I use InDesign and it works great. It does have a learning curve, but it's pretty small. I like it a lot, and it's pretty easy to come up with a professional looking layout. It also makes it simple to collaborate with my graphic designer, since she's already using Adobe.

What does a graphic professional cost? There are two learning curves here. I'm confident I could learn InDesign quickly. I'm not confident that would make me a layout person. If I can give a graphics person A) Text in Microsoft Word and seperate graphics and instructions B) A really ugly InDesign file and instructions (maybe with raw text and graphics just in case), would the graphics person find any particular advantage in B over A?

I'm confident I could learn InDesign quickly. I'm not confident that would make me a layout person.

You are a very smart man. Can I have you cloned?

Ginger, you do DTP professionally, don't you? And content editing as well?

What does a graphic professional cost?

A lot. But I can't be more specific than that, because mine is free. She's a donor, and is solely responsible for us not looking like complete amateurs.

If I can give a graphics person A) Text in Microsoft Word and seperate graphics and instructions B) A really ugly InDesign file and instructions (maybe with raw text and graphics just in case), would the graphics person find any particular advantage in B over A?

Well, assuming you have an idea of how you want it to look, but you know that you can't really get it there in InDesign, there's 2 ways to look at this. Option A has the designer taking the raw material and creating the whole thing from scratch, making a template and style sheets and whatnot, and then laying it out. Option B has the designer taking what might -- no offense -- be a fairly screwed up file, depending on how you want it to lool, and then needing to fix it, and THEN making templates and style sheets and proceding to the detailed layout stuff.

Nine times out of 10 I'd prefer option A.

Several people have told me the goto DTP for someone who needs power, but does not know what they are doing is Indesign. Don't know what someone who does know what they are doing would use that is different.

There's Quark XPress, but my understanding is that InDesign has the edge in popularity between the two, among professionals. That said, the two programs seem similar enough that, for instance, someone who is experienced in Quark and who understands computers could fairly easily move to InDesign.

What does a graphic professional cost?

A lot. But I can't be more specific than that, because mine is free. She's a donor, and is solely responsible for us not looking like complete amateurs.

Some charge per layout page; some charge per job; some charge per hour. For a newsletter that's always 8 pages, I charge per page (though since it's a fixed page amount, it effectively is also charging per job). That said, I do it for the nuns who run my high school, so I vastly undercharge them. It's part volunteer, part give-me-$$.

For something like a brochure/poster/flyer, I just charge a flat rate.

I used to have a bunch of links with info on freelance rates, and I don't know what the hell happened to them. Let me poke around and see if I can find them.

If you find those links, please post - I keep up on web rates pretty well, but I'm always curious about the print graphics side of the world.

Option B has the designer taking what might -- no offense -- be a fairly screwed up file, depending on how you want it to lool, and then needing to fix it, and THEN making templates and style sheets and proceding to the detailed layout stuff.

Yeah that was my guess.

Yeah, for my application it's the other way 'round. The designer did the template work up front, and I just glommed onto it for regular content renewal.

Yeah, for my application it's the other way 'round. The designer did the template work up front, and I just glommed onto it for regular content renewal.

But that's fairly standard for on ongoing thing, versus a one-off, IMO. I would not want to get a 200-page Quark file that an author made and then said, "I need you to make this look like I want it to look." I would lose my shit and double my regular rate (not the rate I charge the nuns), because the job just expanded in scope.

t edit Liese, did I mis-read you? I just re-read it, and it suddenly occurred to me that you might have been agreeing with me. I was up until 4:15 last night, and I am mightly fuzzy-headed.