Best software for making pamphlets
Aug 15 2007
What would people recommend?
I'm using office but it's pretty pants, adobe pagemaker seemed better when I used it years ago. Are there any decent free / shareware programs about?
thanks
Aug 15 2007
#2
Yeah, I'd go with Indesign to be honest. You could use Publisher by Microsoft or something like that, but if you ever intended to get something professionally printed you are best off starting with a programme that you can use. You should download the trial edition of Indesign from the Adobe site and then find a keygen on line to crack it and make it permanent.
Aug 15 2007
#3
Publisher is trash, don't go near it.
I'll third the InDesign reccomendation - otherwise, if it's going to be really short (prob less than 10 leaves) you can use Macromedia Freehand, which is decent, but for anything larger I'd stick with InDesign.
Aug 15 2007
#4
I've been using InDesign past couple of days - it's really good and easy to learn, so definitly has my recommendation.
Oh and it's also the new version of Pagemaker, so if you've used that, you'll already have the basics down.
Aug 16 2007
#5
Yeah, InDesign's the best IMHO, and you don't need to pay for it! 
Aug 16 2007
#6
Indesign or Quarkxpress. Has to be.
Aug 22 2007
#7
I work at a print shop and we're getting a digital printer that automatically collates and staples booklets.
The graphic artist and me are best buds, so I'm gonna have a lot of fun when the boss isnt around.
Aug 22 2007
#8
I always use Publisher. It's easy. For most pamphlets you don't need anything fancy. Just text and pictures, clearly separated.
Aug 22 2007
#9
I use publisher, cos its the first software I got a pirate version of and taught myself to use. I wanna learn how to use summat else though. Sick of the hassle of having to convert it to pagemaker and then pdf. Think I'll check out Indesign.
Aug 22 2007
#10
Boul - why do you have to convert it to pagemaker. Just turn it into a pdf through the print command. There's loads of free software to make pdfs. They integrate into Office. Or torrent a full copy of acrobat, which does the same and lets you edit pdfs too.
Aug 22 2007
#11
Yeah what Knightrose said. I use publisher all the time for wee jobs. (Have Quark sitting on a CD somewhere, but it's a bastard for smaller jobs) You would need to do that as well with Quark. Primopdf works fine for this.
Aug 22 2007
#12
I use Scribus which is good for leaflets and what not. It's free too.
http://www.scribus.net/
Aug 23 2007
#13
I tried Scribus and i found it overwhelmingly confusing. I'm pretty good at design and software, so I would say it's not for feint of heart.
I would however recommend another Open Source package, OpenOffice.org (available at that address). It's a fully-featured office suite and about 1000x better than M$ Word if you ask me. You know all that annoying shit MSWord does? Reformats stuff, the paperclip, etc? OO has none of that and it works perfectly.
I think there are templates for various types of brochures available on their website, but I can send you what I've done if you'd like examples about how to do stuff.
I am looking at making a guide for wobs (and anyone else) about how to do layout in OO. It's on the backburner until I figure out how to distribute it though.
Aug 23 2007
#14
Open Office is fucking wicked indeed. Built in export-to-PDF function too
Aug 23 2007
#15
QuarkXpress pisses on everything else.
Aug 30 2007
#16
Bog standard microsoft word, any old word processer or typewriter - reduce to A5 - fold and staple mate - never mind the quality, feel the width!
Dunno about free software but Adobe Indesign is pretty good. CS2 has a feature (called InBooklet I think) which reorders the pages so that it photocopies correctly.