A key ingredient of a strategic marketing plan is promoting your products and services, communicating the right image of your company to your potential customers.

That image gets communicated every time you hand out a business card, send a brochure, mail a monthly newsletter or sale coupon, or receive a visitor to your Web site. It's crucial, therefore, that all of your publications look professionally-designed and present a consistent and compelling identity.

One of the easiest and most economical ways to create publications that communicate a consistent identity is to use a Publisher Master Design Set.

A Publisher Master Design Set is a collection of common business publications that share a consistent, professionally-created color scheme, font scheme, and design. By creating your company business cards, letterhead, brochures, catalogs, coupons, and Web site using the same Master Design Set (for example, the Layers design, shown in the sample publications below), you can be sure that your publications will look good and convey the same professional image of your company. If you are using Publisher 2003, you can choose from an expanded selection of 45 Master Design Sets when creating your business publications.

If the default colors or fonts in a Master Design Set don't seem exactly right, you can choose new color and font schemes that more accurately express your company image. You can further customize each individual publication in any way you want.

To create a publication from a Master Design Set

1. Start Publisher. In the New Publication task pane, under New from a design, click Design Sets, and then click Master Sets.

    Note   If you are using Publisher 2002, in the New Publication task pane, under Start from a design, click By Design Sets.

2. Under Master Sets, click the design you want.
   A collection of publications that share your chosen design appears in the right pane.
3. Click the publication that you want to create.
4. To change the publication's color scheme, in the task pane, click Color Schemes, and then click the color scheme you want.
5. To change the publication's font scheme, in the task pane, click Font Schemes, and then click the font scheme you want.
6. In the publication, replace the placeholder text and pictures with your own text and pictures, and then save the publication.

 Tip   To immediately create another publication in the same set, click the Back arrow at the top level corner of the task pane until you see the Master Set list.