What is the best design tool for a novice to create professional electronic flyers?

[Nysalia]

Publisher? InDesign? What?

I am attempting to save time and money... It will be dispersed publicly via email marketing and facebook, etc. It may also be printed for mailings. I would like it to be professional in terms of artistic, high resolution, something that looks like a professional designer did.

Let me use and example- Pagemodo (http://www.pagemodo.com/) allows you to make your facebook fan page all snazzy and nice without hiring a very expensive java savvy (or whtvr the coding that is used to customize FB pages) programmer/designer. Its free, easy to use and though I am sure there are some limitations, when you are done you have a professional looking customized fan page. I am looking for a similar program/software but for creating flyers.

Here are an example of flyers I think are professional. These are exceptional so they don't have to be to this level necessarily but just to show you the level I mean vs. say Microsoft templates: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Flyers/133024

[csroberts]

Design software only helps you put the elements together. But you must BE a trained designer to create a design and determine how the elements will go together.

A hammer doesn't hammer nails by itself, it makes it easier for the nails to go in.

[Benchmark Andy]

I would suggest doing with an Email Service Provider. There you can get 100s of premade, customizable templates. Once you chose the layout you are looking for, you can edit the colors, images, etc. Email marketing is affordable, and has a very high return on investment.

[iDesign71]

Publisher is a program installed on many pc's and used by many people to create personal stationery and advertising/promotional material but if you are after something that has all the extra professional features InDesign is the way to go.

The learning curve can be a steep one though to get the results you are after and it's not cheap.

Some page layout software that sits in between these two is Scribus. This has many of the features that you'll find in InDesign but best of all it's open source software so you can download it for free.

If you're not a professional designer/desktop publisher it would be a good option as it allows you to create your layouts to pretty much the same standard as if you were using InDesign without the cost.

Finally, the first answerer makes a valid point, no matter what software you use, without the skills, technical know-how and artistic ability you may still be disappointed in the result. This may also be a reason for considering the open source software for a start, thereby avoiding expensive software until you are sure you want to continue doing your own layouts/designs.

http://www.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus