You can also use this technique to pull in external image assets (PNG, JPG, AI). It takes some setup, but once you've got a template set up, you can change the data in the spreadsheet, re-import, and get a new set of cards. It will also lay them out and fit as many on a single page as possible - so it's easy to print and cut decks. It will use the data in your CSV file to create a card for each row in the file, filling in the placeholders with the appropriate data for each card. Now you can push the Create Merged Document button, and the magic happens. Drag the appropriate data values into the placeholders on the template. Use the DataMerge feature in InDesign to pull in the CSV file. Create placeholders in the template for dynamic data By having it in a spreadsheet, you can do a lot of analysis on the stats, and it makes it easy to change values.Ĭreate a template in InDesign for a single card layout. Different columns for different stats, text, card names, etc. Setup an XLS or Numbers file with all the data for my cards. With a little setup work, Adobe InDesign can be a great tool for iterating on card designs. "Squiggle" is an SVG viewer that runs on top of Batik so that you don't need to render your SVGs every time you make a change. You can use Batik to convert your SVGs to PDF, which of course is a widely accepted format. The only SVG rendering enging I've found to do a reliably good job is Apache Batik. The most difficult aspect of SVG I have found is its compatibility with other formats. If you don't want to use a script to generate your SVGs, it is also possible to pass parameters to your SVG. I have a single external CSS file and a Ruby script using the "builder" library to construct the SVGs from a database. Coming from a web development background, I found SVG to be easier to learn than something like LaTeX. Original Answer: I use custom SVG when designing playing cards. EDIT (April 2017): I released the SVG-based software described in my original answer below for playing card design as a desktop application.
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