Austrade, the Australian Government Trade and Investment Commission, wanted us to convert 20 supplied InDesign files to Publisher templates. The project comprised of eight exhibitor directories and twelve exhibitor invitation templates. The formats included A4, A5, US letter, and half US letter. The design also featured graphic and photo cover options.

As designers, we knew Publisher had a problematic reputation but using the program for this project was a revelation. Click the link to see the exhibitor invitation templates. And check out our blog post, Publisher: a viable DTP alternative, if you would like to know a little more about Publisher.

We could have replicated the various layouts in Word using numerous section breaks. However, the templates themselves would have been difficult to use and update for users without advanced Word skills. Publisher’s ability to support traditional ‘master pages’ was crucial in a project where complex page layouts were utilised.