Appendix A. Automation with Illustrator

With today's "need it now" mentality, we've been thrust into an era where deadlines and delivery dates are shorter than everat the same time, we're being asked to perform twice as much work. If you take a moment to read just about every press release and marketing document produced by companies in the high-tech industry, you'll find promises of faster performance and higher productivity with each new software release. Even hardware items, like the TiVo and the Apple iPod, speak of our need for on-demand content.

The good news is that Adobe Illustrator supports several techniques for streamlining workflow through automationin essence, you can have Illustrator do all of the hard work for you while you take a few moments to grab some lunch (but who takes lunch anymore?).