If you’re looking to do some desktop publishing of your own, but you don’t want to go all-in on an expensive commercial piece of software, there are great options available on the Mac for free. Pages comes with a selection of templates that help you create professional looking documents easy and in a short period of time. You can also work from a blank page, add fonts, personalize text styles, and add graphics and photos to design your document. Pages exports to PDF and Microsoft Word formats, and imports Word documents. Scribus works in a fashion similar to Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress with text frames, floating palettes, pull-down menus and has the features of the pro packages—but without the hefty price tag. However, Scribus may not be the best choice if you don’t have the time or interest to devote to overcoming the learning curve associated with high-end professional level software. If your desktop publishing needs are basic but you also want a full suite of office tools, try Apache OpenOffice Productivity Suite. However, for more complex desktop publishing tasks you might be better off with Scribus or one of the print creativity titles for the Mac.
