Page Layout Templates

[Muddy]

Every month we produce a 64 page magazine that is full of nothing but ads. These ads range in size from 1/8 of a page to full page size. Each page has a variety of sizes on it. With all the combinations of sizes that are used there are many many combinations of ad sizes that can be on a given page.

I'm trying to provide something to my customer that is something like a "naked" template that doesn't have set size parameters other than the page size (6" x 9"). My customer could then drag and drop his ads into this template and create a dummy of the book. I don't need to move this to production as we are creating the ads and filling the pages through regular prepress production. The purpose of this would be to allow my client to build a visual reference and his own page layouts which we will duplicate using hi-res images we create.

Is there any software that would allow us to create this "living" template? I'm looking for a simple and inexpensive solution. Expensive software is not in his budget.

 

[Verdant]

Does your customer at least have access to InDesign? If so you could make a 64-page template for him and create a library of all the possible ad sizes. He could just drag each ad box from the library as he sees fit in order to create his layout. If he doesn't have access to InDesign and needs a cheep solution you could always print out a blank booklet for him and cut out a bunch of blank boxes according to the different sizes. He can then just tape the ad boxes to the template and re-arrange them without any computer at all, only cost to him being the roll of tape needed to hold the ads in place...