I'm a professional designer, and I sit on the board of my local
historical society. As part of my volunteer duties, I put together our
quarterly newsletter. That is, I do the layout. Others write the
content and collect the images to be used.

I use InDesign (I loved PageMaker, but it hasn't been supported by
Adobe for many years now, so I was forced to make the switch). It's a
16-page newsletter; 4 letter-size sheets folded in half the short way,
stapled in the fold. We mail it first class (no "extra" postage
needed) as it's a total pain in the neck to do anything else.

I do the design, impose the booklet, make a pdf, and email it to a
local copy shop. They laser-print, fold, and staple the entire thing.
We used to use a printer that had an offset press, but, among other
things, this is a much faster turn-around time. (That's important,
since the people responsible for the content rarely get it to me on
time.) And it's cheaper (we run about 400 copies).

It took me about 10 hours to do the design of the template, and it
takes about 4 hours to do the layout of each issue. That's including
proofreading, which I must do as no one else seems to be able to do it
effectively. (It's a simple design b/c they can't afford to pay me to
do this, but it's a lot better than our previous, in-house produced
newsletter.)

How does this match with what you're doing? Hard to say. I'm skilled
at this, so I can do good layout quickly, and I know how to design a
template that will look good with minimal effort (e.g., it easily and
nicely handle articles of different length). I also know how to
quickly process photographs so they reproduce well.

You didn't say how big your pages are -- if by "two pages" you mean
two sides of two 8.5"x11" sheets (a 11"x17" folded in half), then your
newsletter is half the size of the one I described.

How long will it take you? Imposible to say, really, as I don't know
your skill level. But expect to triple the amount of time it took me
-- at least. And my time is solid, results-generating work; 10 hours
is 2+ work days. Of course, if you design a good template, then
subsequent issues of the newsletter will be much easier to put
together (as long as the people supplying the content stick to the
template).

So, will it be less expensive? Maybe, maybe not. How much are you
being paid? Unless you're proposing to do this for free, you won't be
able to work on other things while doing this, so factor that into the
true costs of the newsletter. Also, don't forget to take into account
how long it will take you to learn the new program, too. That's
another hidden cost.

As for what software to use, I'd say that you should use anything that
you can afford, that will run on your current equipment (unless you
can afford to upgrade; professional products require a lot of RAM and
CPU power to work well), and that will give you a good result is fine
for a newsletter. If you were designing a brochure or letterhead, I'd
say stay away from consumer-grade products like Publisher. Why?
Because at some point you may need to take these items to a
professional to have them re-worked. And no professional is going to
work on a Publisher file -- they'll have to re-create it in a
professional program. I know, I do this fairly regularly for my
clients (who are always extremely bummed at the extra cost and time
involved). But you're not likely to re-work a newsletter, so this is
not an issue.

If you'd like to see the newsletter I'm talking about, you can
download back issues here:

http://www.waukeganhistorical.org/news.html

Feel free to contact me off-list if you have follow-up questions.

-- 
Margaret
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