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Nice segue for the book I've been writing on paper model design.... (which isn't done yet)
I use a mix of Blender (for CAD work), inkscape (for layout and line markings), Gimp (for image editing that gets fed back into blender as materials, image processing for instructions), pdfmod (for compiling pages of parts into a single file), and Google Docs (for writing instructions).
The real heavy lifting is done by Blender (with the unfolding plugin) and inkscape. Any basic image manipulator or word processor would work fine for the rest of it.
But there are plenty of other workflows that people use to design models. My needs focus around "not expensive" and "runs on linux" as I am creating brand new things from scratch (usually). If you were just doing a recolor of some existing parts you could likely get away with just using gimp/inkscape/photoshop for that. To create brand new non-trivial parts, you really need to use a 3d modelling application and an unfolder of some variety.
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