I found the process intuitive and the results looked good, especially when I started with a template and modified it rather than beginning with a blank page.
I tried building a newsletter using a supplied template and then designed another one from scratch. The app supports column views and easy text flow, circular text, internal photo editing with 80 included filters, mail merge, links to your contacts for letterheads and business cards, support for labels and cards from Avery, Neato, Memorex and others, as well as support for direct-to-disc printers. The templates are easily modified without losing the look and feel of the design unless, of course, you want to. The clip art is also tasteful, and in my experience most clip art is pretty worthless. Unlike a lot of templates, these are skillfully designed and very appealing to the eye.
ISTUDIO PUBLISHER AND AVERY FULL
It has a barrel full of more than 400 templates, and more than a thousand clip-art images and useful symbols. So here's a nice one, called PrintWorks (US$29.99) that debuts today in the Mac App Store. Still, there seems to be a need for more flexibility and a dedicated application for desktop publishing. Those solutions have pretty much been replaced by templates in Microsoft Office and some much better designed templates in Apple's iWork suite. There were a variety of applications that would let you design everything from flyers to holiday cards, from calendars to letterheads. In the days before OS X, Macs were a favorite for desktop publishing.