desktop publishing -- RFI, S/D, WTF

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Anyone with graphic/design/publishing experience, help! The goal: a small, modest, nicely designed quarterly journal, with a modest budget to match.

I've used both Adobe InDesign and Quark Express at work, but I mostly know the text editing functions -- I'm a word guy, not a design guy. So I'm looking for something that will allow me to do layout and composition (mostly text, but some illustrations too) with as little fuss as possible (and hopefully without spending $900 on software...). Does anything exist between the basic publishing functions of Microsoft Office and the professional-level stuff like Adobe and Quark?

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:30 (twenty-one years ago)

If it helps at all, I want the design to be simple but kind of classic -- in the vein of the current Harper's, say.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh I was gonna say Adobe Illustrator, but if you think that's too advanced I don't have any good suggestions.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:32 (twenty-one years ago)

(and to be clear, I'm not asking for help in doing the work, just information on tools to use that I might not be aware of -- like, if you were going to publish such a thing, what would you use?0

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:32 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.adobe.com/products/pagemaker/main.html

― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Adobe Illustrator's not necessarily too advanced, but I think it probably does way more than I need. Is there no mid-market user-friendly desktop publishing kit for, you know, people who put out newsletters and zines and that kind of thing?

If not, it seems like someone should make one. And send me a trial copy free!

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:34 (twenty-one years ago)

x-post -- ah yeah, PageMaker. I haven't used that since the early '90s. I assume it's gotten a lot smoother since then? Is the learning curve not too steep?

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Pagemaker is pretty easy to use if you know enough about publishing and other adobe products. So yeah, I'd say the learning curve isn't terribly steep.

Adobe is also good about having tons of support/training documents.
Plus I'm sure you can find help online if you run into any snags.

― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh and by the way you can DESTROY this job in AMERICA cuz pretty soon it ain't gonna exist here. So all us DTP people better start liking the idea of living in Banglore cuz that's where it's at!

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:38 (twenty-one years ago)

InDesign is probably a bit much for what you're looking to do, but PageMaker should be about right.

― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I was going to suggest Pagemaker as well (not sure what it costs tho).

Also, if your needs arent way off the scale, I hear even MS Publisher (yeah I know, shoosh) is reasonable for very basic projects nowdays, if you really needed to save money.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, there was a great couple articles in the Globe today about how white collar jobs are being shipped overseas at an alarming rate now too.

Thanks, giant multinational corporations, for making america your home and then selling us out!

― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:39 (twenty-one years ago)

People actually pay for Adobe products?!

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Imn my DTP classes I was always taught, Pagemaker for novels/text volumes, Quark for magazines and other pictorial layout.

This was before InDesign existed though mind you.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:40 (twenty-one years ago)

PageMaker costs $399 retail.

Depending on if you have any tenuous ties to a university, you might be able to snag an educational discount (which I think for most software is around $100.

― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh and by the way you can DESTROY this job in AMERICA

Well, I'm just doing it as a sideline for the fun of it. Or maybe I could hire someone in Bangalore to have fun for me...

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:41 (twenty-one years ago)

PageMaker can certainly handle pictures, but if you're going to do something like a magazine that's heavily graphic-intensive you're probably better off with InDesign or Quark, yeah.

From what I understand he's doing something that's mostly text-based, though, right?

― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, very text-heavy, with some interspersed illustrations. Almost like a 19th-century look, is what I'm shooting for.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Sounds like PageMaker's yer bag then.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:45 (twenty-one years ago)

I quite like it, I found it very elegant. Havent used it in years though.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:45 (twenty-one years ago)

quark isn't very fussy. you can learn it in an afternoon.

― hockey family (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:46 (twenty-one years ago)

oh, while we're talking ~~not paying for~~ adobe products, i could use a copy of the most recent ph***sh**. i have an older version that xp service pack two doesn't seem very fond of.

― hockey family (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Scribus is probably the best known Linux solution for this and Windows and Mac versions do exist. it's free and it's Free.

http://www.scribus.org.uk/

(details of non-linux versions in Documentation area)

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 18 November 2004 09:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Quark is still the prefered, InDesign is second. Don't use anything else. Most printers will have a heart-attack if you send them a Page Maker file, can't imagine how they'd feel about Publisher or "scribus".

Illustrator is very cool and powerful, so long as yr. design is only one page.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, 18 November 2004 10:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Since you've used Quark and InDesign before, you'll have no problem picking up the extra bits you need to use. Always better to have something that can do more than you need than just what you think you need, as you'll always discover new things you can do. And Dan's otm about printers: they want the total output or a high-res PDF and for that you need Quark or InDesign. Speak to printers' prepress departments before you buy the software cos they'll have some useful comments I reckon.

― beanz (beanz), Thursday, 18 November 2004 15:39 (twenty-one years ago)

InDesign is probably your best bet as it is far cheaper than Quark (and arguably better). The only problem you may have is in the prepress/printing stage where they may have issues with Indesign files, as opposed to Quark where they will be used to most of its quirks.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Thursday, 18 November 2004 15:43 (twenty-one years ago)

If you are going fresh in, and don't need to, please forget about Quark. it is too expensive and basically a bit rubbish these days. InDesign is much more affordable and GETS IT RIGHT. I wish I could junk Quark at work, but it's frozen in at too many levels.

Illustrator is not the right tool for laying out a journal.

It's worth learning how to make a good quality PDF and supply that to the printers. Caveat: listen to what the printers ask of you, they will love you for it.

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Thursday, 18 November 2004 16:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Talking to the printers is a good idea. I'm just gonna go to some local little print shop, but I suppose it'd be worth picking one and going in to talk to them a little beforehand, rather than showing up with something and having them say, "WTF is this?" (Anyone have any neighborhood print shops to recommend in NYC? Besides Kinko's, I mean...)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 18 November 2004 16:45 (twenty-one years ago)

alex, you keep saying this, but since the need for desktop publishing is usually "go down, get this laid out, bring back a printed copy," I don't see how this can really be outsourced on a vast basis. Ditto for regular layout/studio work; our clients are so damn annoyingly hands on and dictatorial, they'll barely let us make any design decisions without them standing over our shoulders, so I can't see them letting it go to bangalore. They did, however, let all the systems development go there, and they are currently getting screwed for doing that.

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 18 November 2004 17:05 (twenty-one years ago)

A huge percentage of high-end day-to-day desktop publishing work is done for banks and law firms and most of that work already has gone overseas (and yes I believe they probably are regretting it as it does slow the process down tremendously and reduce the amount of hands on pressure they can apply to the publishers.) The work is briefly plotted, faxed to India, created, sent back to the States, edits are made and faxed back, etc and then it's finally printed in the States (for at least as long as the analyst level positions exist here--when then move to India almost all of it will stay there.)

Maybe I should have just said that kind of desktop publishing won't exist anymore, but I have a feeling a lot of it will follow and that price considerations may end up topping the "I want to breath down this guy's neck and make six million and one changes" considerations in the end.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 18 November 2004 17:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Framemaker is perfectly up to the job you describe. I've used it professionally to create technical manuals up to 600 pp. with plenty of graphics.

But it sounds to me like what you really need is a unified design template for the journal that incorporates all the standardized design apects of one issue. That's the big job. Once you have decided on all those details and set up a template, all you really need to do from one issue to the next is decide on a cover, drop in your text & graphics and it's done and dusted.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 18 November 2004 18:17 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

Revive in the hopes that someone can comment on using EndNote with InDesign CS2. I'd like to know if 1)InDesign will screw any of the references up and 2)can you use EndNote with InDesign, or must you do all your EndNote-ing in Word before dumping into InDesign for layout?

Also taking sides: EndNote vs. ReferenceManager

― quincie (quincie), Wednesday, 5 July 2006 18:28 (nineteen years ago)

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