Hello- First of all, I am new here, I saw a link to this forum in a recent issue of LED Digest and I am finding it to be a great resource. My question is, can anyone recommend a good design program for putting together postcards or flyers for direct mail (I did a search but didn't find anything)? I'm on a tight budget, so if anyone knows of a good open source program, that would be best. It doesn't need to do much, I'm just looking for a little more flexibility than Word offers. Any suggestions are much appreciated, thanks!
You can use any grapic program you like and make a pdf of it using a program like primopdf (it's a free printerdriver that "prints" a pdf file instead of paper) that pdf file you can use for your commercial printer to make the flyers www.primopdf.com but there are also other free pdf creation programs.
There was free software intended for such task at Mead website, however I can't find the link due to its site redesign. However you may try following this: www.mead.com/webapp/wcs/stores/serv...051&catalogId=10006&portfolio=false&mainnav=Y
mainly to design the flyer. i hadn't gotten to the issue of printing it yet, but I think I'll use PrimoPDF as Edynas recommended, since it's already installed on the computers at my school. i'm looking through the mead website now, Your Content- do you know if it had a specific name?
Glad I could help. If Photoshop is installed too at your schools putter you can edit the nice templates from mead.com (thnxs yourcontent is a great resource I didn´t knew)
plus it might be overkill for a simple flyer but I'd say Adobe Illustrator is what you want. If you learn how to use it on some simple flyers you can gradually grow your business. Its an print industry standard.
True and that was what I was thinking too but when I replied the post I had in mind that Illustrator comes with a nice pricetag....but as I think of it isn´t there a free full working 30 day trial version..
wow, cool coincidence. in between my last post and checking the thread again, i happened upon photoshop on the school computers and i've been having some luck using it. i checked and they also have illustrator, so i'll experiment with that soon. they replaced a lot of the computers over summer/winter breaks, but i didn't expect that they would have licensed a bunch of new programs as well. i wish i would have found out about them sooner, as i graduate in a couple months!
just remember if you use Photoshop to get you color space correct (CMYK for color reproduction, Greyscale for black-only printing, never use RGB for printed material) and to work at a resolution of 300 dpi. You'll also want to add .125" to your dimensions if you have artwork/images that will reach the edge of the page. if you're just working with text, you might want to consider Illustrator. it makes for MUCH smaller files (as it's vector/math-based—whereas Photoshop is pixel-based, accounting for every pixel on every layer). text editing capabilities are also considerably more flexible and efficient in Illustrator, and you don't have to worry about resolution as native Illustrator elements are infinitely scalable.
You used to be able to get a super discount price on Adobe products. You couldn't get cheap upgrades but you got a full functioning product at a deep discount. That was the way it was back in the day. Something you should check out.
thanks for the practical tips rightandtight- that should save me quite a bit of trial-and-error time. dbinto, i'll check that out with out campus its department, thanks for the tip. that would be pretty great if it's still the case
One question/tip...ask your printer what kind of file and specification they need. Margins, size etc etc and maybe they even have a template for you.