Scribus is a popular open source desktop publishing software that allows you to create publication like e-books, brochures, type setting and other print publications easily. Being a close competitor to Adobe Indesign and QuarkXpress, the advantage that Scribus has is that it is free and supports many features like CYMK color support and PDF creation. Moreover, Scribus is available for Linux, Windows and MacOSX, making it a much worthy alternative to those commercial products. In this article we shall discuss how to create a brochure with Scribus.

Steps to create Brochure with Scribus

Although this article deals with the Windows platform, the steps remain the same for other platforms.

  1. Download and install Scribus software based on your platform.

  2. Download the Scribus Templates tar ball. Unzip the tar ball and  locate  the file “br2-a4-3cols.sla” which is a brochure template file required for this article.

  3. Open Scribus Desktop publishing application. Click File ->Open and locate the file “br2-a4-3cols.sla” from the downloaded templates.

  4. Enable the Properties toolbar (Windows -> Properties) so you can edit the content easily from the window menu.

  5. Once the Brochure template is opened, the editable text area will be highlighted with a red rectangle. Right click on the text area and select “Edit Text“. This will open a new text edit dialog box with more option for you to edit text, background, formatting and style.

  6. The above step can also be performed by double clicking the text area. You can then edit and format it with the help of the Properties toolbox.

  7. Repeat step 5 to edit the required text portions and add new images to the brochure template, if required. Drag the Image icon and drop it to any portion you want. Double click on the box to add image (see screenshot below).

  8. Once you have finished all the editing work, save the document as “.sla” format or export as PDF file. Ignore any post script errors.

Screenshot of sample

The following brochure is a sample done with Scribus. You can also download/view the output PDF file here.

Which other desktop publication software do you use?