BY TREVOR ALYN

The introduction of Real World QuarkXPress 7 is titled "The Oldest Living Layout App." True enough; QuarkXPress has survived and thrived while applications such as Ventura Publisher and Aldus PageMaker have dissolved into obscurity.

Rather than being left behind as publishing evolved, QuarkXPress has sprouted new features that enable it to take advantage of industry changes such as the emergence of the PDF, the web, and XML. Even as it embraced the future, QuarkXPress has never left behind its core block of users: designers. Alongside features such as Job Jackets and PPML export, each new release of QuarkXPress has introduced designer-friendly features such as Photoshop import, image effects, transparency, and automatic drop shadows.

After seven major releases, QuarkXPress is now what you might call a feature-rich application; and that's exactly why you need a book like Real World QuarkXPress 7. If you're getting started with QuarkXPress, you need this book to get comfortable with the application and find the bread-and-butter features that will take the drudgery out of your daily work. If you're a QuarkXPress user from way back, but maybe now upgrading from version 4 or 5, you need Real World QuarkXPress 7 to learn about recently added features such as multi-layout projects, synchronized text, web layouts, tables, and in-layout image-editing features; and if you're a hardcore QuarkXPress gear head, you need it to get your brain around powerful but complex features such as Job Jackets files, composition zones technology, and 21st-century color management.

To meet the needs of these three audiences, this review of Real World QuarkXPress 7 will be divided into three parts, with one part for each audience: newbie, upgrader, and gear heads.

 

Yeah, but I already know QuarkXPress.

Why bother reading a book about QuarkXPress, especially if you already know QuarkXPress? Here are a few reasons:

  • There's more than one way to do almost everything in QuarkXPress, but not every way is the smart way. A one-day class might take your skills to the point where you can build newsletters and simple ads — but unless you learn about features such as style sheets, master pages, and Job Jackets, you're probably doing about four times as much work as needed.
  • Anyone can create a layout that looks great on the screen, but not everyone can guarantee that same layout will look equally good when it comes off the press. If you're serious about professional-looking output, and you don't want midnight calls from your output provider, it pays to learn in detail about features such as color management and Job Jackets.
  • QuarkXPress has some powerful features that most people don't use because they simply don't know about them. Features such as multi-layout projects, synchronized text, and layers can make your life easier and make you look like a pro at the same time.
  • Any one of these reasons should be enough to convince you that a few hours spent with a quality book about QuarkXPress are more than worth the time investment.

 

  

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About the Author

Trevor Alyn manages the Quark editorial department in Denver. He has been a QuarkXPress user since 1987 and has worked for Quark for over ten years. In his spare time, he enjoys reading and creating really strange things in Photoshop.