Free? Publishing software

[scots_lass]

A friend has asked me to design some business stationery for his new business. Up till now I have always used Microsoft Word but thought I might try some publishing s/w instead. Microsoft Publisher is around £100 which is a bit steep.
Does anyone know of a cheaper/better/free s/w package I could use. I will be doing business cards, flyers and office templates for him.
Thanks..........

 

[marinyork]

Depends what you want to do. Draw, writer OO or you can go in the scribus direction.

 

[solmisation]

Hi
Serif PagePlus SE is available for free,
www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/pageplus
or the most up to date version is only £9.99 to buy. I used to use Serif software many years ago, the only draw back was all the calls trying to sell me more and more stuff. Another option is to use Scribus, this is an Open Source software package, but it has a windows installer available. You can find it here
www.scribus.net

Hope this is of some use.

 

[amnesia]

Open Office should be able to most things if all you want to do is design stationery.

 

[XmisterIS]

You should be able to do all that you want in Word - fiddle around with the page break settings!

 

[beanzontoast]

Something to consider is whether you want him to be able to open up and use the 'templates' you are making for him in the software programs he already has, not just send them off to be printed somewhere. If so, you need to think what software he's running and make sure whatever you use can interface format-wise with it.

 

[HJ]

A friend has asked me to design some business stationery for his new business. Up till now I have always used Microsoft Word but thought I might try some publishing s/w instead. Microsoft Publisher is around £100 which is a bit steep.
Does anyone know of a cheaper/better/free s/w package I could use. I will be doing business cards, flyers and office templates for him.
Thanks..........

If you nip out to the news agents and get a copy of PC Pro (the DVD edition) asap you can get a copy of the beta version of MS Office Pro 2010, which is free to use until October. It has Publisher, even though it is a beta version (ie you will come on of the testers) it is very stable, I haven't had any problems with it so far.