The Zen of Document Production
Page 5

Paragraph Rules

The other calendar section in this magazine had its own problem. While the dates weren’t floating about, the 50 or so event names were backed by colored boxes placed behind the text. The same re-flow issues arise, not to mention the pain of looking at all those guides as shown in figure 8. After again converting the background picture boxes to no-content boxes just to quiet down the guides, I used paragraph rules to create the bar on the event names as shown in figure 9 (a Dan Murphy specialty). This is simply applied through a paragraph style sheet, so it flows with the text and global color changes are a cinch to make.

Figure 8 At left, again guides and boxes galore make it hard to look at this layout — let alone work in it. At right, boxes behind the text are converted to paragraph rules.

Figure 9 The combination of rule above and rule below shown here create a bar behind subheads that flows with text.

Time Well Spent

Once all the master pages, style sheets, colors, and layout techniques were finalized, I saved all these layouts as actual QuarkXPress templates (save > type > project template). This ensures that you won’t accidentally save over your nice clean layouts. While the clean up and the new strategies took five or six hours, I guarantee they save the graphic designer and me at least ten hours per issue — if not more. Not to mention the ease of use and consistency.

So, how does the layout artist feel about my meddling? “I’m very grateful for the wonderful job you did on cleaning up and setting up the style sheets. It makes the work on the layouts much easier and faster, and mistakes occur less seldom,” she says. “The anchored stuff is my absolute favorite — a new thing for me! A huge relief, especially when entering changes!” So, I tell her all about Dan Murphy, and his Zen of document construction lives on.

So how much time is saved? How much time can be billed? These products will answer those questions exactly. JobCapture. JobSlug Pro. PrintCapture.

P.S. Do I really think proper use of QuarkXPress features circa 1995 will save you more time than automatic drop shadows, synchronizing text, Job Jackets, and composition zones? You bet.

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