Adobe Illustrator??? please help.

[urbancoupon]

Hi Guys,

I'm having coupon templates designed by a professional graphic designer for a local coupon magazine I'm setting up. The coupon will be an actual full advertiser page.

The Templates will be designed in adobe illustrator and will be un-editable except for the text which I will need to change for the different coupon offers I have to create each time I create a different coupon offer and also an image area where I can insert an image for each new coupon.

So what I need to do is just edit/change the text content and image, for each coupon I create.
The graphic designer said I will need to buy adobe illustrator in order to edit the text and image in the coupon templates, I don't have any experience with graphic design programs and I'm thinking that illustrator may be to difficult for me to use. is it true that I will need illustrator to edit the templates or could anyone please recommend a simple program for editing text and uploading images onto an illustrator created template which then needs to be submitted to a print company in pdf files for commercial printing.

Thanks!

 

[Sdashiki]

If you are seriously trying to run a business, or make money doing this...and youve had to ask these questions...you are in over your head perhaps.

If its in illustrator format, you need illustrator to work on it...

 

[davedee65]

An alternative would be for your designer to lay the coupons out in InDesign with text and picture boxes that you can edit/change/update and then save to PDF. It still means having to by the software but you will probably find it more straight forward to use for your needs.

It could also be done with Word say, having inserted an image of the coupon template as a picture and then editing from there and you can save to PDF from Word if you have a newer version. But this isn't going to give professional results!

Hope that helps.

 

[bigus7674]

I agree about the InDesign approach, but as the other poster said, you will either have to invest in Illustrator, or in InDesign, to make the changes that you are looking to make.

InDesign would offer you more flexability, such as using a data merge to be able to plug in data fields and generate, for example, 20 different text fields with just the one template.

However, this does require you to learn the software whether it be InDesign or Illustrator to make the changes.

 

[Apple OC]

^^^ I agree with the above comments ... you will need the software to edit.

My advice ... because Illustrator and InDesign are not Applications that you can learn overnight.

Buy yourself a Tutorial Book on Illustrator and then download the Free Trial version of Illustrator from Adobe. That may be enough to learn how to edit the layers the Designer has created.

Leave the InDesign part to the Printer and just supply the Printer with "print ready hi rez PDF files.

again ... you will need to buy Illustrator as the Trial version will expire after 30 days.

good luck