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• • May 12, 2018 at 5:24 pm #103717
    Matt Jesse

    Member

    Hi there,

    I’m making a fantasy card game. Trying to figure out how to include little color graphic icons (think magic the gathering) with text from my spreadsheet.

    So far I’ve tried; Converting .SVG icons to a glyph font, via iconmoon.io. Only works black & white. Then adding background color with an Underline. Doesn’t look great, and the color disappears when changing text size.

    A solution with GREP would be ideal.

    I figure these card game designers have been doing this sort of thing for at least 20 years, so there’s got to be an easy way now, right?

  • May 12, 2018 at 5:34 pm #103719
    Graham Park

    Member

    If you are doing a data merge then merge your icon (make it a PDF or .ai file) as well.

    https://creativepro.com/data-merging-part-2.php

    • May 12, 2018 at 7:24 pm #103720
      Matt Jesse

      Member

      I don’t see how that would work. I need the icons to auto populate inline with the datamerged text

  • May 12, 2018 at 7:28 pm #103722
    Graham Park

    Member

    You need to put up an example so we can see what your source and final result you want.

  • May 12, 2018 at 8:08 pm #103723
    Matt Jesse

    Member

    Here’s an example of a magic card;

    https://pin.it/c3ewsadkttyboa

    Note the little graphics inline with text in the middle

  • May 12, 2018 at 8:24 pm #103724
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Matt, you should come to The InDesign Conference next month in New Orleans… there are some attendees coming from Wizards of the Coast, as well as a whole session on using anchored objects. That’s probably what you’re going to need here: anchored objects.

    InDesign doesn’t do colored font characters, so the font trick would work if it’s just black and white, as you discovered.

    If it’s coming in as text, then there are various ways to swap the text with images, such as:
    https://creativepro.com/find-text-change-to-graphic.php

    Or there are some scripts like this one:
    https://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/2014/06/24/peoples-choice-indesign-script-pepcon-2014-replace-words-images-vice-versa/

  • May 13, 2018 at 1:03 am #103725
    Matt Jesse

    Member

    Thanks for the suggestions David.

    I’m shocked there’s no simple way to do this.

    Does that script need to be clicked to run on each card? I’m working with hundreds of cards. Might have trouble when rendering the set to printable .PDF’s…

  • April 19, 2019 at 8:37 am #116200
    Max Seidman

    Member

    I’m about a year late, but I have this exact problem all the time. I deal with it using Find/Replace like David said.

    Here’s how:
    1. Leave placeholder text where you want your icons in the DataMerge sheet. Like “Pay [gold][gold][wood] to gain [stone]”
    2. Datamerge as normal
    3. In the resulting file, place your icon art. Resize properly so that it will fit in the text
    4. For each of your icons, do the following: select the icon art, copy it to the clipboard with command+c, open the find and replace window. In the find field type the name of your placeholder, like “[gold]”. For the replace field, select the arrow and choose “clipboard contents.” Replace all.

    I search to see if Adobe has implemented a better solution each year, and each year I’m disappointed. I’ve created a feature request, if anyone wants to vote for it: https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/37423303-datamerge-icons-images-inline-into-text-frames

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