Creating a Basic Plaque Layout

Getting Started – Creating a 1 by 3 Name Badge

When we are looking at using CorelDraw we have to start some where. For most of us this means creating some sort of layout. When you are working in CorelDraw everything you do is a layout. In this section we will look at creating two different products. These exercises are intended to be easy and straight forward. The first product will be a basic 3 line engraving name plate. There will be no logo just text. The second lesson will deal with creating a laser engraved plate which incorporates a logo and some text.

Creating a Layout for a plastic Lamacoid (Engraving Plastic) plate

The first thing that we need to do is to setup our plate. For this example our customer requires a 1 by 3 inch engraved plate. Thus we need to create a plate / page that is 1 by 3 inches in CorelDraw.
Figure 1 shows us the easiest way to do this. To reach this menu go to LAYOUT | PAGE SETUP.

Figure 1

Within this menu you can chose your plate / page size that you want to use. Type in a 1 by 3 size. Click okay.
Note: An alternative way to create a page size is to enter the dimensions right into the property bar that is located directly above the page layout. Figure 2 shows that I have entered in the 1 by 3 plate size. You will also note that there are two icons to the right of the page size input boxes. These tell CorelDraw whether you want to use a Portrait or a Landscape setup (blue box).

Figure 2

Once the plate has been setup the next thing that we need to do is to create the text that is needed for the job. Typically I will place in my guidelines at this point. However I will save this for when I setup my plaque layout.
To activate the text command all we need to do is to click on the text icon that is located on the tool box to the left of our page. Figure 3 blue box, shows the text icon that we need to click on.

Figure 3

Figure 4 shows us that our cursor has changed to the letter “A” and a “+” symbol.

Figure 4

Now click on the page in CorelDraw where you want the text to start. You will be presented with a flashing cursor. Before you start typing I suggest that you make your text “center justified”. To do this you can use two methods. One is to click on the justification icon located on the property bar located at the top of your page. Figure 5 shows the different justifications. The second way is also listed in Figure 5 is to press the ctrl key and the “E” key together (Anytime that you see a command with a letter or say ctrl and the letter this is a hot key and can be pressed at anytime within CorelDraw so that you can activate the command with out having to go to the menu) or better yet the ctrl key and than the “E” key. Let go of the “E” key and than the ctrl key.

Figure 5

If you want more information on text than I suggest you read the section on text. Once the justification is changed we need to change any of the other font attributes that we want. For this example I would suggest that we change the font to Arial. Click on the font list and you can move down the list to select the font that you want. In this case I have selected Arial – see Figure 6.

Figure 6

Change your font size to 18 point text as per Figure 6.
Now start typing. I want 3 lines for this job so press enter when you get to the end of each line. Figure 7 shows my text. Do not worry about where the text is on the page as we will correct this later on.

Figure 7

Click on the Pick tool located at the top of the toolbox see the blue box   in Figure 8. Your text will be selected. If it is not than click on it to select it.

Figure 8

Now we need to place our text in the center of the page. There are a number of ways to do this. For this exercise let us identify two ways. The first entails the “place by eye” method. This tends to be the method for most new users. For this example the better way is the second method which is use the align command. This command is located in the ARRANGE | ALGIN AND DISTRIBUTE | CENTER OF PAGE. Figure 9 shows us the command location. You will also see that the hot key is “P”. So instead of migrating all the way up to the menu you can just press the “P” key – make sure that you are not in Text mode.

Figure 9

Your image is now in the center of the page and you can now send it to the laser. Because most of the laser manuals are quite good at explaining how to print from CorelDraw I will end here. If you need more information on printing to your laser than I suggest that you reference your machine manual.

Creating a Basic Plaque Layout

This section has been written to help you setup a basic plate layout. We will be creating a plaque layout for a 5 by 7 plaque.

When you open up CorelDraw it typically will open up to provide us with an 8.5 by 11 page size. We need to change this to a 5 by 7 page size.
There are a couple of ways to tell CorelDraw how big you want a plate. Let us look at two ways.
The first entails going to the property bar and typing in the page size that we want. Note: make sure that you have nothing selected. Figure 10 shows the plate as it is placed in the property bar. When you are done press the “enter” key.

Figure 10

The second way and the one we discussed earlier is to can change the page size is to go to LAYOUT | PAGE SETUP.
Figure 11 shows you the dialogue box that comes up. Type in the plate size here adjusting for Portrait or Landscape.

Figure 11

If you use this size all the time you can save it as a custom size. To do this click on the “Save Custom Page”. Figure 12 shows you the dialogue box that comes up.

Figure 12

Click “okay” and exit the dialogue box.
If you would like to access this custom paper size in the future all you need to do is select the paper size pull down menu located in the property bar – see Figure 13.

Figure 13

Placing in your guidelines

I always feel that it is best when setting up a job that you place guidelines in your layout to show you where the margins of your plaque should be. Although you do not necessarily need them they act as a visual guide for your job layout.
What are guidelines? They are lines that you can use to align items in your drawing to. These lines are visible to you but will not print by default.
To access a guideline all you need to do is take your mouse over and place your pointer on top of the ruler in either the top or left side ruler. While holding down your left mouse button drag the guideline out to the desktop.
For beginners I suggest that we do it another way.
Go to TOOLS | OPTIONS or ctrl j see figure 14.

Figure 14

You will be presented with a tree look. Move down and find the section entitled “guidelines”. See figure 15. Click on the horizontal section.

Figure 15

For this job we need to create a guideline for the four sides of our job. For our plaque the first thing that we have to consider is the 3/8 inch border that is around the plaque. Also we want to add a .5 inch border to the left and right margin (my choice). With the top and bottom border I want to add a .75 inch border (my choice). Thus when we are adding our guidelines than we need to create our vertical guidelines at .5 + .375 (3/8) = .875 (left) and .5 + .375 – 5 inches = 4.125 (right). The vertical will be at 1.125 (bottom) and 5.875 (top). Adding in guidelines is easy. In Figure 15 we have typed in one of the Vertical guidelines and than clicked the “Add” button. Than added in the second number and clicked “Add” again. Repeat for the Horizontal guidelines.

Figure 16 shows the page with the guidelines added.

Figure 16

Creating the Job

For this job we are going to bring in a logo and some type and lay them out in the plaque.  For this job we have scanned a logo and we need to bring it into the job. Open up the import command – Figure 17 shows how you access the import command.

Figure 17

Figure 8 shows the import command dialogue box.

Figure 18

In Figure 18 there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Make sure that the “Preview” box is selected as per the green box. This allows you to see the logo coming in. If you only want to see files of a certain type – tif for this example than your “files of type” should be tif – blue box. You can either, click on the file name and than click import or just double click on the file name to bring in the logo.
Once the logo has been imported into CorelDraw you will see your cursor change to a sideways “L” with the logo name attached – see figure 19. If you want the logo to come in at the size that it was created than just click on the page and the logo comes in size as – for a bitmap image I would suggest this way. If the image is a vector image than you can drag the cursor to size the image – see figure 20. The red box in figure 20 indicates the size the logo is coming in.

Figure 19

Figure 20

For this setup we want the logo to appear at the top of our plaque setup. Now drag the logo to the top of your page see figure 21. Do not worry if the logo is centered we will do that later on.

Figure 21

Now we need to type in the text for the plaque. To access the text tool click on the “A” that appears in the toolbar – see figure 22 or you can just press the F8 key.

Figure 22

Your cursor will turn into a plus sign and an “A” – see figure 23.

Figure 23

Click on the desktop and type in your text. When you want to go to the next line just press enter. Once you are done you can click on the pick tool – see figure 24.

Figure 24

Click on the text with the pick tool so that it is selected (the black squares around the object indicate that it is selected) – see figure 25.

Figure 25

The first thing that you need to do is to make the text center justified. Figure 26 shows the tool bar where you can adjust text attributes. Select the center icon in the pull down list.

Figure 26

Figure 26 shows us that this toolbar allows you to change the font and the size. I have changed the font size from 24 to 18
Next we need to space out the text. We can do this a number of ways but I will suggest that you break the text group apart. Select the text and go to the ARRANGE | BREAK ARTISTIC TEXT APART.
You can now select each line of text by itself – see Figure 27. Thus you can resize the text or change the font etc.

Figure 27

Drag your text to where ever you want it.
If you want to center your text on the page you can go to ARRANGE | ALIGN | CENTER TO PAGE VERTICALLY. This will center you text left to right on the page.
Figure 28 shows the finished plaque. Notice the text is inside the guidlelines.

Figure 28