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Adobe InDesign, Illustrator or photoshop

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
April 15, 2017
8 replies
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Hey so I am very interested in Graphic Design and I am trying to teach myself how to work my way around the InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop programs. My question is for creating flyers, which program would be of best use to me? I am in college right now, so the flyers I plan to be creating are for events, and possibly will be creating logos and designs in the future.

Thanks for any insight you have to offer!

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Correct answer Steve Werner

I'd agree that InDesign is your best bet. Best ways to learn InDesign (learning on your own):

(1) Get a Lynda.com subscription. www.lynda.com. 10 days for free. Start with David Blatner's InDesign Essential videos. Much better than trying to paw your way through YouTube videos of vastly mixed quality, some for older versions of the software.

(2) Get the best beginner's book: Sandee Cohen's InDesign Visual Quickstart Guide. Inexpensive, also available in Kindle edition.

You'll save yourself a ton of time and loads of mistakes, and you'll have a better understanding of the whole design process as well, includng how to get something printed.

jane-e

Community Expert

It is absolutely acceptable to do a flyer in Illustrator, and Illustrator can be the preferred choice for a one- or two-page flyer.

If it is long enough to need page numbering or if it has headers and footer, though, then InDesign is the best.

But never, never, create a flyer with Photoshop. Occasionally people do, and it always turns out to be a bad idea. Use Photoshop to edit photos.

And please note that the OP did not post in the InDesign forum. The thread was moved by staff.

jane-e

Community Expert

I thought about this question as we finished day three of a four day Illustrator class today. One of the students had been making flyers in InDesign and another had been making them in Photoshop.

UNPROMPTED...

...they both were exclaiming as they walked out that from now on, Illustrator would be their first choice for flyers because of all the amazing things it can do that the other two programs cannot.

So on behalf of my students, I am voting firmly for using Adobe Illustrator for flyers!

happie_97

Community Expert

Hi Jane,

I totally understand. I go back and forth with both programs. Illustrator is amazing and has some awesome tools and effects that you can't do anywhere else. It really just depends on which program I start in. Sometimes I start in Illustrator and end in InDesign and other times I stay in Illustrator.

Your students are AWESOME!!!

Jeff Witchel, ACI

Community Expert

What I always tell my design students is "If you even think of calling it a layout, do it in InDesign."

Barb Binder

Community Expert

This question landed in the InDesign forum, so of course we are all going to say InDesign.

InDesign is meant for document layout—from 1-page flyers to magazines to long books. As Uwe mentioned, InDesign has superior typographic and layout features.

That said, I bet if you posted the same question about creating a flyer in the Illustrator forum, people would answer Illustrator. (I'd like to think this would not happen if you posted the question in the Photoshop forum, but no guarantees!) Illustrator can handle simple flyers and very short documents almost as well as InDesign. (It does not handle complex or multi-page documents well at all.) I have plenty of students who prefer to design their short pieces in Illustrator, and when questioned, it's almost always the same answer—they know it better than they know InDesign.

That said, I do agree with the InDesign recommendations. And that you will want to eventually learn all four of the aforementioned programs if you want to work as a graphic designer: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat.

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

happie_97

Community Expert

Barb you are so right because InDesign is my favorite program so I use InDesign for almost everything involving layout.

However, there are those times when I use Illustrator to design business cards, postcards, or other small projects. I like this workflow because I can create one business card, place it into InDesign and use step and repeat to lay multiple copies down on the page. Then if I need to make a change, I make that change inside of Illustrator and the links automatically update in InDesign. All programs have their purposes, but I teach my students to use Photoshop mostly for photo manipulation, Illustrator for logos, web graphics, and similar projects, and use InDesign for page layouts.

Jeff Witchel, ACI

Community Expert

Hi happie_97,

Here's a quick way to do what you're describing entirely in Illustrator,

http://www.jeffwitchel.net/2012/01/quick-set-up-a-page-of-labels-with-crop-marks/

Enjoy!

Jeff

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi,

often you'll need a combination of all three apps. And more…

PhotoShop's image manipulation features, Illustrator's superior vector drawing tools, InDesign's typographic and layout features and the freedom of combining several color spaces in one document.

The final product would be produced best with InDesign where you export to PDF for the print service providers.

Also include Acrobat DC to your toolset where you do the preflight of your production PDF.

Regards,
Uwe

amaarora

Inspiring

Hi,

In addition to what Steve said, you can Illustrator for designing logos and Indesign for flyers.

-Aman

Steve Werner

Correct answer

Community Expert

I'd agree that InDesign is your best bet. Best ways to learn InDesign (learning on your own):

(1) Get a Lynda.com subscription. www.lynda.com. 10 days for free. Start with David Blatner's InDesign Essential videos. Much better than trying to paw your way through YouTube videos of vastly mixed quality, some for older versions of the software.

(2) Get the best beginner's book: Sandee Cohen's InDesign Visual Quickstart Guide. Inexpensive, also available in Kindle edition.

You'll save yourself a ton of time and loads of mistakes, and you'll have a better understanding of the whole design process as well, includng how to get something printed.