IN THE LAST 20 YEARS, QUARKXPRESS HAS EVOLVED from a desktop publishing tool for print to a multi-faceted publishing program that provides expert output to a variety of media. Using QuarkXPress 8, you can do everything from produce a handful of business cards printed with a color inkjet to press-ready PDF files to Web sites and interactive Flash files. But the real reason you use QuarkXPress is to make these things look cool. Back in the day, we heard that word often from Quark founder Tim Gill, who never lost focus on the importance of design tools.
The hallmark features of QuarkXPress—expert typography and precision item placement—are augmented today with automatic drop shadows, image editing, opacity, drawing tools, tables, and high-end typographic features for multilingual print and online publishing. Every new version of QuarkXPress has also introduced and enhanced productivity features, making it easier to use, faster, and more interactive. Multiple users can now simultaneously work with—and seamlessly update—the same content to produce print, Web, and Flash materials. The majority of QuarkXPress users, however, design self-contained pieces for print such as the layout shown in Figure 1 (next page).
Figure 1: A magazine spread is typical of a QuarkXPress print piece. Commonly used layout aids include the tools at the left; the Measurements palette at the bottom, which provides quick access to all formatting features; and palettes for working with pages, styling text, and applying colors at the right.
In publishing, QuarkXPress is generally considered an “end of the line” application, meaning that it’s where the text and graphic files you work on in other programs ends-up. And it is, of course, where the content is output, whether in a print or online format. You can also create original content in QuarkXPress. It’s always been a functional word processor, the drawing tools are much improved, and the image-editing tools are expanded in version 8. The cross-media capabilities make it possible for you to share content among print, Web, and Flash pieces, so the line now has more than one ending.
In most publishing workflows, however, content is created by experts in specialized programs. Writers produce copy in Microsoft Word, data is compiled in Microsoft Excel, digital images are fine-tuned in Adobe Photoshop, and logos and other graphics are created in Adobe Illustrator. All these pieces are pulled together in QuarkXPress, where you select typefaces and colors and design a layout to complement the content. Designers generally store all the pieces for a project in the same folder, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: This folder contains typical pieces used in the creation of a brochure. In this case, the designer created the HockeyBrochure.qxp QuarkXPress project file to contain the print layout, imported the LeagueCopy.doc Word file containing the league descriptions, used the TeamRoster.xls Excel information in a table, and imported two image files: Player12.jpg and TeamLogo.eps. The designer also created a Fonts folder to store copies of the precise fonts used with the project (although the fonts themselves are activated through separate font management software).
Once in QuarkXPress, pieces usually come together in one of two ways—you can start with a predesigned template and plug in the pieces or design free-form from scratch, experimenting with various options. Either way, QuarkXPress puts many tools at your fingertips, including grids for aligning text and items; master pages that contain repeating design elements; item creation tools for drawing shapes and lines; typographic, image manipulation, and color options; expert handling of text, pictures, and tables; and professional print and online output.
Major publishers throughout the world use QuarkXPress for publishing books, newspapers, magazines, catalogs, direct-mail pieces, corporate communications, and much more. With the capabilities of QuarkXPress, a publisher might simultaneously produce multiple editions of a piece in multiple languages across multiple media. As you learn the basics of QuarkXPress 8, keep all this potential in mind—you never know when you may need it.
The building blocks of a QuarkXPress layout are the same regardless of the output media, and they’ve remained the same through every version of the program. Layouts consist of items (primarily boxes and lines) and contents (text and pictures), as shown in Figure 3. The ability to precisely organize and format items and contents is a hallmark of QuarkXPress.
Figure 3: The building blocks of a QuarkXPress layout remain the same, whether this page is printed or accessed online.
Features in QuarkXPress that make this type of layout possible include:
Predesigned master pages that contain repeating elements such as folios and text boxes for headlines (Chapter 9).
The ability to create custom grids and guides for aligning items, pictures, and text (Chapter 9 and Chapter 5).
Precision item placement, including rotation and scaling, with numeric and visual tools (Chapter 3).
Drawing tools for creating boxes of any shape to contain color, text, and pictures (Chapter 3).
Tools for creating lines, text paths, and tables (Chapter 2).
Drag-and-drop text and picture import; integration with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Bridge (Chapter 7).
The ability to create colors in all standard color models, including CMYK, RGB, PANTONE, and Web-Safe, and manage color for the best output across devices (Chapter 8).
Options for experimenting with color and image transparency, layering, and image manipulation (Chapter 7 and Chapter 8).
Drop shadows that can be applied to items, text, and images (Chapter 3, Chapter 5, and Chapter 7).
High-end typography features, including built-in and custom hyphenation and justification settings, OpenType support, and hanging punctuation options (Chapter 5).
The ability to create or import tables and apply formatting (Chapter 6).
Word processing features such as search and replace, customizable spell check, and change case (Chapter 4).
Item manipulation features such as item styles and item find/change (Chapter 3).
Support for more than 30 languages, including East Asian languages.
Familiar tools and interface for producing print, Web, and Flash content.
The ability to share layouts and share content among layouts for collaboration and consistency.
Expert output tools, including output styles, Job Jackets, and PDF/X support.
All these features come together in QuarkXPress to help you publish effectively and efficiently.
This book focuses on the primary tasks you’ll perform in QuarkXPress while creating high-end print projects, and it helps you leverage those skills for use in Web and Flash publishing. We specifically targeted features that the average user needs to perform his or her daily work—in a real-world publishing environment. Each task included here is brief and self-contained, so you can quickly look up questions, skim the answers, and get back to work.
Since most users today either grew up with a computer or have been using one for more than a decade, we expect you to know how to:
Start a program (Windows users) or launch an application (in Mac speak).
Open, save, and close files—and then find them again. We’re talking about any type of file, including the QuarkXPress files you create, digital image files you download or create, files received via e-mail, Word files, and so on.
Consult experts as necessary on publishing topics such as expert typography, color, and high-end printing.
Although QuarkXPress lets you create print, PDF, Web, and Flash files, this book assumes print production. Information on PDF, Web, and Flash publishing is consolidated at the end of the book in Chapters 11 through 13. Otherwise, every task would be full of caveats about the differences in print and online workflows. In addition, the majority of basic features in QuarkXPress—creating boxes, formatting text, importing images—apply to both print and online workflows.
If you’re new to QuarkXPress or desktop publishing in general, see Chapter 2 to orient yourself to the program. You’ll learn about the main window that contains the pages you design; the general organization of the menus; the basic tools you need for creating and working with items, text, and pictures; and the floating palettes you’ll use for everyday tasks. You’ll also find out how to customize the workspace to suit your workflow and projects.
Every previous version of QuarkXPress, particularly versions 3 through 7, looked basically the same. And they worked basically the same way, with new features basically tacked on and squeezed in. On the plus side, this allowed users to keep working as they had been, ignoring new features or learning them at their leisure. On the negative side, keeping everything the same led to a stagnant, inefficient interface.
QuarkXPress 8 introduces a whole new look and an entirely new, streamlined workflow. The software is similar enough that current users can hit the ground running—but different enough that they’ll need to reorient themselves and learn the new features right away. If you’re in this situation, head straight to the Retraining the QuarkXPress Mind appendix in the back of this book. Quark also provides a QXP What’s New.pdf found in the QuarkXPress 8 > Documents > English folder.
Since QuarkXPress offers hundreds of options—and hundreds of tasks you might perform—this book does not cover everything. If you need to delve deeper into a feature, or learn about an advanced or special-purpose feature, check the resources provided with QuarkXPress.
If you need information about a feature that is not covered in this book, try the Help file or the documentation provided with QuarkXPress. You will find the information surprisingly clear and helpful for documentation.
Help file: Look in QuarkXPress Help for quick steps to perform a specific task. You can search for a specific task name, such as “hanging characters,” or use the navigation tools.
User Guide: To view the complete QuarkXPress 8 User Guide PDF file, navigate to this location: QuarkXPress 8 folder > Documents folder > English folder. The QXP User Guide.pdf folder provides complete workflow information that provides context and defines terms while explaining how to use each feature in QuarkXPress. You are not likely to want to print the 440-plus pages here, but you might think about moving the file to your desktop for quick reference.
Other resources: In the same location as the User Guide, you’ll find the QXP ReadMe.pdf, which provides information on system requirements, installing, and known issues. The QXP Troubleshooting.pdf is here as well, offering tips if the software is crashing or freezing, or if you’re having printing or font issues. If you end up using XPress Tags, QuarkXPress formatting codes you can apply to text files, all the codes are in the XPress Tags Guide.pdf in this folder.
Keyboard shortcuts: To speed up your work, look up and memorize the keyboard shortcuts for things you find yourself doing over and over. You’ll find the Keyboard Commands.pdf file in the QuarkXPress 8 > Documents > English folder as well. If you’re a keyboard shortcut junkie, print it out for quick reference.
Some people prefer hands-on or visual learning, and for that you can consult the Quark Web site (www.quark.com). Click Support, then Training. You can search for a trainer or training center, watch videos, and download exercise files called QuarkEd.
Quark provides free technical support, in English, for registered users of the latest version of QuarkXPress. Quark scatters this information about liberally, but we’ve collected it here so you don’t have to dig for it:
E-mail: If your situation falls into the “it’s bugging me but not stopping my work” category, e-mail tech support and they’ll generally get back to you within 24 hours. You can upload your QuarkXPress files for review as well. E-mail [email protected] or fill out the e-mail form at www.quark.com (Support > Desktop Tech Support).
Phone: For those lucky emergencies that happen during the work week, call tech support at 1-800-676-4575. You can call 24 hours a day from Monday through Friday. (That’s midnight on Monday morning to midnight on Friday night, Mountain Standard Time.)
If you need product information such as pricing, e-mail customer service at [email protected].