I recently had the pleasure of working with The Barnhart Group in Akron, Ohio. The Barnhart Group creates entire publications in-house providing services that include photography, editorial and page layout in addition to printing, bindery and direct mail services. Barnhart recently added web site development to their offerings - with a little help from QuarkXPress. Take a look at our most recent QuarkTalk Video Blog and hear from Brent Barnhart, CEO of The Barnhart Group. Please note that the URL mentioned in the blog is still “under construction” - the actual URL is www.barnhartprinting.com.

QuarkTalk - Episode 03 - The Barnhart Group

See you on the road - Shellie

Please send comments to: quarktalk@quark.com

Greetings - I recently recorded a seminar for Apple Inc. at Left-Hand-Man Productions in Cuppertino, CA. Not only did I have the opportunity to work with the charismatic Brent Haley (formerly of Apple), but I also got to visit the mothership itself, Apple Inc. headquarters. Not only was I was completely enthralled by the internet wireless campus, phenomenal food court (sushi chef no exception) and extremely friendly personnel - I also had a very entertaining and expensive visit to the company store. I promptly stocked up on everything Apple including, but not limited to, keychains, pens, hoodies, t-shirts and Mac accessories. So - if you enjoy Apple as much as I do, please take a look at the following online seminar that focuses on QuarkXPress 7: Breakthrough Design and Productivity. Enjoy!

QuarkXPress 7: Breakthrough Design and Productivity with Apple

See you on the road - Shellie

Please send comments to: quarktalk@quark.com

Thanks to all of you who have written letting me know how much you enjoyed the first episode of QuarkTalk, our new video blog. As promised, here is the next edition featuring QuarkXPress 7 Web Tools. Please be sure to send all your questions and comments to shall@quark.com - let me know what you would like to talk about. To view this week’s edition of QuarkTalk, please click the following link:

QuarkTalk - Episode 02 - Takin’ it to the Web

See you on the road - Shellie

Quark is pleased to announce that we now have a great new way to communicate with you through QuarkTalk, our new video blog. QuarkTalk will feature information on products, events, tips & tricks, and all things Quark. We would also like to know what YOU would like from QuarkTalk. Please feel free to send your questions and comments to shall@quark.com. To watch this week’s edition of QuarkTalk, please click on the following link:

QuarkTalk - Episode 01

Enjoy!

See you on the road - Shellie

I just got an excited text message from a colleague in London informing me that our new product, Quark Interactive Designer, just won best of show at this year’s Mac Expo.

What is Quark Interactive Designer? Well we have a whole page about it here, but in a nutshell it’s a Flash creation tool that works right inside QuarkXPress and is made for designers, not developers.

Congratulations to all of the team, and I hope all of our customers will enjoy it too. (You can download and try it out right here)

The Quark Symposium headed to Chicago last week with more excitement and anticipation than I could ever imagine. Hundreds of QuarkXPress users turned up at McCormick Place to touch, see and hear all of the latest and greatest from Quark Inc. From morning through early evening, you could feel that something new and different was coming from Quark. Each and every session was packed, not an open seat in the house.

Our day was filled with meeting and greeting customers from California to Maine, Florida to Toronto, and everywhere in between. I also had the distinct pleasure to be a featured presenter on the main stage. My session was entitled “Beyond Print: Creating content for different media with QuarkXPress 7 Web tools.”

Some of the other great sessions that were presented to attendees included:
• What’s new for designers in QuarkXPress 7
• Take creativity to new heights with QuarkXPress 7 typography
• Job Jackets technology: Unprecedented collaboration and error-free workflows
• Successfully navigating the gray areas of color management with QuarkXPress 7
• Ask the Experts

Running concurrently with the featured sessions were hands-on labs, each with 40 new Universals iMacs running QuarkXPress 7.01 Universal. Quark is the first desktop publishing software company to release a native Universal application.

Be sure to check out our events page to see when we are coming to a city near you.

See you on the road!

Shellie

It’s not often I get to visit a person who is coloring a Batman comic book, writing a novel and designing a book cover at the same time. It’s even more rare that the person in question is doing all three in QuarkXPress… unless of course that person is Chip Kidd, one of the all-time greats of graphic design.

One of the highlights of the whole QuarkXPress 7 launch process for me, was getting time to sit down with Chip in his NYC office and talk through the innovations in QuarkXPress 7. Let’s just say, he likes what he saw. In fact, Chip joined us at the QuarkXPress launch back in May and eagerly received one of the very first copies of QuarkXPress 7.

At the launch, Chip regaled the audience with possibly some of the most geeked-out designer humor I have ever heard, along with a more reflective reading of a ‘lost chapter’ from his brilliant first novel, The Cheese Monkeys. By the way, fans of The Cheese Monkeys will be pleased to know that Chip’s first QuarkXPress 7 project was getting to work on finishing the follow-up book and that it will appear on the page exactly as it appeared on Chip’s screen as he was writing it: right in QuarkXPress .

–Marc

In July, I had the pleasure of heading to San Luis Obispo to work with the student-run staff of the Mustang Daily Newspaper at CalPoly. This is one of the few, if not the only, daily college publications entirely written, designed, assembled and printed on-campus by students. The Mustang Daily general manager, Paul Bittick, is a long-time newspaper veteran who has always believed in QuarkXPress as the publishing tool of choice. Paul’s experience and his knowledge of QuarkXPress enable him to turn his students into a full-fledged newspaper staff.

The Mustang Daily participated in our QuarkXPress 7 Early Adopter program, and were one of the first college newspapers to completely migrate to QuarkXPress 7. One of my Quark colleagues and I spent a few days on site with the students to get them up to speed on all the powerful new features of QuarkXPress 7. One of the features that will prove to be the most valuable to the staff is Composition Zones, which will allow each writer on the editorial staff to work on their columns within the same layout at the same time. No more waiting around for another editor to finish that portion of the newspaper. Talk about speeding up production – this is key for the Mustang Daily and its tight daily deadlines. My congratulations go out to the entire staff on their migration to QuarkXPress 7. For more information on the Mustang Daily head to http://www.mustangdaily.net.

See you on the road!

Shellie Hall
Sr. Marketing Content Specialist, Quark Inc.

ID Magazine, the leading critical magazine covering the art, business and culture of design, recently held their 52nd annual Design Review.  As usual the quality of the design was excellent, and also as usual QuarkXPress was the most-used primary layout software in the graphics category

Congratulations to all of the winners!
— Marc

How’s that for timing - within minutes of Steve Jobs revealing Apple’s first professional desktop computers to run on Intel processors, QuarkXPress 7 becomes the first professional page layout application to run natively on them! That’s right, QuarkXPress 7 is now a Universal application which means that it runs natively on the new Intel Macs (and the older PowerPC ones as well). So not only do you get all the new and enhanced features, some of which we’ve mentioned here in the QuarkXPress 7 blog, but you now get the best possible performance on the latest hardware from Apple.

Indeed, I’ve just spent the last half an hour or so trying out the new Universal version on my MacBook Pro, and it is running so much faster than it was in Rosetta. (The first thing I did was open one of the projects I had been working on last week using the PowerPC version and it appeared almost instantaneously. It wasn’t the largest of files but I really noticed the difference). I can’t wait to put it through its paces tomorrow.

Not only this, it’s a free update for existing QuarkXPress 7 users. You can download the installer from the website right now:

www.quark.com/products/xpress/701update.html

Remember to have your QuarkXPress 7 validation code to hand, because you actually need to reinstall the software. As always, the ReadMe file will guide you through the process.

If you’re using a Mac but aren’t using QuarkXPress 7 yet, the link above is still relevant. Just download the software and when you run the installer you’ll be given the option of installing a 30 day fully-functional evaluation. (An eval is available for Windows users as well - see Jonathan’s blog below) With over 160 new and enhanced features in QuarkXPress 7, there’s lots to explore so check out the training section of our website (www.quark.com/training) which contains all sorts of instructional materials to get you up-to-speed with the application in next to no time. There’s another positive note on performance to finish on!

Nick