So is Publisher really that bad?
Publisher and print shops...like oil in water
If you are creating something to print on your home printer go for it! Publisher is inexpensive, and for making a basic flyer or your toddler’s birthday invitations, it will work just fine. But if you are designing your business brochures, business cards or postcards, where quality matters, Publisher just creates more headaches than it’s worth.
Here are three reasons of caution if you want to use Publisher as your “professional design program”;
The biggest one: Incompatibility
Publisher, MS Word and other Microsoft programs do not behave the same way when a file is brought from one computer to the other. The reason for this is when the project is designed on your computer, you are using your computer settings, your printer settings, your fonts, your graphics, and other unpredictable settings that are used when creating the document. When you simply just save a file, and take it to a print shop, they do not have all of the settings, fonts, graphics on their system as they are on yours, therefore getting different results. Think English speaking computer creating a file, handing over to a mostly Spanish speaking/broken English speaking computer reading your file.
The PACK AND GO feature helps to get rid of most of these problems, however, most printers prefer or even require at minimum a PDF document instead of having to mess with the Publisher file.
The reason why InDesign, Illustrator and other professional design programs work better, is that they are postscript driven programing and Microsoft products are not. Never mind the fancy words – it means English to English! (or your language of choice).
Inaccurate Templates
As nice as Publisher is to provide a variety of commonly used templates, they can often make you nuts if you want your document professionally printed. Try using the tri-fold template and you’ll see what I mean. A tri-fold has three panels, but the template panels are incorrect in size. You’ll go nuts trying to figure out why your middle panel is always off center, and the inside panel is too close to the fold.
Graphics and Photos
Publisher provides graphics to use, however, users often stretch and enlarge photos improperly and/or use low resolution photos. You can only import .jpg and .tif images in Publisher, which are raster graphics and tend to look more fuzzy.
My best advice?
It is very wise to check with your printer of choice BEFORE you start working to make sure they will accept your file. If they do accept the file, but have to rework it to make it compatible for professional printing you can expect to pay for redesign fees. Or, you can just call your GRAPHIC SIDEKICK and save yourself the trouble! Until next time…
