Background

This two day Quark authorised course is designed to provide users of QuarkXPress with an excellent grounding in this immensely powerful desktop publishing program.

A further two day Advanced QuarkXPress course is recommended for those who need to use Quark’s Collaboration setup, image editing and Job Jackets in-depth. In this introductory course you will learn how to produce professional documentation ranging from single page newsletters to highly sophisticated magazine layouts.

The course covers all the major page layout and text handling features in QuarkXPress and highlights time-saving shortcuts and hints and tips from XPress professionals.

The course covers setting up page layouts from scratch, editing existing page layouts, working with templates, using text management features, making use of styles and master pages to save production time, working with colour, importing graphics and images, creating tables, using layers and preparing your project for print.

Who should attend

PC or Mac users who wish to start working with this program

Course Outline

DAY ONE

INTRODUCTION

QUARKXPRESS BASICS
QuarkXPress tools
Importing pictures
Entering and importing text
Different shaped picture & text boxes
Using the Tabs bar
Controlling palettes
Creating palette groups

SETTING UP PAGES IN QUARK
Setting the page size and margins
Columns and gutters
Positioning the document origin
Quark’s measurement systems
Using multiple undo

THE DOCUMENT LAYOUT PALETTE
Moving around the document
Creating and deleting pages

WORKING WITH CONTEXT MENUS
Activating a context menu
Customising keyboard commands

TEXT AND GRAPHICS FEATURES
Framing text and picture boxes
Rotating graphics
Locking items and contents
Maintaining picture attributes
Transparency and drop shadows
Cropping images
Using runaround
Applying Runaround to a cut-out
Grouping and multiple selections
Finding and changing text
Linking and unlinking text boxes
Selecting through a stack of objects
Arranging items in a stack
Image editing in QuarkVista

USING MASTER PAGES
Creating and editing master pages
Automatic page numbering
Creating headers and footers
Using combinations of Master Pages
Creating and deleting Master Pages

WORKING WITH COLOUR
Creating custom colours
Understanding spot and process colours
Creating, editing and appending colours
Creating colour blends

CREATING AND FORMATTING DOCUMENTS
Fonts, styles and sizes
Text rotation and flips
Leading and tracking values
Modifying text and picture boxes
Using invisibles and guides
Creating a project from a Job ticket
Splitting and creating new windows
Creating a template

SETTING QUARK PREFERENCES
Typesetting preferences
Introducing tabs and rules
Using the rules

MORE TEXT CONTROLS
Re-shaping text boxes
Anchored text boxes
Using the Baseline Grid

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

DAY TWO

FURTHER TEXT CONTROLS
Paragraph and character style sheets
Versatile typography with OpenType
The Glyphs palette
Using special characters
Changing character case
Style sheets with templates
Runaround techniques
Soft and hard returns
Using space/align
Using the QuarkXPress library

WORKING WITH TABLES
The Table tool
Tables with picture boxes
Importing data from MS Excel

WORKING WITH BEZIERS
Creating custom shapes and paths
Creating text on a path

WORKING WITH LAYERS
Using layers to isolate items that should not print
The Layers palette
Adding, removing and merging layers
The Layer Attributes dialog box
Using Keep Runaround in layers
The Layer selection area
Deleting Layers
The purpose of visual indicators

DOCUMENT FACILITIES
Single and Multiple layouts
Copying between layouts
Moving pages between documents
Importing native Photoshop files

PRINTING FROM QUARKXPRESS
Automatically embedding fonts, colours and images for trouble-free printing from QuarkXPress.
A printing checklist
Creating Output Styles
Exporting as a PDF

QUESTIONS AND ANSWER