Digital Design using QuarkXPress 4

Tony Lockhart, Paul Honeywill

Description

Digital Design using QuarkXPress 4 gives you the ability to fully understand QuarkXPress, while developing a knowledge of the rules of design and how computers can exploit them. Students with non-visual backgrounds can rapidly improve, producing worthy examples of pages that integrate text and image. Knowledge gives you choices.

The authors approach the subject of teaching QuarkXPress from all the necessary directions.

Learning software enables you to lay out a page but not to design one. So this does not take the reader through a series of steps reproducing designed pages - that teaches you nothing. Instead, the authors provide an objective understanding of what makes your designs work.

Sujets

• Loisirs
• Arts Numériques
• Communication visuelle
• General
• Design
• Desktop publishing
• General officer
• Informatique
• COMPUTERS

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 1997
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841508528
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

digital design using
QuarkXPress 4
Paul Honeywill and Tony Lockhart
intellect
First Published in 1997, reprinted 2002 by Intellect Books EFAE, Earl Richards Road North, Exeter, EX2 6AS, UK
Copyright 1997 Paul Honeywill and Tony Lockhart
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocoping, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. Consulting editor: Masoud Yazdani Copy editor: Lucy Kind Cover Illustration: Sam Robinson Illustrations: Screen dumps from QuarkXPress 4 and material provided by both authors.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-852-7 / ISBN 1-871516-76-5
Printed and bound in the UK by Cromwell Press, Wiltshire
Table of Contents Preface Chapter 1 You, Intuition and the QuarkXPress Interface 2 Using QuarkXPress: The Document Layout The Toolbox Text Pictures Long Documents Colour Special Effects Printing 3 You, Design and Working with QuarkXPress 4 Structuring a Document 5 Using Elements (Items) within a Document 6 Using Digital Type within QuarkXPress 7 When your Document leaves the Desktop Index
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Quark Inc, Colorado USA for inviting us to be Beta testers of QuarkXPress 4 and offering general assistance with the book. Also, the chair of Scitex User Group UK for allowing us to see and use research findings from many reprographic houses on file encounters between themselves and the customer: we hope that the final chapter will raise awareness. We would also like to thank the students who tested Chapter 2, Using QuarkXPress . In addition we would like to thank Frank Wright for his help with printing issues, Omar Al Hasso for researching the design changes in MacUser, Jane Weston and Katharine Reeve for their help and advice.
Trademarks
Throughout this book trademarked names occur. Rather than put a trademark symbol in every occurrence, we state that the names are used only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the owner with no intention of infringement.

The Phaistos disc from Crete, forms the creative source for the cover illustration. Reproduced from Sassoon, R., Gaur, A. 1997 Signs, symbols and icons , Intellect
This book is dedicated to:
Glynis, Lois and William - PH
and
Maeve Heneke and the staff of the former Paddington College, London. Now I truly know that as B. F. Skinner said in 1964 Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten - TL
Preface
Design before computers required a detailed understanding of the processes involved. The advent of desktop publishing has led to the removal of many aspects of these processes which retained trade and professional specialisms, such as graphic designer, typesetter and so on. Consequently, dtp became branded as a lower order of design. In many cases it was a lack of design knowledge that gave dismissive ammunition to the elite few who regarded dtp in this way. In its defence, it was not the technology that reflected the design quality, it was that it was available to anybody who wanted to desktop-publish .
This book addresses the problem by looking at the fundamentals of traditional design and how it compares in the digital age. It attempts to bring these two processes together by analysing what was good practice before page make-up software and how it applies to working digitally.
Chapters 3 to 7 will equip you with a foundation of knowledge which will allow you to self-learn and develop appropriate design skills by understanding what to look for, as opposed to being shown examples of clever designs which at this stage you could reproduce only by step-by-step copying without knowing why.
Chapter 2 will teach you how to use QuarkXPress 4 as a design tool. What you create with that knowledge is entirely up to you. Once you have grasped a function of the software use your own text and image files to practice. By doing so you place learning into context, only you know what you wish to achieve.
The object is not just to get to the end of the book in a certain time period. Teaching QuarkXPress to a beginner on a one-to-one basis would, on average, take 3 to 4 days. However, rarely does one find two people learning at the same pace. Set your own pace, proceed to the next section only when you are comfortable with what you have learned and more importantly how it relates to what you wish to communicate in your design.
To get the most from this book, we suggest that when you are using chapter 2, the QuarkXPress tutorial section, you should refer to chapters 3 to 7 for more information i.e. why is one typeface preferable to another? The design section does not tell you what is a good typeface and what isn t; what it does tell you is what to look for in a typeface so that you can make an informed choice.
The step-by-step guides are numbered paragraphs. Read these before doing anything. In the side margins are tips, hints and other additional information.
You do not have to be a computing wizard to use this book. However, it is assumed you possess the basic skills of clicking, dragging, copying and pasting in the windows environments found on both Macintosh and PC.
Important
Throughout Chapter 2 there are keyboard shortcuts for various functions. This book was produced on an Apple Macintosh. To avoid unnecessary wording we have inserted the Macintosh keyboard commands in the text. If you are using QuarkXPress 4 on a PC, simply substitute the Control key for the Command key. Other keyboard commands should work as listed. If you have a Macintosh with an older-style keyboard, use Option when asked to use Alt.
Chapter 1
You, Intuition and the QuarkXPress Interface
Before beginning any class I ve always found it useful for the student to understand how QuarkXPress describes the computer interface as a working graphic studio, and then position the student in relation to the computer and design. Learning software on its own is insufficient, and QuarkXPress training tends to be confined to program learning. Program understanding comes from your knowledge of the metaphor that the computer uses to describe the real world. If you, as a student, understand the logic of the metaphor and its functions, you are then equipped to self-learn, develop and exploit the nature of digital design.
When acquiring new knowledge, such as QuarkXPress, it is always best to understand the real world metaphor that the software uses to describe the tools and techniques that a graphic designer would use.

Volume low.

Volume high.
You understand the metaphor that the volume control uses to describe the real world, when you adjust the volume control this is exactly what you expect - learning to use QuarkXPress is no different.
You learn to navigate through the real world by recognising representational symbols that describe objects, and the actions that you should take as a consequence. With a computer you are able to adjust the sound level with relative ease. The graphic representation of volume control is familiar; an unfamiliar image would not enable you to understand its function. Learning to use QuarkXPress is no different. By unpacking and understanding these processes you should be able to familiarise yourself each time QuarkXPress is upgraded or undergoes a major redesign of its interface and functions.
By doing so you can extend this approach and apply this method to any program, such as MacroMedia Director or Photoshop. This introductory chapter could be used for any program which has been written to operate in a windows environment for either Macintosh or PC. Therefore, what is important is your understanding of what the action words mean and how the desktop metaphor of noun and verb functions. When using Photoshop a photographer would understand the actions of a Noise Filter for Despeckling or altering the radius of the Median. A graphic designer will understand the language of typography used as the action verbs within QuarkXPress, such as track (overall space between letters and words) and kern (individual space between letters). Also, the nature of design using a computer allows you to reflect upon human perception, which tends to be altered through new possibilities that the digital capability of a computer can offer. By exploring the potential of design using computers, new opportunities can be established. There are three distinct parts to effectively using QuarkXPress as a tool: The Computer
The QuarkXPress object/action computerinterface as a metaphor for working in a graphic design studio. You
Knowledge of design, its principles and its terminology.
Objective reflection upon elements of design that remain constant, and what elements of design can be exploited using a computer.
It is assumed you know how to operate a Macintosh or Windows computer and are conversant with clicking and dragging, Open and Save dialogue boxes and so on. If not, you are advised to take time out to learn these basics after reading this chapter and before beginning the QuarkXPress tutorial in Chapter 2. Understanding the desktop metaphor encourages learning of these new opportunities through familiarity. Pointing and selecting becomes inseparable from the desktop assumption that people are inquisitive, they want to learn, especially if the environment appears recognisable and engaging. With QuarkXPress the design studio metaphor creates an interface that allows you to use the tools of graphic design. To operate the computer you look for objects that are familiar, these objects suggest their function - language and description of functionality needs only to be approximate and not exact.
The developers of QuarkXPress know the importance of an intuitive interface. This is reflected in any upgrades or major redesigns of the program. By understanding this, you can self-learn.
The Interface as a