I am the chairman of a small charity that supports orphans in Malawi. To raise money I have an idea for which I will need to provide advertising space to UK businesses. This advertisement will appear on printed flyers and, in another form, on the internet. What I need is the software that will enable me to create and publish the advertisement.

I can’t tell you everything about my idea because it’s a new concept for advertising. Obviously, if I gave away all the details, you would know as much about it as the person who gave me the idea and I would lose my competitive advantage.

What I really need are the nuts and bolts and background information on the creative software and desktop publishing programs that will enable us to be able to create good advertisements easily. I have heard of software providers such as Coral, Adobe and Serif, but because you are there offering advice under the heading of ‘Jo’s Help Line’ I am certain that you will know a lot more about this sort of thing than I know.

At the end of the day if we can be successful we will make money for the charity. Is there a trade paper that deals with software for advertising media or software?
‘Theophilus’, via email

Most people in the professional graphic arts space will use page make-up and design tools such as Adobe’s Creative Suite and QuarkXPress. Larger newspaper publishers tend to use specialist publishing systems, but I think that would be rather over-the-top for your requirements. You mention Serif and this is an option that’s definitely worth exploring in terms of value-for-money and functionality. The reviews on Amazon are favourable, with one user describing it as "still the undisputed king of desktop publishing for those on a budget". Serif’s PagePlus software can also open, edit and save PDF files which is something you’ll be needing to do. You might also want to investigate some of the free shareware programs that are available, for example Gimp is a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It doesn’t have as many features or third-party plug-ins, but it’s a good image manipulation program. And it’s free. For other free options, Google the phrase ‘shareware’. I hope this helps with your project.

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