The Shape-making Power of Union and Difference
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The Bell-Curve Trick

Bell curves can come in handy for a variety of illustrations.

To draw the bell in figure 10 using no Bézier tools, I performed the following actions:

I drew an oval, taking note of its exact width.

 

I chose item > step and repeat, and in the step and repeat dialog box, I entered a repeat count of 2, a horizontal offset that was exactly equal to the width of my first oval, and a vertical offset of 0.

I drew a rectangle that was double the width of my first oval, then moved it to where its upper midpoint would overlap the center of the middle oval (see figure 11).

I shift-clicked so that the rectangle and the middle oval were both selected, then chose item > merge > union.

With this still selected, I chose item > send to back. The shape collection in figure 12 resulted, now ready for the final cookie cut.

I selected all three shapes and selected item > merge < difference. Figure 13 shows the completed bell shape.

The Movable Blend-Center Trick

How many times have you wished QuarkXPress’ cool blends allowed repositioning the center point of its circular blend style? Thanks to the union command, this is actually possible.

Take a look at figure 14. My goal was to make this look like a three-dimensional ball, but here it looks more like a supernova.

              

Luckily, QuarkXPress can be tricked into moving the center of the blend. All you have to do is draw a tiny little line above and off to the side of the object, select both the line and the ball, and choose item > merge > union. QuarkXPress now calculates the center of the object in a skewed way — with the line serving as the uppermost part of the item. Just don’t forget to group your new creation with a white box that obscures the location of that little line you drew.

Above and Beyond

The shark in figure 16 shows how far you can go with the crescent-moon and bell-curve techniques. Create a bunch of ovals, position them, rotate some of them, union some of them, difference some of them, then union and difference a few more. There’s no limit to the smooth shapes that can be created in this way. Best of all, when you’re done, your illustration will be represented by a single QuarkXPress box that’s always supremely visible and editable directly inside your favorite application.

Don’t go too far, though, figure 17, “Balloon Bunny,” shows what happens when people spend too much time playing around in QuarkXPress and not enough time working in it.

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