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I think you’ll come to the conclusion fairly quickly that Microsoft isn’t sponsoring my site. I would like to take a moment and tell you about Microsoft Publisher (simply referred to as “Publisher” from here on). I’ll try to start on a positive note…it is affordable, you can make pages and move graphics around, and you can even do funky things with text for headlines, etc. That about sums up all of the good things I can say about it. If you want to print out things on your home printer, like book reports for the kids or flyers for your church fundraiser, then by all means use it. Beyond that you can expect a world full of angst and confusion. Let me explain further…

High-end page layout applications such as Quark and InDesign are built from the ground up to be workhorses for graphic designers in the printing industry. (I realize I put Quark in there, but even though I detest it, it still outranks Publisher by light years in functionality and usability.) Publisher was designed to be a friendly and simple layout program for people at home who want to do the things I mentioned above, but somewhere along the way someone at Microsoft had an idea. That someone should have been flogged and run out of town. They decided to add “commercial printing capabilities” to Publisher and thereby make Prepress Professionals like myself cry and force Customer Service people in the printing industry to begin drinking heavily.

Since there seem to be commercial printing tools and settings available in the Publisher menus, this creates false hope that anyone who owns Publisher can be a marketable graphic designer when someone with no real background in graphic design tells them how great their flyer is for the school bake sale. I’m not sure if you can feel my cynicism yet, but I assure you there will be more. This equates to changing the air filter on your neighbor’s car and him (or her) telling you to go open a service center because obviously if you can change an air filter with the poise, grace and attention to detail you have demonstrated, surely you can rebuild a transmission. I wish I were joking, but I am telling you the truth when I say this has happened. (Not the automotive part…that I know of.)

Let’s look at it this way…if all of those nifty and magical tools for creating instant headlines and text effects in Publisher were really worth anything, don’t you think the big boys would have them in their software too? If Publisher was really a useful tool in the world of commercial printing, wouldn’t they market it in that direction a little more and try to grab some market share instead of throwing it in with the Office bundle?

Let me be specific about the pitfalls with Publisher…
First and foremost, when someone is all done designing that awesome brochure in Publisher and sends the files in to the print shop, the first thing that usually happens when they open the file is that text has moved. Yes. It moved. Sometimes it reflows text completely and cuts off line endings where they shouldn’t be cut off.  Good times. Now you’ll be paying for extra time so the print shop can fix the text, and not knowing exactly how it should be in the first place usually results in several revisions. Aspirin anyone?

Of course this only happens if the print shop has all the fonts used in the document, which most Publisher users don’t know much about or how to package them with the file before submission. I’m certainly not trying to insult anyone here, but the reality is this: if you are versed enough in working with commercial printers to understand what is required to complete the process efficiently and accurately, you already know that using Publisher is problematic at best. So what happens when fonts are missing in Publisher? As soon as you open the document, a warning window pops up telling you a font is missing, asks if you want to replace it with a different one or use the default substitute. It does not tell you or even show you where the font is used. You have no idea how to get a close match because you can’t see anything in the document until you decide to replace it. Then, you embark on the search to figure out what you just replaced. Go ahead and open up an 8-page newsletter that already uses 12 different typefaces and try to find that 1 you just replaced since you have no idea what it looks like or where it was used. Forget the aspirin and break out the liquor.

So now that you have replaced a font somewhere in the document and fixed all the text shifting, let’s talk about colors.  There are two main color classifications in commercial printing, spot color jobs and 4-color process jobs. I will cover these two in more detail later, but here’s the nutshell: spot colors are tints of inks that are mixed together to produce a specific color and that single color is printed. You can use more than one color for 2 and 3-color jobs, but practically speaking if you go beyond 2 or 3 spot colors, you might as well use 4-color process. Full color (4-color process) consists of 4 primary inks (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) that are “mixed” on press with dots of varying sizes to give you the effect of full color. Pick up a magnifying glass and look at a magazine page. You’ll see very tiny dots. That’s 4-color process printing. Why am I telling you all of this? Because it is nearly impossible to make Publisher produce a file that uses spot colors or CMYK (4-color process) colors. I have done it and the process is ridiculously elaborate and cumbersome.

Okay, so Publisher can’t do it, what’s the big deal? Well…if you have this nice flyer that is black and red on your screen in Publisher and you have a quote from the print shop that shows a nice affordable estimate for your fundraiser printing in two colors, you’re about to have a rude awakening. If you haven’t already informed your print shop that you want to print a 2-color flyer that was designed in Publisher and submit the files, you can expect one of the following things to happen.

1. They will call you and tell you that your flyer cannot be printed in 2-colors without either redesigning in another program or having them do costly modifications.
2. They will call you and tell you that it will have to be printed in 4-color process if you don’t like the above option, also resulting in higher cost.
3. They will call you and refer you to their copy-shop store or another copy-shop store for a lower-quality solution.
4. They will call you and tell you they do not accept Publisher files.
5. Your proof arrives without any calls or problems. (RED FLAG - This scenario illustrates that you have just been pigeonholed as a rookie and your print shop is opting to choose a  solution for you because you obviously have no clue what you’re doing and trying to explain colors and printing to someone who sends in Publisher files is too frustrating and rarely, if ever, actually works.)

Expect one of those phone calls if you use Publisher. It was not meant for serious designers and the limitations I have just touched on are very significant in the world of commercial printing. If you feel absolutely compelled to use it, expect problems. Talk to your print shop beforehand and ask if they have any suggestions or tips. If you give them fair warning and enough time to stock up on adult beverages, they will be more inclined to help you through it than simply dumping the files on them and crossing your fingers.

Tags: Add new tag, Brochure Printing, Commercial Printing, Design Software, Designing for Print, Graphic Design Printing