Hi there!
At work we are struggling a little bit to create a document where prices for different things are showed, think of it like a physical catalogue that sometimes is sent in PDF to clients so they know what are the prices for our services.
What app or software do you suggest for something like this? Using word is kind of good but not great for what we want to see.
Thanks!
Publisher 2021 LTSC for PC or Swift Publisher for Mac.
Affinity has a Publisher app. It is similar to InDesign, but much more affordable. It has some decent templates that might work for your needs.
Affinity Publisher or InDesign are the power tools here. Pages might be okay as well, actually.
The key question is what the workflow should be: Who will be updating this document and how will they do it?
I ask because Publisher and InDesign both kinda expect a designer to craft a template document, then someone else feeds content into that document in order to publish it.
I’ll update it, but we do it once a year to adjust the price if supplies get more expensive.
I think maybe I’ll hire some freelancer that uses Affinity or Indesign for the template and then I just update the document accordingly.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Thanks! I’ll look into them.
I hace a Mac, I guess I’ll check Swift publisher. Thanks!
Aren’t Craft documents supposed to be beautiful, easy to create, and easy to share on the web?
I don’t think it is the tool for a catalogue.
I bought Affinity Publisher a while back, thinking I’ll make beautiful documents for my students. But as of yet, I never took the time to sit down and learn to use the damn thing. Same thing with Omnigraffle.
I wonder if he could use Keynote? It’s flexible and easy to use. I know some people use it to make documents. Not sure it would be useful here. Or Numbers? Can you make pretty documents with it?
Affinity Publisher is another beautiful-looking piece of software sitting on my Mac that I have yet to make much use of. (Sad face)
It’s worth breaking down what these tools do in the simplest possible terms: they lay out shapes, images, and text. (Affinity Publisher, Adobe InDesign, and others add a layer to this in which you can lay out text flow areas, then insert e.g., a Word document using Styles and have the designed document map the Word document and its styles to the template.)
So, before anyone gets excited about using the tools, they should think about what that really means, and probably practice it a bit (or a lot) before investing (cash or time) in more expensive tools for doing the same thing.
I can make equally gorgeous things in Affinity Publisher, OmniGraffle, and Pages, but that’s mostly because I’ve spent many hours pushing pixels around on a screen!
It really isn’t hard to learn to do, but I suggest starting with what you have (eg Pages) and using the Arrange and Shape tools to make interesting things.
Pro tip: visit something like Dribbble, find some inspiration, then try to make it in the tools you’re practicing. Riff on that and then you’ve got something great you can use.
Take a look at Canva. I’ve used it a couple of times for small design projects. They have templates for just about anything you might want to sent out into the world.
+1 to this idea. I create all sorts of beautiful docs in Google Slides. Bonus, they’re collaborative and easy to get feedback on.
ETA: The key is to change the slide dimensions to either 8.5x11 or 17x11 for a spread.