Attn: Designers

[The Masked Unit]

What types of (Windows) programs are used to create nice looking documents like brochures etc, and which would be pretty easy to learn to use? Something simple would be fine which I could save to a PDF, but which is generally better than just trying to make something look nice in Word.

Thanks.

[Dead kate moss]

InDesign. There may be something easier to use. It's not too hard though.

[no_offenc]

There are a few free/open source design/illustration tools out there.  Scribus (for dtp), Inkscape (vector illustration) and the GIMP (Photoshop type stuff) are all perfectly serviceable. Not Adobe/Quark level stuff but still decent nonetheless.

[The Boston Crab]

Publisher has a brochure template.

Depends how fancy you want to get.

[Mister Six]

It's not too hard to 'find' a copy of InDesign online, and if you sit yourself down over a weekend and go through some online tutorials you should be able to get to grips with the basics easy enough.

Quark's a pile of shit, and I have no idea how on Earth the thing's still going. I can only assume that there are a lot of daily newspapers that don't have time to retrain everyone on InDesign and so continue to use crappy old Quark.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Quark's a pile of shit, and I have no idea how on Earth the thing's still going. I can only assume that there are a lot of daily newspapers that don't have time to retrain everyone on InDesign and so continue to use crappy old Quark.

That's certainly the case where I work.