Programs for creating and printing brochures and booklets. Simplebooklet - an extremely simple and free booklet creation service

Of course, every private firm or company needs competent and effective advertising to attract customer attention to certain goods and services. However, doing this, a priori, can be extremely difficult and problematic, because advertising seems to be a whole science with a bunch of subtleties, features and nuances. A fairly good option for how to quickly and without much difficulty attract an audience of clients to the company’s offerings is to create branded products, for example, advertising brochures. But here, as usual, there are some subtleties and nuances, which consist in the difficulties of designing advertising material on your own.

Omitting any details, I want to say that the ideal solution to this issue would be to create advertising booklets in a special program designed for that purpose, which we recommend that you download for subsequent installation. Among all the applications designed for this, the leading place in terms of popularity and functionality is occupied by the quick creation of Microsoft Publisher, downloadable by any user without restrictions and following certain requirements. This amazingly convenient Microsoft application has a lot of features, which I will try to tell you about in detail.

Especially for those who are well versed in this and want to independently work on creating it for their company, we would like to give a recommendation to download the distribution kit from the website portal, with other products of similar functionality presented there. An important advantage of the utility for quickly creating on a computer after downloading is the function of outputting ready-made materials for printing in almost any format, regardless of their extension and other features.

Basic functions

• ready-made page templates;
• embedding various fonts into documents;
• character and paragraph text styles;
• color model and color separation system;
• creating PDF documents;
• drawing tools;
• creating files for subsequent printing on printing equipment;
• import/export of documents in various formats.

Pros and cons

• free distribution;
• availability of Russian-language localization;
• presence of a master page;
• working with text blocks, graphics, scripts;
• powerful integrated scripting environment;
• PDF support.

• lack of support for working with flash files;
• errors when trying to use the “Visualize” button.

Alternatives

Inkscape. Free application for working with vector illustrations. With its help you can create logos, posters, business cards, etc. It supports various text processing methods, has many drawing tools, works with clones of objects, can compress files and save them in the necessary graphic formats.

Business Card Master. Free program for creating original layouts of leaflets, flyers, business cards. It has many ready-made design options. It features fine print settings, has a built-in integrated editor, allows you to add brand names, pictures, logos, and save the project in a special database.

Operating principles

After downloading and installing the program, a window will open in which you can start creating new documents and make all the necessary settings for this.

The main window looks like this:

Interface

It contains a toolbar with which you can perform all basic operations with documents.

To create a cover, click the “Image Block” button. Then specify the block size using a frame. Once you have defined the boundaries, select the desired pattern from the rectangular selection. Each panel element has its own context menu. Through it you can call the “Properties” item and configure any block parameters.

New document

To add new pages to a document, go to the “Page” menu and check the “Copy” option.

Copy

In the next window, indicate which page and in how many copies to copy. You can remove unnecessary blocks in new pages.

Properties

To create a halftone gradient shade, activate the Shape tool, create a new block and go to the Colors section. Select the gradient type and desired shades.

Color properties

To insert template text, create a new block and select the appropriate item in the context menu.

Inserting a template

To save the layout, for example, in PDF format, click the “Save as PDF” button and set all the necessary parameters:

Export to PDF

Scribus is a professional tool that allows you to create and print books, calendars, business cards, booklets and other printed products.

On the Internet you can easily and quickly create a booklet like this:

Select one of the brochure templates and open it in Office for the web to make it editable in PowerPoint for the web and others in Word for the web).

Advice: If you're already connected to PowerPoint for the web, navigate to booklet templates by going to the menu file PowerPoint for the web create, and then under the template images, click More on Office.com.

You will be on the PowerPoint Templates page. From the list of categories, select Booklets.

When working with a booklet, you may want to Rename the file and replace the replacement pictures with pictures that will work. To do this, right-click the unnecessary picture, select the command Change picture, then select another image.

Share a brochure

When you're ready, print the booklet or share it online. You can do this if the booklet is still open in PowerPoint for the web. There is no need to save it first (this is already done for you).

Seal

To print the booklet, press CTRL+P, wait until the Print dialog box appears, and click the link to open the PDF version in your calendar. In this window, use the print command in the PDF viewer.

Sharing

Program for creating booklets.
How does this work

Once you find yourself on the website of the Low Prices printing house, you will no longer have to rack your brains over the question “in what program is the booklet made?” Now you can make almost any original layout design using our own editor. To do this, you have a set of templates and tools, skillfully using which you can easily achieve the desired result.

CREATE A BOOKLET

Creation of advertising brochures
in the constructor
printing house "Low prices"

The development of a unique design always begins with the selection of analogues. Feel free to take other people's ideas if you like them. Of course, we do not encourage you to plagiarize, but it is simply necessary to use successful techniques in your work. Study competitors' products or any other publications if you like them. What do you think is successful about them? What attracts the eye? What feelings does it evoke? Will your clients like this design? Answering these questions will help you make your print publication not just good, but better! But these are the lyrics, and now it’s time for you to find out how to make a booklet on your computer using our editor.

CREATE A BOOKLET

Booklet design: 5 simple secrets

Secret 1. When thinking about which program to use to make a booklet, do not rush to purchase expensive design programs. If you do not have a specialized education, then most likely you will only throw money away and will not get the expected result. The fact is that to master such a program you will have to spend too much time - during this time the need for a layout may disappear. It's easy to avoid disappointment. To make a booklet online for free, our editor will be enough for you.

Secret 2. If you need a design layout, but you don’t know where to start, take a look at our editor’s template database. It contains quite a few different design options for every taste and need. It's good if you have at least some idea of ​​what you need. But even if this is not the case, just explore all possible options. One of them will probably give you the right idea.

Secret 3. Don’t try to cram everything beautiful into your work at once. Redundancy has never benefited anyone. This statement is especially true if you need to create an information booklet. In this case, colorfulness can be sacrificed for the sake of clarity and accessibility. Instead of meaningless pictures, insert diagrams, infographics and other useful image options.

Secret 4. In the Low Prices printing house program, you can either make an A4 booklet or choose a different format. The selection of the required format also occurs in the editor. Pay attention to the corresponding menu item and do not forget about it if you want to avoid problems during printing. In addition, you need to take into account the orientation of the booklet - this parameter is in many ways even more important than the format.

Secret 5. We have created a program to make booklets at any time. Therefore, you can use it as many times as you need. Please note: If you have already made a layout once, then to print again you will not have to remember how it was and perform all the steps again. Just go to your account and send us the previously saved layout. By the way, in this case we will also receive all the details for paying for printing.

In this section we want to tell you how to make a booklet on a computer if you are doing this for the first time. Or rather, even about what to do at the very moment when you realized that you need this booklet.

CREATE A BOOKLET

How to make a beautiful booklet.
A little about the pictures

Creating a design layout largely depends on what goals you have. After all, the concept of “booklet” includes a huge number of products that are very different in nature. Menus, price lists, information leaflets, election campaign materials, advertising products - all these are booklets and their production follows the same algorithm, although each individual type has its own subtleties.

CREATE A BOOKLET

Free program
for creating booklets. Pros

Developing a booklet design in our designer has several undeniable advantages compared to other options for solving this problem. The best thing, of course, is that you can make a brochure online for free. However, this is not our only advantage. What are the advantages of using the Low Prices typography editor?

• Simplicity. Even if you don't know how to create a brochure on your computer, that's okay. You will easily understand how our designer works, and in just a few minutes you will be able to produce a fairly successful layout. The editor's interface and its button images have undergone multiple user testing. And we are confident that we managed to create an interface that is as understandable as possible for ordinary people.

How a booklet is developed

We hope that now you are sure that when planning a booklet in which program you will not have to worry about making it. Let's draw up a specific plan of your actions, where we will tell you in detail how the booklet is made. We will divide the work into three stages - preparatory, main and final.

Preparatory stage

• Before making a booklet, put programs like Photoshop or Corel in a far corner. You won't need them
• Make a list of tasks that your future booklet will perform. It is very important at this stage to understand whether you need to develop an advertising booklet or something else.
• Before making a booklet on a computer, sketch out a sketch of the future product by hand on a piece of paper and fold it as we have already described.
• Check if all your illustrations are ready. We collect the finished illustrations in one folder and number them so as not to confuse anything.
• We write texts in a format convenient for you (we most often use Word or Google Docs).

If you often need to print large documents on your printer, perhaps you would like to save at least a little paper and toner consumption. Learn how to print text as brochures and get 4x savings!

Do you like to read? Surely, your answer will be positive (at least, I hope that our site is visited by literate people or those who want to learn something useful). Today, for the reading population, it is not at all necessary to buy books or various periodicals. The Internet provides the widest possible freedom. You can read online directly on various sites, or download e-books and view them on your tablet or smartphone.

However, reading electronically does not always allow you to effectively absorb information. Sometimes it is much more convenient to have printed text at hand. Therefore, many people print e-books and various articles on a printer. It would seem that everything is fine: I printed it out and it’s in order! But, there are a couple of “buts”... Usually the printer prints on standard A4 sheets, which is sometimes excessive in terms of its size. It would be much better to print on A5 sheets in the form of small booklets or brochures.

This printing option, firstly, significantly saves paper (up to 4 pages can fit on 1 A4 sheet), secondly, it reduces toner consumption, and thirdly, it allows you to get a more compact “book” that you can always carry with you! Do you want to know how to print a brochure in Word or its free equivalent Writer from the OpenOffice and LibreOffice packages? Then I offer you a choice of several ways to do this.

General principle of creating brochures

The main condition for the correct printing of voluminous text in the form of a brochure is the correct arrangement of the pages. You need to calculate it so that the finished book can be folded in half and its pages are in the correct order, and on both sides of the printed sheet!

At first glance it is difficult and incomprehensible. However, simple mathematics will help us. The main “trick” when creating brochures is that the number of pages in it will always be a multiple of 4. Knowing this, you can easily calculate the correct sequence. For example, to print a 4-page brochure we need 1 A4 sheet. On the front side we will place pages 4 and 1, and on the back - 2 and 3. To print an 8-page booklet you will need 2 sheets of paper and placing pages 8, 1, 6 and 3 on the front sides, and 2, 7 on the back. 4 and 5.

That is, in fact, on the front side we print all the even pages on the right, starting from the end, and on the left, all the odd pages from the beginning. Similarly, on the reverse side we will print on the left all even pages from the beginning and odd pages from the end. To avoid confusion, I suggest visualizing the task in the form of a table:

I think everything is more or less clear now. You can continue the sequence for more sheets, however, the more there are, the worse they will bend. As a result, our book will simply “spread away.” For this reason, the USSR State Standards approved the maximum volume of a brochure of 48 pages (12 sheets).

If the number of pages is a multiple of 4, then you can successfully use the above scheme. However, in practice we usually deal with an arbitrary number of them. In this case, you just need to add 1 to 3 blank pages to the end of your document to be printed, so that their number becomes a multiple of four!

For example, your document contains 21 pages. You have two options:

1. Condense text so that it fits on 20 pages (for example, reduce the font) and print the brochure on 5 sheets.
2. Leave the text unchanged and simply add three blank pages at the end. Then you will get a brochure on 6 sheets.

Actually, that's the whole theory. Knowing it, you yourself can manually arrange the pages of your future brochure in the desired sequence and in two passes (first all the front sides, and then all the backs) print it on almost any printer that can print two pages per sheet. However, doing everything manually is time consuming and not very convenient, so let’s look at existing automation methods.

Standard function for printing brochures in Word and Writer

It would be strange if such powerful word processors as Microsoft Office Word and OpenOffice Writer were not able to print text in the form of a brochure. But at first glance it seems that this is exactly the case. There is a standard function for creating brochures in both editors, but it is hidden quite deeply and, alas, does not always work correctly...

Print brochures in Word

The main drawback of this standard Word function is that it reformats the entire document from portrait to landscape orientation with the pages not always placed correctly (especially if they contain tables or pictures). This method is also not suitable if the file contains page breaks and/or mixed orientation (some pages in portrait and some in landscape).

However, for simple books, the option is sometimes the simplest. To use it in Word you need to open a window "Page Options". For Word up to version 2003 inclusive, its option is located in the "File" menu, and, starting from 2007, on the "Page Layout" tab - the "Margins" drop-down list - the "Custom Fields" item or a small button in the lower right corner of the "Page Options" section ":

In the window that opens, go to the tab "Fields" select from the dropdown list "A few pages" meaning "Brochure". The result of this action will be that the document will automatically be reformatted into landscape view and each page in it will become smaller (in fact, it will turn into A5 format). This will cause the text to move or be cut off (if large fonts, table frames or images are used).

If preserving the original formatting is not particularly critical for you, then to save paper you can slightly reduce the text (for example, from standard 14 to 12 or even 10) and print the document. In the print settings you need to select double-sided printing, taking into account the properties of your printer (I recommend that you first print a 4-page brochure and remember how to turn the sheet over to print from the reverse side).

So far, the document has not changed visually (unless you count page reduction as a change, that is, the brochure itself is not displayed anywhere). But, if you activate the option in the printer settings preview before printing, we will finally see what it all started for - the correct breakdown of the document into pages:

Printing brochures in OpenOffice Writer

OpenOffice Writer handles brochures much better than Word. There is no pre-formatting of the document here, and all tasks for creating a brochure are performed by the print manager. This avoids disturbances in the appearance of document pages, and also eliminates problems with mixed orientations and breaks (the content of all pages is proportionally reduced and automatically switches to landscape view with a layout of two pages per sheet).

OpenOffice Writer prints “native” text document formats as brochures with a bang. However, problems may arise when opening Word documents, which do not always contain Writer-compatible layout...

To use the brochure printing function in Writer (and indeed in OpenOffice or LibreOffice), you need to go to the menu "File" and call the item "Seal". In the window that opens, go to the tab "Page Layout", activate the option "Brochure" and set the printing sequence (for a printer with a two-sided printing function, “All”, and for regular ones, first “Front sides”, and then “Back”):

As you can see, Writer is significantly ahead of the popular Word when it comes to printing brochures! If you use this particular editor, then in this regard you are lucky. However, the formatting of Word documents may be affected when opened in Writer, so let's look at alternative ways to print brochures.

Brochure Print Queue Generators

Modern printers, even the simplest ones, are very “smart” devices. If you take a closer look at the functions of their driver, you will find a whole bunch of various settings and options that allow you to flexibly control printing. Among these settings, you may also find the ability to print booklets.

Most often, this function is located either in the section that is responsible for page settings, or even directly in the print dialogs. For example, in my Canon printer this is on the second tab “Page Setup” in the “Page Layout” - “Booklet Printing” list:

You could say I was lucky. My printer itself correctly breaks the pages of a document in the correct sequence, without disturbing the formatting, adding blank pages if necessary and correctly changing the sheet orientation where necessary. However, unfortunately, not all printers can do this. But most printers (and even in the settings of Word itself) have a print function two pages per sheet:

Having this opportunity and knowing the required sequence of pages in the booklet, we can easily print any document as a booklet without losing formatting. The only drawback of this method is that landscape-oriented pages will remain in the brochure in a horizontal position (see screenshot above).

If this is not so critical for you, then all that remains is to create the desired sequence of pages for printing. There are quite a few different solutions for this. I offer you one of the best, in my opinion, - an online generator, which for some reason is located on the website of the Berdyansk Department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations :)

There are many different options and a fairly extensive article on brochure printing in general that would be worth reading. As for our task, to generate the correct print queue sequence we only need two or three actions:

1. We indicate the number of pages in our brochure (I deliberately put the number not a multiple of 4).
2. If the number of pages in our brochure is not a multiple of 4, then we should add to our document at the end an extra blank page with a non-printing character (for example, several spaces, or even better, invisible characters that are entered from the numeric keypad with the number 255 while holding down the ALT key). After this, check the “Blank page added” checkbox so that it is taken into account when calculating the print queue.
3. Click the "Calculate" button and get the result.

The result is displayed as a list of copied rows of numbers separated by commas for the front (obverse) and back (reverse) sides. At the same time, for the reverse side there are two rows at once for printers that support or do not support the reverse order of sheets when printing.

If you do not have access to the Internet or the desire to tinker with the online service, you can install a stationary print queue generator on your computer called (install on behalf of the Administrator):

This program is quite old and has not been updated for a long time, but, nevertheless, it works even on new systems. Using it is very simple: indicate the number of pages in our brochure and click the “Get” button. In the “Line 1” field we get a number of front pages, and in “Line 2” - back pages. In this case, the program calculates only sequences that are divisible by 4.

The program has a small number of options that can be accessed by clicking the "Setup" button. Here you can activate the reverse order of string generation, as well as set the insertion of delimiters or combine both strings into one sequence of numbers.

The advantage of brochure print queue generators is that we can use the calculation results not only for printing in Word, but also for printing booklets from PDF or DJVU files! In short, from any program that supports the function of directly specifying the print queue.

Programs for printing brochures

As we can see, OpenOffice Writer has very good standard functions for printing brochures, while Word lags far behind in this regard... In order to level out this annoying oversight of the developers, a number of programs have been created that allow you to print brochures and booklets from ready-made documents on your own.

The most popular programs are ClickBook and FinePrint. However, their main drawback is that they are both paid and quite expensive! What’s even sadder is that these programs do not have free analogues for Windows (for Linux there is the Boomaga virtual printer with similar functionality).

What should lovers of free software on Windows do? who don't want to become pirates? There are two options to solve the problem. The first is to save the document as a PDF file and print the booklet using a viewer program.

I recommend doing this in STDU Viewer. We save the document as a PDF (in new versions of Word this can be done directly, but for older versions (before 2003) you will need to use a virtual printer) and open it in the viewer. Now let's go to the menu "File" and press the item "Advanced Printing". In the window that opens, in the printer properties, set the printing of two pages on one sheet, then specify the desired print queue and be sure to activate the option "Automatically rotate pages". Let's get the right brochure!

The second way to print booklets programmatically from Word is to use various macros. Macros are mini-programs that run in the Microsoft Office environment and significantly expand its functionality. Unfortunately, macros can execute malicious code, so they are blocked by default both by Word itself and by most antiviruses.

Unfortunately, the only effective free way in this case is to use the standard functionality of the printer driver. However, not all printers “can” print booklets. If you have no luck with this, you can try printing the booklet from the PDF. This will allow you to preserve the original formatting 100%, but will require additional movements and the installation of additional software.

Unfortunately, there is no universal method for all occasions, but for each task it is possible to choose the optimal course of action that will allow you to create a brochure from any document. Happy printing!

P.S. Permission is granted to freely copy and quote this article, provided that an open active link to the source is indicated and the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny is preserved.