Introduction / Background

Quark XPress, like Adobe InDesign, is a powerful page layout program. It offers great versatility in the ways text and images can be manipulated. XPress is the industry standard for advertising and communications design firms and production facilities.

Back in the "old days," before digital technology and software created the phenomena called DeskTop Publishing, graphic design and print advertising were created in several stages. First, comprehensive layouts were created (using a variety of traditional materials, like paper, ink, markers, t-squares and triangles) for client approval. Once a piece was approved for production, various professionals were contracted to produce the image(s)—photographs or illustrations—the type, and any other art the piece required.

These parts were then assembled and pasted onto a piece of illustration board in a form known as a "mechanical." The mechanical was then sent to the printer for production, whether it was a brochure, stationery or an ad for a magazine.

It is important to understand the principle of creating a mechanical because Quark XPress works in an analogous fashion: various parts of the page design are produced elsewhere (via another software program on the computer, or traditional text manuscript, photography and illustration) assembled, and "pasted" onto a board, much the way traditional mechanical were produced.

One of the most important aspects of making XPress work is remembering the notion that elements are assembled on "pieces of paper"—like the photostats and repros of old—and "pasted" onto a parent surface.

To put text on your page, you must first have the text you wish to use, either as a manuscript which you can then type, or as a word processed document already on disk.
Within XPress, you create a text box (or "piece of paper") for the type to reside on. This is almost identical in concept to the practice of spec'ing the type, having it typeset, and pasting the repro onto a board in the position indicated by the comprehensive layout.

To put an image onto your page, you must first have the image produced—either by creating it with another software package (like Adobe Illustrator, or Adobe Photoshop), or using more traditional means, like photography or illustration, which is then digitized (scanned) into the computer and saved as an .eps or .tif file.

To add it to your XPress document, you would first create a picture box (or “piece of paper"), and then place the image onto it. This process is, again, very reminiscent of the more traditional method of making a photostat of the image, in the correct size and shape, and pasting the stat onto the mechanical surface "for position only."

Quark XPress takes the analogy one step further: as with a traditional mechanical, the type is "real" and is used exactly as it has been pasted up in the making of the negatives for printing. The images, however, are "stats"—that is, representations of the original art, used to indicate what the image is, where it appears on the page, and how large it is to be reproduced. Just as the printer would use the original image (transparency, photo, or illustration) to create negatives which matched the stats for size and position, so does Quark XPress expect the original art for any images used within a document—that is, the actual files that were created either as scans, or Photoshop or Illustrator documents—before it can actually print anything.

If there are any hints I can give you before you begin, they are these:

1) Always remember to select the element you wish to influence—with the appropriate tool—before you make changes. For instance, you can only "get" a picture or "get" text when the appropriate text or picture ("pix") box is selected and the content tool is active.

2) Always have a hand-drawn rough of your proposed layout before you begin: XPress relies heavily on measurements, both for the size of objects, and their position on the page. This can make for confusion if you have no ideas for layout before you begin.

3) While text and some graphics can be created from scratch in Quark, it is far easier to have both text and image documents created in other applications (i.e. MicroSoft Word, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.) and stored in a folder for placing into your XPress document. Again, some pre-planning will serve you well. Copy edited or created in XPress can be saved as a text document.

New document

Choosing "new" from the File menu will pull up a dialog box which allows you to determine the size, format, margins, column guides and whether you want facing pages and/or an automatic text box.

You can name your layout here, but this will not save your document.

You can choose either “print” or “web” as layout type.

Page Size: You have some typical choices from the popup menu. The measurements for the size you choose will register in the "width" and "height" boxes. If you want a horizontal page click on the sideways icon. You can also ignore the popup menu and type any size you want in the width and height boxes.

Facing Pages: When you check this, your desktop will show double page spreads. If you leave this unchecked, you will see only one page at a time.

Automatic Text Box:When this option is checked, you will get a text box on each page which is linked to the text box on the following page, and so forth. If you are placing text which will run for several pages, it is smart to leave this checked. Typically, however, it can be a pain when you know your document must be a specific number of pages. It is easier to create and link your own text boxes for short documents.

Margin Guides: This indicates the automatic space created between the edges of the paper and the "live" area. When facing pages is unchecked, "inside" and "outside" become "left" and "right."

Column Guides: This divides your page into the number of columns you specify, and puts guides at the appropriate places. Gutter width is the space between each column, when there are more than one. It will determine not only how far apart they are, but how wide the columns need to be to fit within your page and margin guides.

If you have chosen more than one column, your automatic text boxes will be formatted to match.

You can change the number of columns on any given page, at any given time.