Thread: making brochures

I'm new of being a graphic designer. A client wants me to make a brochure. What's the best thing to do? Should I use a template or is it better to make one from scratch? What's the usual size and what software should I use? Indesign or Photoshop?

For brochures you should use indesign because brochures are used for printing purpose Indesign will do good for it.

You can get ideas for brochures and other stuff from this site http://www.stocklayouts.com/

Thank you Jani. I guess I just have to learn Indesign... I'm an expert in Photoshop and Illustrator but Indesign.... hmmmm...Oh well, guess I don't have any other choice.

You can do it in Illustrator too. Actually all you need to have is a vector software.

Call me weird but, for brochures, I use an odd piece of software I purchased many years back! MS Publisher LOL, i know it sucks, and there are many better programs, but I do not do many brochures, and when I do, I like to use a program I know like the back of my hand.

Yes, I could do it on FreeHand, but bad habits die hard! LOL

Originally Posted by LeenkzMike

Call me weird but, for brochures, I use an odd piece of software I purchased many years back! MS Publisher LOL, i know it sucks, and there are many better programs, but I do not do many brochures, and when I do, I like to use a program I know like the back of my hand.

Yes, I could do it on FreeHand, but bad habits die hard! LOL

OMG, that piece of crap should be banished! That software was created to help secretaries, er, administrative assistants, create office newsletters, not for creating print materials. I worked in a print shop and it required extra effort to get Publisher files ready for print. Ugh. This think is like most Microsoft products, a piece of crap. I do not apologize for my bluntness.

banzaibert, as Jani mentioned, you can create a brochure in Illustrator. Just remember that it won't be print-ready, but it can most definitely be done with that.

If i do it in Illustrator, you said it won't be print ready, so how can i make it print ready? Should I use some sort of template for brochures?

Well Chaka,

I am sorry my comments got you so Jacked Up, My friend who I use for short runs, has no problems with Publisher files, I understand it is a piece of crap, but it works in my situation.

Originally Posted by banzaibert

If i do it in Illustrator, you said it won't be print ready, so how can i make it print ready? Should I use some sort of template for brochures?

At the print shops, what they'd do is take the Illustrator file, import it into either InDesign or Quark, setup the most efficient way possible for your quantity. Meaning they'd setup the sheet 2-up, 4-up, etc., than they'd run that to film or straight to plate. Print-ready would mean they could open the file and run film/plates from it.

Originally Posted by LeenkzMike

Well Chaka,

I am sorry my comments got you so Jacked Up, My friend who I use for short runs, has no problems with Publisher files, I understand it is a piece of crap, but it works in my situation.

Do you think they'd ever tell a client what a hassle it is? Remember, the customer is always right. But, no self-respecting graphic designer would ever use Publisher. At the print shop, whoever got the Publisher files got the short end of the stick.

So in other words I really need to learn Indesign quick because my client is asking for a print-ready brochure. Sheeesh.... Indesign looks so complicated.

It's really not that complicated. Just open a new document, set the parameters to those of your brochure (make sure it's finished size). Once that's done, you'll use content/text boxes to design the piece. You can't enter text or images without those boxes.

Have you asked your client if they could print from PDFs?

I only ever made 1 brochure and it was for my fathers business.. I kinda cheated though lol I used a website called www.mybrochuremaker.com

Never know.. might inspire you with some great ideas if nothing else! Besides.. can't hurt to look.. can it?

I remember when I first designed a brochure for our school organization. I did it in Corel Draw 11 as far as I remember. It was fun, cool and easy.

I love this forum! Everyone is super helpful. Thanks a lot guys, I'll sure will try different methods in making brochures....but I have to master Indesign first then venture in other ways. All those boxes in Indesign makes it more complicated. How can it not be as easy as Photoshop?

That's because Photoshop was created for the creation and manipulation of images. InDesign is for publishing and isn't as complicated once you learn it. The best thing to do, since you're just starting out with InDesign, is create a simple brochure. If you have Photoshop already, you can create graphics there and then import them into InDesign. You can do the same with Illustrator images as well. I'd also suggest you take some quick InDesign tutorials to learn the basics. Here are a few links that would useful to that end:

Free Adobe InDesign Tutorials
InDesign Basic Tutorials
Adobe Video Workshop This is my favorite