WHEN it comes to designing newsletters, fliers, brochures and other documents, there are two kinds of people -- artists and folks like me.
I'm among the graphically challenged, and the idea of creating anything more complicated than a business letter gives me the willies. On the other hand, I understand the importance of looking good in print.
That's why I've always enjoyed Microsoft Publisher.
It doesn't expect you to be a design genius. Microsoft hires the design gurus and invites you to steal shamelessly from their inventions.
The result: a desktop publishing program that produces great-looking documents in a fraction of the time it would take you to do the job from scratch.
With the release of Publisher 98, Microsoft has made a fine program even better, with more automation, a greater choice of document designs and an improved conversion routine that turns your documents into Web pages. It's so good that it makes you wonder why the same outfit can't build an operating system that doesn't drive you up the wall. But that's another column on another day.
If you're not familiar with the genre, a desktop publishing program combines word processing, graphics and design features.
It creates pages containing frames that can hold text, photos, charts, tables, or drawings. But unlike most word processors, desktop publishers allow you to flow text from one frame to another, so that you can start an article on Page 1 of the PTA newsletter and continue it on Page 4. If you add or cut text, it automatically makes adjustments on both pages.
Publisher makes the job easier through a combination of templates and Wizards.
A template is a predesigned document -- the layout, typefaces, and graphic placements are already chosen.
All you have to do is substitute your text, headlines and pictures.
Of course, once you've chosen a template, you can modify any element, add pages or graphics and move things around to your heart's content -- but the grunt work is already done.
Publisher 98 includes templates for more than 1,600 newsletters, fliers, brochures, postcards, forms, letterheads, business cards, signs, greeting cards, calendars, manus, awards, gift certificates and the like.
After you select a template, Publisher's Wizards take over. A Wizard is a mini-program that asks you questions about the document you want to create. How many pages? How many columns of text? Do you want to print on both sides of the paper or just one? What color scheme would you like?
When you're through, the Wizard creates the entire document. Then it's time for you to replace the dummy text with your own, either by typing or importing it from a word processor.
Likewise, by clicking on one of the placeholder graphics, you can replace it with your own photo or chart, or choose from thousands of clip art images and stock photographs.
Microsoft has added some nifty new features, including a Catalog that organizes templates and Design Sets that automatically create new brochures, fliers, business cards and other documents with a consistent layout, typeface collection and color scheme.
A new Personal Profile feature automatically adds your name, company name, address and other information to every document.
Wizards, which once disappeared after creating your document, now hang around, allowing you to modify the entire design with a couple of mouse clicks, even after you've added your own text and other features. Unfortunately, Wizards occupy about a third of the screen, leaving precious little room to actually work on your document.
But you can make the Wizard disappear.
Editing features have also been improved, and the program now behaves more like Microsoft Word, the company's flagship word processor. In fact, if you have Word installed on your computer, you can automatically use the word processor to edit the text in any frame, which is useful for dealing with type in narrow columns. When you exit from Word, the changes show up in Publisher. An on-the-fly spell checker now highlights mistakes as you type, and a slick auto-fit feature dynamically adjusts the size of a headline or caption to fit a frame.
The program's Web converter will turn your documents into credible Web pages, complete with working links to other pages. In fact, Publisher's Catalog includes a variety of attractive Web page designs.
Just be aware that Publisher's Web pages may not load or display as efficiently as they would if they were designed from scratch. If you're creating a Web site that's more than a few pages deep, you might want to use a dedicated Web page editor (Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator have built-in editors).
There isn't much of a downside to Publisher 98. It still won't display more than two pages at a time, and its inability to produce four-color separations keeps it from being a real professional's tool.
But that won't bother most home and small business users, who get what their busy schedules demand -- quick, easy, good looking documents.
Microsoft Publisher lists for $99.95 and requires Windows 95. For information, point your Web browser to www.microsoft.com/publisher/.
Pub Date: 4/12/98
