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Newsletter Program

B

brandon.vong

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 8, 2007
154
0
Hi everyone,

I need to produce a newsletter for an organization at my school and was just wondering if you guys have any awesome programs that you could recommend that is not too hard to pick up? Thanks for your inputs and suggestions!
 
Thanks for the suggestion but do you have more suggestions aside from the iWork suite? Thanks!
 
Adobe InDesign CS3
This professional page layout app has tons of built-in features, Photoshop filters, drawing tools etc...
This is definitely the best tool for what you want to do.
 
Sorry, one more question, is $314 for CS3 Design Premium through my school a pretty good deal?
 
I paid $650 for the CS3 Design Premium Upgrade, and the retail rice is something like $1700.
I'd say you're getting pretty sweet deal.
 
snickelfritz said:
Adobe InDesign CS3
This professional page layout app has tons of built-in features, Photoshop filters, drawing tools etc...
This is definitely the best tool for what you want to do.
Click to expand...

the OP asked for:

brandon.vong said:
I need to produce a newsletter for an organization at my school and was just wondering if you guys have any awesome programs that you could recommend that is not too hard to pick up? Thanks for your inputs and suggestions!
Click to expand...

indesign has a steep learning curve as it is a professional app as mentioned. i do not think thats a smart purchase for someone who is looking for something that is "easy to pick up".

i second the recommendation for pages. you could also just use microsoft word. i also think there are a few online apps that will generate a PDF of a newsletter via a web interface, you will have to google for that however.

you can look at this, too: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18896/swift-publisher
 
I whole-heartedly disagree; Indesign is actually easier to use once you learn the basics.
Consumer-level apps are ultimately frustratingly limited, in terms of flexibility and quality of the output.
And very few, if any, commercial printing services will accept files from Appleworks, Pages, etc...
ie: if you're going to devote time and effort to learning an application, it might as well be the right one.
 
snickelfritz said:
I whole-heartedly disagree; Indesign is actually easier to use once you learn the basics.
Consumer-level apps are ultimately frustratingly limited, in terms of flexibility and quality of the output.
And very few, if any, commercial printing services will accept files from Appleworks, Pages, etc...
ie: if you're going to devote time and effort to learning an application, it might as well be the right one.
Click to expand...

I agree with you. ID has an intimidating interface, but once you learn the basics, is really smooth to work with.
 
Thanks for your input. I did look at Pages but did seem quite limited. The newsletter is to be sent out to business fraternity alumnus so I do not want it to look "kiddish/unprofessional" so I guess I'll take a stab at InDesign. I'm assuming the CS3 Bible or whatever is a good start then? Thanks once again for all of the suggestions. If I do this, I want to get it done right.
 
My advice would be to immediately focus your efforts on the "Paragraphs Styles" palette.
Learn as much as possible about it.
In a nutshell, the paragraph styles palette is where you name, create and store the formatting attributes for your entire document.

You set the style name, font, size, indents, line spacing, tabs, font color, etc... within the styles dialog.
These attributes can then be applied to any paragraph by placing the insertion point anywhere in the paragraph, then clicking the style name in the palette list.
Subsequent edits to the style will update all paragraphs it is applied to.
Live preview is available in the styles dialog, so you can see the results of your edits while you are tweaking the styles.

It is impossible to overstate the benefit of mastering this feature.
This is also true of Microsoft Word, although I have yet to meet a Word user that has ever used paragraph styles.

GL
 
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