But what if I told you it was possible to do this using one database with one InDesign file? Well, it can be done! How this technique works The way I would imagine that most people would tackle this task is to make three postcards in InDesign, separate the prospect list into three different databases and prepare the three Data Merges separately. For the sake of this example, it will be Canada, Europe, or Australia, and the layouts will differ from each other, not just the picture in the background. To tailor the postcards to each prospect, the front of each postcard will have a layout based on the destination that the prospects indicated they’d like to travel to.
Take the following example: A travel agent is preparing follow-up postcards based on information it received from prospects during a travel expo. In this post, I’d like to demonstrate another technique that shouldn’t be possible, and that is changing a layout during a Data Merge. I like to try and make Adobe InDesign’s Data Merge perform tasks that shouldn’t be possible, such as heat maps, bar graphs, and changing colours.