QuarkXPress
Design Techniques
It is appropriate that a book on design should reflect high production values. QuarkXPress Design Techniques, by Michael J. Nolan and Scott Cook, from Hayden Books, is a breath of fresh air among the rows and rows of computer titles, most of which follow a standard look and feel. The entire book is done in four color process on nice paper. This left the authors, who also designed and produced the book, open to use color anywhere it made sense, such as color coding different chapters, as well as the freedom to show all design samples in color.
QuarkXPress Design Techniques is a bit of a misnomer, as this book is just as accessible to the PageMaker, Framemaker, or even MS Word user. The authors have identified the growing number of desktop publishers thrown into the design field without even realizing it. Many professional typesetters and graphic artists today have no background in the traditional printing and graphics trade, and many are not experienced designers either. This book does an excellent job of filling the gaps. Besides design principals, the authors make sure you wonÕt stumble when it comes time to face production issues such as color printing. It even lists standard paper and envelope sizes.
This is not a beginnerÕs Quark book. Rather, itÕs a book for the Quark user who knows how to use the software, but is ready to hone their design skills. In fact, the logo section has some fine guidelines for how to create logos, but the only reference to Quark in the whole section advises the reader not to use Quark in designing the logo, but to use an illustration program instead. For the most part, though, Quark information rides along with the design discussion.
Design examples credited to a variety of design studios provide lots of inspiration. The authors say a few words about the underlying thoughts on each each piece, as well as any special techniques used to create them.
QuarkXPress Design Techniques, not a thick book (186 pp), is open and airy, with short passages and lots of graphics. Pick it up and just browse. Nothing takes more than a few minutes to understand.
For the person who has a feel for design, but not much real design experience or training, this book will pull things together. For the designer getting started with Quark, this book wonÕt go into great depth on Quark, but it will show you how Quark can fill your every design need.Ź
QuarkXPress Design Techniques
by Michael J. Nolan
and Scott Cook
Hayden Books
$24.95
QuarkXPress
Tips & Tricks
QuarkXPress Tips & Tricks, by David Blatner, Phil Gaskill and Eric Taub, and published by Peachpit, is the direct opposite of the previous book. This large reference book (426 pp) contains nearly every tip ever published about Quark, but offers no guidance in the design area.
A ten-page table of contents lets you know whatÕs in store. ItÕs easy to scan the headings under the chapter names to find a tip that might solve your problem. Except that the page numbers tend to be off by one. Ah, that last minute copyflow problem. The bookÕs colophon states that the table of contents was generated using Vision Contents XTension, but my one random lookup yielded a ripple that lasted for several pages. But never mind. This is a great browsing book anyway.
The tips are all categorized with a small subhead, followed by the tipÕs description as a big bold heading. There are two or three tips per page, with the shorter ones appearing as gray sidebars. Illustrations clarify some tips. Besides tips, there are chapters on scripting (with Applescript), QuicKeys, and XTensions.
The troubleshooting section covers printing, bad file formats, fonts, and other problems. Blatner is also a PostScript specialist, so itÕs an added bonus to have insider information on those PostScript printing problems we all have from time to time.
Like many books these days, QuarkXPress Tips & Tricks comes with a CD full of extensions, clip art samplers, demos, shareware and freeware utilities, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Type Reunion and Adobe Type Manager, and AppleScript.
For the person who likes to impress their friends with new tips, this is a great book to have on hand.Ź
QuarkXPress Tips & Tricks
by David Blatner, Phil Gaskill
and Eric Taub
Peachpit, $35
The ProfessionalÕs Guide to QuarkXPress 3.3
The ProfessionalÕs Guide to QuarkXPress 3.3, by Kim Baker and Sunny Baker, and published by Wiley, is directed to the high end userŃnot a tip book, not a design book, but a big guide to setting up a serious production operation.
This book advises you on everything from equipment (including the wise choice of leaving important color scanning to an outside color service) to software of all kinds, giving you realistic expectations of RAM and CPU requirements for some of the more sophisticated graphics packages.
About a third of the way through the book, after the section on management of the publishing department, the Quark discussion begins. This section covers, in depth, nearly everything, including the Frame Editor. IÕm not sure how useful bitmapped frames would be in a professional publication venture, but this book covers it more thoroughly than any other book IÕve ever seen.
The typography section covers all the bases as well, including the fraction preferences dialog box.
While this book covers the subject matter in depth, it doesnÕt give the reader a chance to explore alternative solutions, like making your own fractions using Quarks typographic controls, or the reality of the time consuming process making a frame entails, for whatŃ a bitmapped frame with very little flexibility (make a good frame in Illustrator and be done with it in a fraction of the time). (The fraction feature is only marginally useful, since it makes local type size and baseline shift changes to the numbers that prevent you from easily making changes later.)
But these are minor complaints on a book that covers some dicey subjects quite thoroughly, like database publishing, style tags, and script writing. The section on graphics formats, color publishing, and trapping go beyond the usual Quark discussion, and includes information on related software like Photoshop and Cachet. The authors also cover what you need to know about color keys, bluelines, matchprints, embossing, die cutting, and a host of other printing issues.
An exhaustive listing of contact information for hardware and software companies and publications fills a section at the back. The book comes with a CD containing utilities, scripts, and demo XTensions, including XChangeÕs catalog of commercial XTensions.
If you are into publishing big time, this book should answer your big time questions. If you arenÕt a big time production house, but just like to know everything, this book will give you something to sink your teeth into.Ź
The ProfessionalÕs Guide to QuarkXPress 3.3
by Kim Baker and Sunny Baker
Wiley, $39.95
©1995 Terry Wilson. Reprinted from PMUG Dialog, newsletter of the Princeton Macintosh Users Group.
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SIDEBAR
Excerpts from the booksÉ
Design Techniques
Four-color black
There is blackŃand there is really black. When using four-color process printing, you may want to add a four-color black. Four-color black has a depth that cannot be found simply by printing one pass of black ink. Instead, it combines all four colors at various percentages. Never use four-color black for type because it creates registration problems. But for backgrounds and other graphics, it works very well.
1. Choose Colors from the Edit menu.
2. Select New.
3. Choose CMYK; type in the name 4-color black to distinguish it from regular black, and select 100% for black, and 60% for Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.
4. Click on the Save button.
Tips & Tricks
From PageMaker to QuarkXPress
If you just need to import text from PageMaker, we suggest that you export the text from PageMaker in Microsoft Word format and then import it into QuarkXPress using Get Text. This preserves more type formatting and paragraph styles than cutting and pasting text.
ProfessionalÕs Guide
Tip: ATM, Big Type, and Non-PostScript Printers
When you try to print that 720 point character thatÕs a key component in a Quark design on a non-PostScript printer such as a bare-bones Canon copier or color inkjet printer, do you get a bunch of giant pixels instead of a graceful letter? Without PostScript, a bigger share of the rendering job falls to ATM and it needs more memory to do its work. Set ATMÕs memory way upŃyou may want to set it to more than 1MB for really giant type.
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