Producing a brochure

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Producing a brochure

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woodsprite

Joined: 20 Mar 2006
Posts: 2943
Location: North Herefordshire

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 07 10:55 am Post subject: Producing a brochure

I'm battling away at the moment to produce a brochure to promote my business using a word template. I'm trying to do this as economically and quickley as possible but it's a nightmare! My photo's wont fit, the blurb wont fit etc etc.
Am I making life difficult for myself? Do you think I should just find a printer and send everything off and get a better result? If so, has anyone any suggestions of a decent, realitively inexpensive printer?
Jules

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45676
Location: Essex

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 07 10:57 am Post subject:
Word's not the right product for the job, do you have any other programmes? Publisher might be better.

Nick

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 34535
Location: Hereford

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 07 10:58 am Post subject:
Even Powerpoint might be better. And I hate powerpoint,

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 07 11:10 am Post subject:

First question: are you intending to print this yourself, or send your template to a printing company? If the latter, slaving away with Word is probably no saving of time for the printing company; they'll only have to recreate everything in their software.

Second question: do you see yourself doing more of your own publicity materials? If so, get yourself a copy of Publisher. If this is a one-off, layout can be done in Word (for home-printing) but as you're seeing it's a right faff, because as Tahir says it's not the right tool for the job. So for a one-off choose between persevering and forking out for a printing company to do the job for you.

A.

boisdevie1

Joined: 11 Aug 2006
Posts: 3897
Location: Lancaster

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 07 11:28 am Post subject:
I bought a prog for fifty quid called pageplus and it does the job very well.

woodsprite

Joined: 20 Mar 2006
Posts: 2943
Location: North Herefordshire

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 07 1:14 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the advice everyone.
I'm utterly hopeless with all stuff technical so in the future I will be farming this sort of stuff out (and potentially looking for techie bods to do it for me, at a price of course

) but for now I've taken the cowards way out and produced a reasonable brochure using this website.
www.mybrochuremaker.com.
Its not ideal but with glossy paper and photo quality ink, its printed up quite well. Thanks for your help.

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 07 2:44 pm Post subject:

woodsprite wrote:

(and potentially looking for techie bods to do it for me, at a price of course

)

Various people amongst our number who'll be happy to relieve you of your cash

Maxwell Smart

Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 607
Location: London Town

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 07 11:52 pm Post subject:
Just make sure whatever program you choose to do it in will be acceptable by your printers... Also for cheap print runs try printing.com but read their guides closely. For quality print runs try seacourt.net

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 07 10:12 am Post subject:

Maxwell Smart wrote:

Just make sure whatever program you choose to do it in will be acceptable by your printers...

That's essentially sound advice, but ordinary folk doing short-run materials for their small business probably aren't going to invest in a high-end DTP package. Publisher isn't welcomed with open arms by printing companies, but they can work with it.
A.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 07 3:35 pm Post subject:

Barefoot Andrew wrote:

Maxwell Smart wrote:

Just make sure whatever program you choose to do it in will be acceptable by your printers...

As per a previous discussion:
-- send things to a printer as a PDF file --
and make the printer's life very simple.

Mind you, it then becomes your concern that (for example) photos and scans are stored in the pdf at an appropriate resolution.

But it means that you and the printer have no need whatsoever to be using the same software, or even type of computer...

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 07 3:37 pm Post subject:
Like anything to do with computers, it quickly becomes non-trivial... A.

VSS

Joined: 14 Jan 2007
Posts: 2845
Location: Llyn Peninsula, North Wales

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 07 9:38 pm Post subject:

boisdevie1 wrote:

I bought a prog for fifty quid called pageplus and it does the job very well.

If you mean Serif Pageplus - it is brilliant. I use it all the time for brochures, catalogue, booklets, promo stuff. If you have on of the up to date versions you can use it yo publish pdf files too. Will even allow you to do a website (although the serif webplus programmes are better for this).

Worth it if you can get a copy.

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