created from the Symbols panel and drop it on the artboard. For instance, the WL-OL875 labels I'm working with are arranged in three columns of ten labels each. Therefore I'll drag my "Halloween Label" symbol from the Symbols panel nine times, creating nine instances in a column beneath the first one (see Figure 16). Depending on the label template you've chosen, you may need more or fewer instances. Don't worry about rows right now. Focus only on the first column, instances arrayed vertically, top to bottom, leaving other columns blank. Try to get each instance close to where it should be, but you needn't worry if it doesn't exactly match up with the label guide.

3. Line up the bottom instance with the bottom margin. Using the Transform panel and the bottom margin value from the template's product page on WorldLabel.com, align the bottom of the last symbol instance to the bottom margin (refer back to the "For All Labels" section if you don't recall the steps).
If the symbol bounding box (in red in Figure 16) extends below the bottom of the label, then you won't be able to position it solely with the Transform panel. You'll need to zoom way in using the Zoom tool and manually align the bottom of the label symbol instance with the bottom of the template guide. When you're done, zoom back to the full page view with the CTRL+0/CMD+0 keyboard shortcut.

4. If it isn't already selected, switch to the Selection Tool and then press CTRL+A/CMD+A to select all the symbol instances on the artboard, which should still be just a single column. The top label is in place, the bottom label is at least vertically aligned correctly, but the intervening instances are probably still messy. It's time to rectify that.

5. Open the Align panel from the Window menu. The Align panel offers very cool, very easy, one-click alignment and distribution of multiple objects-objects like our label symbol instances (see Figure 17). With all the instances selected, click the Vertical Distribute Center button (bottom row, second from the left) to evenly distribute the instance vertically, which, if we did everything else correctly, should also put them in the right vertical positions for their respective label guides.

Next, click the first button on the Align Objects row of buttons, the Horizontal Align Left command. All the instances will then snap to a comment left edge. It may not be correct left edge, however, which we'll fix in the very next step.

6. Still have that sticky note on which your wrote down the X and Y coordinates of the first label instance? It's time to use that. With all the symbol instances still selected, set the reference point on the Transform panel to the top-left corner and enter the X value you wrote down into the X: field. Press return to snap the labels to their proper horizontal alignment. You should also verify that the Y: field value is still the same one you wrote down (distribute operations can sometimes introduce minor shifts along the vertical or horizontal axes).

7. At this point one entire column of labels should be correctly positioned both horizontally and vertically. Moreover, they should still be selected. If not, press CTRL+A/CMD+A to select them all once again, and then press CTRL+G/CMD+G to group them. Grouping enables you to work with multiple objects as if they were a single object. They can be broken apart again-ungrouped-by using the Ungroup command on the Edit menu or the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+G/CMD+ SHIFT+G. The fastest way to fill up the additional columns, though, is to group all the instances in the first column, duplicate, and work with each column as if it were a single, solid object.

8. Double check the vertical positioning of the now grouped column in the Transform panel's Y: field, and then press CTRL+C/CMD+C to copy the column to the clipboard. Follow that up by pressing CTRL+ CTRL+G/CMD+G /CMD+V to paste the column back onto the artboard as a new object.

9. Drag the column until it's roughly in the right place to fill up the next column of the page, and then repeat the paste and move until you have all columns filled. Align the right column to the right margin by (preferably) using the Transform panel or by manually positioning it while zoomed in.

10. Now, just as you did to fill the rows in the first column, select all columns with CTRL+A/CMD+A, return to the Align panel, and align and distribute the columns. This time, of course, distribute them across with the Distribute Horizontal Center command (fifth from the left on the bottom row) and align their top edges with the button fourth in from the left on the top row, Vertical Align Top.

11. Complete the task of filling the label sheet by checking the Y positioning of the columns' tops in the Transform panel against the value you noted earlier. Ultimately your label symbol instances should all perfectly align to the label guides below them (see Figure 18).

Before you print (File > Print) a hundred pages of the same label, take some time to print a single test sheet. Computers and printers vary widely, and, although the template you're using may be flawless, the page image might shift a little bit during printing such that your artwork doesn't perfectly align to the pre-cut labels. This is very, very common, as a matter of fact. Save a bunch of ink, label sheets, and frustration by printing a single test page on blank paper, and then, holding the printed page and a blank label sheet together against a window or lamp, check the alignment of the label images relative to the label cut marks. If they don't line up, use the Selection Tool to move columns or rows of labels (ungroup them if necessary), and possibly even re-align or redistribute with the Align panel, until your test print page matches the pre-cut label paper. When your test print matches perfectly, do one final test print-a single page on one label sheet-as a final check before printing multiple copies of the same page.

Don't forget to save your document (CTRL+S/CMD+S) often!