Unfortunately, TeX and sons pretty much begins and ends with typesetting; graphical nuance is not its strong suit. It's easy enough to illustrate a text-oriented document, but it's a real bear to create magazine-style or brochure layouts, spreads, gatefolds and so on. For that sort of thing, you really need something that is tied much closer to output than to content in the working space, and TeX is pretty heavily biased the other way around.
I'm told that QuarkXPress was once the leader in page layout for magazines etc. I wonder if it's still a viable alternative. Apparently you can get it for $850.
