[simonsays]

Evening all
A client' asked me to design her a generic poster template (ie with her branding and colours) which she can electronically update herself as and when necessary. The obvious format she suggested was Word, but as we know (well at least I know!) Word isn't the most designer-friendly application in the world, and has so many annoying nuances which won't let you do this, that or the other, so I was wondering is there another format anyone would suggest I could export it to (from InDesign) which she could easily update and insert text for events etc? PDF is the obvious one but she only has the standard 'read only' version, but perhaps there's a way of granting her access in the PDF set up stage? Thanks all for any help, I'm still finding my feet in this game a bit...

[SparkCreative]

You're right about Word - it's terrible, and won't let you do most of what you take for granted. Even changing the margins is bloody difficult. Powerpoint is slightly easier, even though it's not really meant for layout - at least she'll be able to fiddle with it. I suggest, whichever one you use, you create the bits you don't want changing as hires images and drop them into the layout and then lock them. Then do the text bits in PPT or Word over the top. The other issue you're going to have is that she won't have any decent typefaces, so you'll have to do everything in Arial or something. Good luck.

[simonsays]

Hi sparkcreative that's helpful thanks. I'm pretty sure that the client (she's an ex colleague so I know her well) will be happy using the basic fonts (arial etc), she just wants to be able to work on the template. It's probably going to have to be Word so I'll find a way...
cheers