Best Mac Software For Designing Flyers
- Best Mac Software
- Best Mac Software Free
- Best Program To Make A Flyer On Mac
- Best Mac Software For Designing Flyers Template
- Free Software For Designing Flyers
Despite the rise of viral marketing and online advertising tools, nothing can beat an awesomely made flyer. They are cheap to mass-produce and can be distributed directly into the hands of potential customers, making them the perfect choice for entrepreneurs of all kinds. To help you out in creating your very own flyer, here is a list of some of the best solutions. Online flyer creators and flyer app for iPhone/iPad are also included.
- With clothing design software, they can come up with patterns and designs and get their 3D previews. This is much better than the old school way of sketching the designs with paper and pen because they give you the exact idea of how a particular design will look once you are done with it. Here are Top 10 Free Clothing Design Software for Mac users.
- Recommended software would be Indesign and Quark XPress both of which require professional training as well. My recommendation is get a professional Graphic Designer or the printer's DTP staff to do the final work for you ready to press if all the above sounds like foreign gibberish to you.
GIMP is the best free Photoshop alternative you can find. Although it is an open source image manipulation software, it is almost as powerful as Adobe Photoshop. Some even argue that GIMP is better than Photoshop. If you are looking for free flyer makers and serious about flyer designing, look no further than GIMP. Flyer software are software which help with creation of professional looking flyers in minutes. These software align everything. They have Built-In Templates. Some of these software allow you to add maps to the document, Add barcode or QR Codes to the document and more. They are used for the creation of Brochures, Newsletters, Wedding Invitations, Greeting Cards, Certificates and for a number.
Adobe Spark saves all your designs for you in your Adobe Spark Projects folder, so you can pause at any point and return back to your design if you need to take a break! You can also revisit your project once it’s finished to update details or the design for future needs. Best Mac for print design. The best Mac for print design is the 27in iMac 5K. Once you get beyond business cards and tiny flyers, print projects tend to benefit from a large canvas on which to design. Arguably, we’ve left the best program for creating flyers until last on our list. Adobe InDesign is the market leader in publishing software, and despite rivalry from Affinity, it still remains, for many designers, unbeatable. Photoshop vs. InDesign: Which Is Best for Print Design?
Adobe Illustrator
Which one is the most suitable for creating flyers, Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign? While they can all be used to create a flyer, Adobe Illustrator is the best flyer makers out of the three. Here is a rundown of their strengths and weaknesses.
Photoshop excels at manipulating a single image – cleaning it up and applying effects to it is a breeze in Photoshop but it fails miserably at creating a page from scratch. Illustrator can change images, although not with such nuance as Photoshop can, but its forte is creating a single page – arranging all the elements, such as text and images in one layout. InDesign doesn’t handle extensive image manipulation or single pages well, but it reigns supreme when the project is about assembling material into multi-page layouts, such as brochures. Therefore, the most appropriate Adobe product for creating flyers is Adobe Illustrator.
Best Mac Software
Details: For Windows & Mac, Free 30-day trial, starts from $19.99/month
Print Creations
Print Creations is available for installation in 13 languages, including Swedish. As you launch the program, it won’t just pop out, instead, a window with the words “Print Creations Experience” will slowly fade in and that truly looks amazing. Sadly, Print Creations turns out to be just a one-trick pony. Though it allows the most customization with regards to printer options, in fact, it might be the most printer-friendly of all flyer solutions in this article, it also has the most eye-gouging pricing system imaginable. For example, only 2 out of 22 templates in the flyer category can be used, while the rest must be unlocked at a staggering price of $19.99 for every two templates.
The product itself is split into modules as well, with each module being sold separately. Flyers and brochures are only $59.99 while the entire package of modules costs $162.44. Free demo version produces a file with a watermark.
Details: For Windows & Mac – Free with Limited Features, $29.99 to buy
Microsoft Word
Wait what? I thought Microsoft Office Word is a boring word processing tool? Not anymore. The newer Microsoft Word versions (2007 onwards) are capable of making posters, flyers, cards, and even infographics. As shown at the screenshot below, a quick search on “flyer” returns hundreds of gorgeous and professional looking flyer templates in seconds. After selecting a template, you can easily add and customize the text, colors, graphics, effects, and more.
It would be even better if you have Microsoft Publisher, which is of course the perfect Microsoft Office solution for flyer designing. Microsoft PowerPoint works completely fine too, as it shares a lot of similar features with Microsoft Word and Publisher.
Details: For Windows – Free 1 month trial, Starts from $6.99/month or $69.99/year (subscription-based) or $139,99 (one-time)
GIMP
GIMP is the best free Photoshop alternative you can find. Although it is an open source image manipulation software, it is almost as powerful as Adobe Photoshop. Some even argue that GIMP is better than Photoshop. If you are looking for free flyer makers and serious about flyer designing, look no further than GIMP. It has a steep learning curve for beginners, which requires newbie to put in some time and effort to master the features beforehand.
Details: For Windows & Mac, Free
SmartDraw
Once you launch this flyer creator, you will be greeted with hundreds of available templates, ranging from those for infographics to mind maps and flowcharts. The creation process is so easy that you will probably drop everything you’re doing and want to test them all. The free demo allows a 7 days trial, has print limitations and includes a watermark on the output file, which can be exported as .pdf or saved as proprietary SmartDraw .sdr and .sdt file formats. Comes with full PowerPoint and SharePoint integration and priority technical support.
Details: For Windows, Free 7-day trial, $197 to buy
Easy Flyer Creator
Surprisingly enough, when you launch this program, it will run in a small 900 x 700 window that cannot be maximized. It has a slightly archaic interface but offers a wealth of various templates that look professional and can produce credentials indistinguishable from the real ones in just a few minutes. Some templates do have minor spelling errors, as you can see in the screenshot below, so pay attention.
Easy Flyer Creator also offers a Windows 8 app that offers similar features. You can check out their flyer maker app at Windows Store.
Details: For Windows, Free with limited features, $39.99 to buy
Online Flyer Makers – Faster & Easier, But Less Features
PosterMyWall
There is no complicated setup procedure, you merely click the big green “Create your flyer now!” and you will be taken directly to the choice of flyer background. You have five categories to choose from: Facebook InstaCollage, gallery image background, upload your own image, monochrome background or color fade background. Combined with the gallery of ready-made images to be used on your flyer, you can create a truly spectacular piece of work, even if you’re not especially handy with art.
It’s truly a pleasure to work on PosterMyWall, but there is a nasty surprise when you try to save your work. There are three download options available – high quality for $7.99, medium quality for $2.99 and the free option, which also puts a big, smeared watermark at the bottom of your flyer. This can be circumvented by taking a screenshot of your finished flyer and cropping the rest of the page, but it still leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. To add insult to injury, paid options also require your email address. Using PosterMyWall.com is the best for purposes of training your flyer-making skills and testing your flyer ideas in practice, but nothing else. The resulting exported design will be in .jpg file format.
Details: Web app, Free with watermark
LucidPress
After you click “Try it now”, you will be able to start creating a flyer right away. The user interface is clean and pleasant to work with, but you will be constantly nagged to register. There is even a pop up appearing every five minutes with the useful suggestion that you should sign up, along with two massive buttons on the page. These buttons that lead to the registration page are littered everywhere around the work surface. You can’t export or share your work until you register, so you might as well click them eventually.
There are three paid options: $9.95 per month for a single user, $19.95 per month for an upgraded single user account, $50 per month for a shared account for 5 users and a free account. All these prices receive a 20% discount if you’re subscribing for a year. The most interesting of these options is the team account, allowing up to 300 (!) people to work at the same time on a single flyer for $50 per month per 5 users. Though, that price might be just a little too steep, as Adobe’s entire product suite costs the same while giving infinitely more utility.
Details: Web app, Free 14-day trial, starts from $7.95++/month
FlyerLizard
Scroll down the page a little bit, click the blue “Create” word and the page for making a flyer will open right away. Unlike most of other websites for creating flyers, it’s not done in Flash, rather it’s a regular webpage. You still cannot do anything with regards to saving, sharing or publishing your flyer without logging in, though. This website handles text exquisitely, with plenty of formatting options. Adding a footer or header is such a joy that you won’t even notice that you’ve made a flyer from scratch. It even supports right-to-left text direction!
Images are not its strong suite, since you can only add one image and even, there aren’t many options for manipulating them. To add an image, click “New Layer” and select “Image”. Unfortunately, there are no image galleries, so you will have to find and upload your own image. In general, this website seems to be having some constant performance issues, but at least the registration itself is free and requires only an email address.
Details: Web app, Free (requires registration)
Flyer Maker App For iOS
PosterMaker
This app for creating flyers and posters is available through iTunes for $4.99 and supports iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, though it is optimized for the iPhone 5. It is available in 10 languages, including Simplified Chinese. Unfortunately, it cannot export high quality PDF in any size larger than 8.5 x 11 inches nor create 11 x 17 inch layouts for posters.
Details: For iOS, $4.99 to buy
Only with the correct software will you obtain the best results with the least effort in the shortest time. In most cases, using a tool you are familiar with will be less effective than using the correct one. Here is a list of the top 10 brochure design software in 2019.
The top 10 brochure design software list
One important suggestion I want to share before helping you choose the best software to use is to make sure you have all the content ready. If you need help with that process, you can check out this other post on how to make a brochure.
For faster reading I have divided the list into 4 parts:
The most popular tools for brochure design
| Use: | For professional jobs, and for documents that have to be translated. |
| Platform: | Desktop (Windows and MacOS) |
| Cost: | 7-day free trial, then $20.99/mo. Students and Teachers can have the entire Adobe suite for $19.99/mo. |
| ✔ Pro: | Industry standard. Easy to use. Very flexible. What you see is what you’ll print. |
| ✘ Cons: | If you add other Adobe software (Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.) to the list, the price becomes steep. |
InDesign is so good that it quickly became the industry standard almost immediately after its released 20 years ago and still even today it has no rivals.
The software handles typography absolutely brilliantly, and despite having all the tools you need to be precise and produce professional-looking documents, it is very easy to learn and use. And if you need help with the software, you can find tons of resources online like our InDesign beginner's guide, this list of InDesign tutorials divided by beginner, intermediate, and advance, or this 30 min course that covers all the basics! We also published a list of resources and courses on InDesign.
InDesign is the right choice if you are working in a professional environment because:
- the majority of the designers know how to use it
- it makes the job easier
- it has all the necessary features (color management, font management, styles, etc.)
If your brochure has to be produced in other languages, follow this link to see how to translate an InDesign file. And if it's an inspiration what you are looking for, we got you covered with these amazing templates made for InDesign, and most importantly with a list of the 100 best InDesign brochure templates. So now, you have no excuse but to create the perfect brochure!
| Use: | Open source alternative for professional jobs |
| Platform: | Desktop (Linux, Windows, MacOS) |
| Cost: | Free |
| ✔ Pro: | It also works on Linux. It’s free! |
| ✘ Cons: | Not as powerful or easy to use as InDesign. |
Scribus is an open source desktop publishing software that runs on Linux. It has a lot of the same features of InDesign, and it’s free. Unfortunately, there isn’t much content online on how to use Scribus, so save some time to test and learn it before using it on a professional project. Scribus is also available for Windows and MacOS.
| Use: | For simple projects and non-professionals |
| Platform: | Online |
| Cost: | Freemium or subscription (from $9/mo) |
| ✔ Pro: | A lot of templates and content |
| ✘ Cons: | You can download your work only as PDFs or Images |
Canva is the perfect solution to make a brochure if you are not a professional designer. The software offers many templates (some free some not) from which you can start to make your brochure. During the editing, you can select or purchase images, icons, etc.
Valid Alternatives
Quark XPress is probably your best alternative to InDesign. In the 90s, XPress had a 95% market share. It wasn’t until InDesign arrived in early 2000 that they lost their prominence.
Best Mac Software Free
Quark has caught up with the lack of features that made them lose their monopoly, and now they are back to business with a fully improved 2018 version.
Affinity Publisher is the new entrants that wants to out-throne InDesign. The software looks really nice and functions in a very smooth way, but during my test this summer I found that many features were still missing. At the time of this article, it is offered for free in a public beta.
If you already have a subscription to Office 365, Microsoft Publisher would surely be a better choice than using Word.
Adobe Spark works similarly to Canva, but I found Canva much simpler to use.
LucidPress is a publishing app that works on the browser. You can drag and drop elements, change text, etc.
If you are on a Mac and are looking for a cheap option, Swift Publisher can be a good solution. The software doesn’t have the features of a professional tool but for simple, amateur projects, it could be a decent choice.
Tools to use only if you have no choice
Microsoft Word and Apple Pages
Best Program To Make A Flyer On Mac
Word and Pages are word-processors. They are not focused on graphic choices as much as on text. For that reason, they won’t give you complete control over the layout of your document. Picture placement in Word and Pages is a nightmare. You won’t be able to create a professional looking document as you would with InDesign.
Software You Should Avoid
Illustrator, Inkscape, and Affinity Designer
These three software programs are very powerful, but they are for vector graphic design, illustrations, and logo design. You can, of course, bend them to your needs and create a brochure with one of them, but for better results, it would be a much better choice to pick one of their partners (InDesign, Scribus, Affinity Publisher) that focus on DTP.
Photoshop, Corel Draw, Gimp or Affinity Photo
These solutions are developed for photo editing and the editing of digital images. They are used to modify, create, and retouch 'raster' images, i.e., those images based on pixels.
Best Mac Software For Designing Flyers Template
Brochures are a combination of vectorial elements (text, logo, icons) and raster images (pictures, photos). Mixing and dealing with these elements in software that is mainly focused on raster elements will make it way more challenging and time-consuming to layout your brochure.
PowerPoint or Keynote
Don’t do this to yourself. These two pieces of software are amazing for creating presentations, and that is how you should use them.
Give importance to the content
With the tools you’ll use to design your brochure, make sure your content is clear, focus on the story you want to tell the reader, and don’t forget to write a call to action!
Free Software For Designing Flyers
Stefano has worked on numerous mid to large–sized InDesign projects for Alstom, DeLonghi, Philips, and many others before starting Redokun in 2015.
As Redokun’s Co-Founder, Stefano spends most of his time helping customers to optimize their InDesign work-flow. He also holds in-house InDesign courses for companies in the Venice, Italy area.