TechiGrandma

Print help

Depending on your level of ambition, you can either get the software and create your own print designs with it, and then choose your printer, or you can go directly to an online print site that will help you design your print product. Here are a few suggestions:

Print Shop: Broderbund has been making Print Shop since the earliest personal computers came on the market. Granny fondly remembers churning out birthday banners with her Commodore 64 and making birthday cards that coordinated with the banners. This handy program features dozens of designs for everything from a greeting card to a website that you can simply modify by changing words or colors, and also offers help if you want to design your product from scratch. Unlike more powerful (and immensely more complicated) programs like Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, Print Shop is easy to learn and limits your choices so you don't get bogged down. You can knock out perfectly respectable (or not respectable if that's what you want) products in minutes. Print Shop is also very reasonably priced: the current version is selling right now for $21.50 (normally $29.99). A reliable program that can get you through some tough spots.

Microsoft Office Publisher: A bit more advanced than Print Shop, Publisher is also easy to learn and use and offers many templates plus the opportunity to design it yourself. It's a bit more flexible so you may spend a little more time getting onto it. Because Publisher is part of the MS Office family, it integrates with Excel and Word and other Office products, expanding its capability. If you want to get a little more serious and yet still have a program that is easy to learn, Publisher should be the one. You can download a trial version for free. The newest version is not yet available for sale. You can find older versions inexpensively, however.

VistaPrint: This online printer offers many specials on most types of print jobs. You can get yourself some free business cards or tri-fold brochures or holiday cards, or sticky notes or just about anything else, depending on the season. Grandma ordered business cards for this business, sticking with only the free options (custom options all cost money) and she's happy with what she got. The big caveat: VistaPrint gets you on the way out. Shipping charges are ridiculous. So if you are needing your print product in a day or two you might do better to go to your local printer and pay the price. But if you can wait, choose the cheapest shipping option and you'll come out ahead, especially if you load up, purchase several products at once. VistaPrint tries to con you into choosing a more expensive shipping option by estimating really long waits for the cheaper options, but Granny has found that usually you will get your order much sooner than the estimated time.  The plus: you can design your item online and it will probably look just fine; there are many designs from which to choose. If you design your product using Print Shop or another software package you pay more to get it printed (you'll also want to check the format that VistaPrint accepts: if you use PDFCreator (see our tips page) you can convert just about any format into pdf and send that to VistaPrint) but you can take it through to the end and then decide if you actually want to pay the money.