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I'm in the process of developing supporting materials for my ongoing campaigns, and want to make them as professional as possible (as much of it, such as my house rules, players guides, etc., I intend to use for quite some time). In the past, I've simply used Word to create documents, and then converted them to PDFs. I'd like something that's more robust, however, since that method is pretty limited. What software would folks recommend to create professional-looking documents (understanding that I'd have a bit to learn from a layout perspective)? Does anyone have any experience in this regard (on a non-professional basis or otherwise)?
For non-professional (and affordable) Microsoft Publisher is not bad for layout. Professionally, Adobe InDesign will take your layout and make it their b#~+@ - once you learn its intricacies.
In my humble opinion of course. As far as learning about layout, study magazines and materials that you find easy to read and try to emulate them in your own layouts. A couple of tips:
- Whitespace is your friend.
- Large blocks of text are easier to read in serif fonts (Times New Roman) than sans serif fonts (Arial, Helvetica, Verdana).
- Pay attention to color combinations - some are easier to read than others, and for those that are color blind, completely unreadable.
Hope that helps!
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Thanks. I was considering Publisher, but wasn't sure how the documents would look in the end compared to other options. How difficult it Adobe InDesign to learn/use? I'm willing to pay a little more, and put more time in, if it's a much better product. (And- thank you for the additional tips. Greatly appreciated!)
Adobe plays nice with other products (not just Adobe products). Microsoft Publisher, not so much. InDesign is more expensive, but it is worth it. Visually, there really is not a whole lot of difference in output (if you know what you're doing), but InDesign allows finer control over objects in your layout that Publisher does not.
Check out OpenOffice - it's like MS-Office, only it's free. It will export to PDF (free). Also check out GIMP - it's like Photoshop, only free. If your pretty good with computers, check out Ubuntu. It's a very user-friendly version of linux for PCs. It comes with gimp and openoffice already installed, plus a lot of other goodies. Oh, and it's free. :-)
For more serious desktop publishing, you could try Scribus (free).
I've had to use Open Office. It's terrible. I haven't used Publisher or InDesign, but I'd trust Lilith's endorsement.
You might also consider upgrading to Word 2007 if you haven't already. I'm not saying it'll solve your problem, but it's much better for layouts and things than the older versions were (not that that's saying much, mind you.)
Um, nobody kick my ass for being the Mac dork, but anybody who does own a Mac and is looking for an affordable document layout program for producing gaming materials should give serious consideration to iWork. It runs about $75 and comes with a word program, and spreadsheet program, and a presentation program. Both the word and spreadsheet programs include very versatile document layout features. And not that you may ever have a use for a presentation program, but I can tell you from personal experience that Keynote kicks PowerPoint's ass in every way imaginable.
In the past, I've simply used Word to create documents, and then converted them to PDFs. I'd like something that's more robust, however, since that method is pretty limited.
When you say more robust, what particular sorts of features are you looking for?
If you already get it through Office, Publisher is a good desktop publishing program for the non-professional and has a pretty short learning curve if you're already familiar with Word (or any previous deskpub software). InDesign might be a bit more "oomph" than you need, assuming that you're going to work on one computer and print/publish from home, and are not sharing work across computers or using a commercial print service.
In either case, you'll probably still want to draft your text in Word, export to PDF, and create images in your art software of choice. In my experience, desktop publishing software just gives you a better user interface for putting it all together. (There are other benefits, too, but more for commercial/mass production use than "regular-people" use.)
I've had to use Open Office. It's terrible. I haven't used Publisher or InDesign, but I'd trust Lilith's endorsement.
You might also consider upgrading to Word 2007 if you haven't already. I'm not saying it'll solve your problem, but it's much better for layouts and things than the older versions were (not that that's saying much, mind you.)
There are some really significant improvements in terms of inputting pictures into the documents and such in Open Office 3. It may be worth another look.
InDesign certainly is a far better program for publishing...but with InDesign you get to choose between the $700 version and the $1800 version which is slightly more pricing then Open Office, which is free.