Create Marketing Materials in Publisher

Every business, large or small, uses marketing materials – from business cards and letterhead to flyers and posters. Typically, a commercial print shop would have designed and printed these materials, but with the advent of desktop publishing software and quality printers you can create good-looking marketing materials.






Publisher screen shot
Selecting a single design-set gives all your documents a smart, uniform look.
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In-house printing lets you make changes easily, create documents with a quick turnaround time and print the number of documents you actually need because you can print more anytime you like.


Choose a Design

Microsoft Publisher 2003 includes a range of custom-designed publications to quick start your projects. These include business cards, postcards, letterheads and all the ancillary documents that most businesses will need.


Publisher groups the publication types together into sets according to their purpose and their design style. The best approach is to start by selecting a design group that has all the elements you are likely to need.






Publisher screen shot
Set up a Personal Information set with all your business details, and Publisher can add them to your documents automatically.
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From the New Publication task pane, browse the New from a Design list. Select the Design Sets > Master Sets group and locate a design that you like – ignore the actual colors in use for now. Check that the set includes the types of documents you need to create. Use a single design so that all your documents look like they belong to your business, and so that you spend less time deciding how to make a document look good and more time focusing on its content.


Start a Publication

To get started on a publication ‑ such as a business card ‑ click the design set you have decided to use and click Business Card to open the template. If you have previously created personal information sets, one of these will be used to populate the business card with the business and personal information.






Publisher screen shot
Use the logo wizard to configure a logo for your documents. You can even link it to your Personal Information set.
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To create a business information set, or to or edit one that you’ve already created, choose Edit > Personal Information. You have four business sets: primary business, secondary business, other organization and home/family. Any one of these can be used for any purpose. To edit a set, select the one you want from the list and type the information required into the various places in the dialog. Click Update to finish.


To add a logo (or make changes) to your business card design, click Include. Select the logo that Publisher has included, and locate the Wizard wand icon below it. Click this to open the Logo Options task pane. From the Logo Designs collection you can choose an alternate logo for your document or, to include your own company logo, click Inserted Picture and click Choose Picture to select one from your disk. Close the task pane when you are done.


When you save your document, you’ll be prompted with a message indicating that you have modified the logo and asking you if you want to save it to your currently selected personal information set. Click Yes to do so. The logo will be saved into your personal information set and will be available each time you select that set in future.

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