HELP.....designing my own flyers for my business ??????

john0612

what software should i use?
i've found a company online that'll do 5000 a6 for £55 delivered and there glossed on both sides.
so i need to create a design so i can send it off to them.

someone told me m/s publisher is good ???

bareing in mind i have no design experience is it easy to do, or should i pay for some one to do it for me ?

thanks

Enjoylife_2

Hi John,

What file types will the on-line company accept? This generally will dictate what software you need to use (sometimes they will accept a PDF, in which case you could use MS Word and output as a PDF - instead of print).

As for whether someone else should design it, that depends on your budget. You could use elance, which a few colleagues have used with relatively good results (which would get you over having to find or buy software & figuring out how to use it, as well as the design time). In general, business wisdom says that you should stick to what you do well and marketing & let others do specialist things like designing.

john0612

Enjoylife wrote: »

Hi John,

What file types will the on-line company accept? This generally will dictate what software you need to use (sometimes they will accept a PDF, in which case you could use MS Word and output as a PDF - instead of print).

As for whether someone else should design it, that depends on your budget. You could use elance, which a few colleagues have used with relatively good results (which would get you over having to find or buy software & figuring out how to use it, as well as the design time). In general, business wisdom says that you should stick to what you do well and marketing & let others do specialist things like designing.

Hi, this taken from their site
"We accept many formats including Photoshop, Corel, Quark, Freehand, Word, Publisher"

hth
john

john0612

* bumpety bump *

isofa

Publisher is basic, and professionals wouldn't touch it with a proverbial. However it'll have wizards to help you.

For all my design work (including pre-press, and items for print runs) I use Adobe software: InDesign, Photoshop etc. CS2 and CS3 versions, but this software doesn't come cheap, prepare to extend your mortgage!

However, if you want a good piece of professional software, very cheaply, Computer Shopper is giving away Quark XPress v5 - discussion here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=628415

A few years ago this cost nearly £1000!

It has a steep learning curve though, as with all professional products.

To be honest, if you have no design experience, I'd pay someone to do it for you. Getting things perfect for print can be a very complex procedure, especially (for example) if you don't know the difference between bitmap and vector images, don't know how to scale at set-up graphics for the optimum print resolution, let alone the fine points of design, fonts to use, point sizes, weights and the like - go to someone who does!

Marty999

I work for a commercial printing company and we do not like accepting artwork files that have been created in Word, Publisher, Powerpoint or the like. If you wish to use these applications it is best to save the files as PDFs as most printers can print from PDFs these days.

As for buying a cheap version of Quark Xpress or similar, I would not recommend this unless you are trained in graphic design - it's too complicated and you will be wasting your time, plus to be frank, it won't look professional. I suggest you contact a professional graphic designer, or perhaps a student at a design college - they will be pleased to do a job like this. Or why not ask you printer - if they don't have their own in-house designer they are bound to have a local designer they sub their work out to.

bookduck

you must have found a competitor's advert and thought that 'that is not bad' or another advert of some kind of product and thought it was good, or there were bits that you thought were apt and would like!

Surely at worst you should be able to knock up something similar or a mixture there of.

isofa

I'm with Marty999 on this one

bookduck

isofa wrote: »

I'm with Marty999 on this one

Yeh, so am I. However, there are so many [strike]things to rip off[/strike] alternative methods to market your own brand, and these people are going for cheap, a5 - which people do not tend to keep. Nothing cheaper than no production cost!

Reggie_Rebel

If you don't want to shell out anything Open Office includes an application called Drawing which you can use to design posters and flyers etc.

Obviously it won't be professional quality but it you are paying someone to do it it will give them a start and get them on your wavelength

bob_a_builder

Another free bit of software to add to the list

Page Plus from Serif - similar level to MS Publisher