QuarkXPress 7 - One Day Introduction Training Course

QuarkXPress is the standard in page layout for most professionals working in print and design industries. The principle is simple: QuarkXPress allows you to place elements created in other applications onto a page and to flow text around those objects. But there are many other features to this powerful tool including advanced typography tools, utilities for precise aligning and positioning, tables and layers to name but a few.

In this one-day course we focus on learning the key features of QuarkXPress required to produce well-formatted, print-ready colour documents. You will learn how to flow and format text, place and position images, align and adjust layouts and create multi-layout files.

By the end of this course, you will have a groundwork knowledge of the main elements involved in producing professional print-ready documents with confidence and will have a sound working knowledge of the key requirements of good quality press documents. Please note however that QuarkXPress is a large application and for a more fully comprehensive introduction we recommend the two day introduction course.

Overview of QuarkXPress
-When to use QuarkXPress
-The standard workspace
-Files, Projects and Layouts
-Palettes and Preferences

Document Basics
-Working in Projects and Layouts
-Document navigation
-Layout Properties...
-Creating a new Project
-Saving options

Text Boxes
-Creating boxes
-Inserting text
-Importing text
-Preparing images for print
-Placing images
-Changing image properties

Editing and formatting text
-Character and Paragraph option in the Measurements palette
-Character options in the style menu
-Paragraph options in the style menu
-Text options in the Modify dialogue
-Baseline grids

Defining master pages
-Using the Pages Layout palette
-Adding elements to a Master

Text box linking and flowing documents
-Page numbering
-Creating sections for variable numbering
-Linking text boxes
-Creating "from" and "to" fields

Typography
-Kerning and Tracking
-Leading
-Hyphenation and Justification sets
-Typography pitfalls
-OpenType fonts and ligatures
-Glyphs

Style Sheets
-Creating a Paragraph style
-Creating a Character style
-Applying styles
-Editing styles
-Changing default styles

Colour Swatches and Gradients
-Adding a CMYK swatch
-Pitfalls with QuarkXPress's default colours
-Working with spot colours
-Changing default colours
-Creating colour tints
-Creating colour gradients

Preparing pictures for print
-Image size, resolution and cropping
-RGB or CMYK colour mode?
-Sharpening for print
-Saving options: TIFF, EPS, PDF and JPEG

Picture boxes
-Drawing picture boxes
-Runaround options for images
-Embedded paths and Alpha Channels
-Reshaping picture boxes

Graphic Effects
-Modifying image attributes
-Working with opacity
-Creating blends with transparency
-Applying drop shadows
-Customizing drop shadows
-Importing and working with PSD files
-Loading and saving presets

Layout features
-Split views of projects
-Aligning objects
-Duplicate functions
-Step and Repeat

Tables
-Creating tables
-Creating tables from existing tabbed data
-Reverting data to tabulated data
-Table and cell format options
-Importing excel tables
-Colouring cells and strokes

Outputting
-Collecting files for output
-QuarkXPress print settings & Dialogue Boxes
-Creating a PDF for proof and for print