Do you design your own brochures? If so, the chances are you have a few software tools that you tend to rely on. While this means you’re familiar with their capabilities, it has the major downside of forcing you into a comfort zone that might not be best for results.
It’s far better to have a range of software for brochure design at your disposal, so you can pick the right one for each design. Below are a few suggestions, explaining their strengths and weaknesses.
Adobe InDesign CC & Illustrator CC
Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite is considered the industry standard for designing a brochure, and these two tools are included in it. This means they integrate well with other components, such as PhotoShop and Acrobat. They have many similar features, but suit slightly different projects, with Illustrator aimed more at professional designers to create high-end vector art.
Both offer master pages, along with configurable workspace, paragraph and character styles. Advanced font management is handled by ToolKit, while advanced colour management comes courtesy of PMS, FOCOLTONE, HKS and TOYO, while both offer asset linking and output packaging.
The two main downsides of both tools are that they can take a while to get the hang of, and that the cost is fairly steep. InDesign, for instance, is $50 a month — though there’s nothing to stop you cancelling your subscription after you’ve finished your project.
Scribus
Like the Adobe tools, Scribus isn’t easy to get your head around, but it has one very big advantage — as an open-source software, it’s free. On the downside, it’s less flexible than InDesign, but it does offer powerful layout tools for making a brochure.
Scribus offers a number of the features found in InDesign, although not the advanced management ones. However, a big plus is that it integrates well with Gimp, which is also free, and the two in combination can be used to create a good brochure design.
Inkscape
Like Scribus, Inkscape is a free, open-source tool which, though less powerful or flexible than the Adobe equivalent, can be used to make excellent brochures. Like Illustrator, Inkscape is geared particularly to creating vector art and has powerful vector editing tools, with high-quality PDF export.
The big drawback here, though, is that Inkscape will only support one page or canvas. You can solve the problem by creating separate files simultaneously, but it doesn’t have the advanced tools to make your job easier.
Microsoft Publisher
Depending on what level of quality you’re going for in your brochure, you might be able to make do with Publisher, which is included with the standard Microsoft Office 365 package. It has plenty of built-in templates, but perhaps its biggest advantage is that it’s easy to use for anyone accustomed to other Microsoft applications.
That doesn’t make it a substitute for the other tools mentioned, though. It has relatively limited functionality and won’t produce professional-standard files ready for print. On the other hand, if all you want is a decent amateur brochure, Publisher would be a great option.
The One Sure Solution
Of course, the one sure way of making certain you end up with an awesome brochure design is to hire a professional designer to produce it. Why not get in touch with us if you want to know more?
