Which do you prefer?

Recently I've returned to the office after a 3 1/2 year hiatus from Graphic Design. Well, a hiatus from being in an office. I've used my favortie layout program Quark for over a decade.

Here's the thing, InDesign has pretty much taken over market share. Personally, I don't care for any of the interfaces that Adobe provides. I find them tedious and slow with a PC feel to them. Well, they don't even feel PC, they are PC.

So, what I've found is that I'm being forced into using InDesign even though it takes every designer out there, by admittance or not, a lot longer to get a job done. I ran into one company that did most of their work in Photoshop. Who the heck does a newsletter in Photoshop? Absurd.

Yes Quark has an 90s feel and it's not flashy, but man can you get a job done fast with it. The key commands are so much better in Quark that it's not even a competition. The tables for InDesign are great I'll admit. That said, most I speak with say the same thing. They say that InDesign is a much more robust program. I don't even think these goofs know what robust means. It's full of a bunch of things you'll never use is IMO what it comes down too. Robust simply is not practical in a deadline oriented field. So here's what I've had to say to my staff repeatedly since I've returned, "You're late with this job."

Just thought I'd share part of a rant I posted on another forum.

Any thoughts or designers out there?

FYI, I mainly work with publications and ads held within them.

No program has text control like Quark. The problem is the owner of Quark is an ass and has never had the community at mind. I mean you can get photoshop for under $300 which is vastly deeper of a program than Quark which runs $900.

It took Quark forever to move from 4.11 to 5.0.

Let's talk about a licensing server if you have several hundred designers/Editor.

The Quark Licensing program marries itself to a mac addrress of your network card. So essentially, if you have to have redundant hardware, it will not work on one node of the cluster.

Our Editorial Department simply saw the direction Quark was headed and stopped using Quark COLD-TURKEY.

Has anyone used QPS? It's a Quark repository with log-in permissions. Quark didn't even develope it, or support it, until recently. You'd have to go to Deepbridge for support.

Unfortunatley, I think they had a great product and lost sight of what was important to the user. They were only woried about money, which is why I think they went so deep into developing a licensing server for their product.

I have them both and will use either of them to get the job done. I do have plans to eventually move over to Indesign completely and dump Quark down the road.

Last edited: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 at 11:24:52 AM

XD lol! So true. This can be said of a lot of things: you get a sledgehammer for a 1inch nail. More is not better.

You deal with adds in publications: do you have to do full-on graphic designs for your advertisers and all, or is more like text layout (Classifieds, Real Estate, etc.)?

One great thing about Adobe CS is how you can work with Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. And how they all tie together neatly. Might be better to this way if your publications are full of flashy blings and complex designs; if you're mostly text-based the old horse might do.

Heh, remember PageMaker? It was only good for typesetting. You still had to order a photostat from a Typesetting house and paste everything up with a waxer.

IMHO Photoshop is hands down the most useful piece of software ever written, but I would never try to use it as a page layout program. I've been using Quark since the late 80's. Not because it's the best piece of software I've ever used, but simply because most of my freelance jobs are Quark docs. I can re-use a lot of the old layouts and get a jump on deadlines.

My main page layout program for the last 12 years has been Multi-Ad Creator. The company I used to work for rammed it down the designer's throats. It's only redeeming quality was the ability to scale text and graphics that were grouped together. Other than that - it was a piece of junk I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

Lately I've been seriously trying out InDesign but the jury is still out. I'd have to agree that the key commands are much better in Quark, but in all fairness part of that might just be familiarity.

I second all that KBC said in that post.

MultiAd Creator=

Hugo, I do full on design. Although, it's not my strength and would not consider myself an artist. I've always worked in publishing and all of the products were magaiznes. So yes, page design and ads is what I do. My real strength is that I know almost everything about the industry from start to press. Basically I'm an idea man and have others do the work for me. Less than half of my time is spent doing page layout these days. That's pretty much the goal of any graphic designer involved in publishing. I've never worked with one designer over the age of 45. In my area you've got to move up or you'll get burnt out. I'm certain it's quite different for those on the extremely creative side of the industry.

I can make things look good and get it done on schedule. In my particular part of the industry deadline is everything and "wow you" design quality is put on the back burner.

KBC, I used the waxer when I was the editor of my college newspaper. I loved those days. We'd get all liquored up and paste until 2 a.m. I also used multi-ad and had the same feelings.

I'd rather use a quick command to pull up a palette than having them stacked on one of my screens. I just find InDesign to be a burden. I've the same feelings for all Adobe products though. Photoshop is great but I want to get in it and back out of it as soon as possible. Back in the day I used Freehand rather than Illustrato for the same reasons.

I'm becoming prehistoric quick. Hmm. Depressing. XD

If art school is a bellwether, quark is dead.

I am partial to colored pencils and construction paper. A crayon always does well in a pinch. Burnt Siena is best.

I'd rather start backwards with this. What file format does the end result need to be in? Proprietary, PDF, or just printed? You including picts (or even movies I suppose)?

End result would most like be a printing on a digital web press. Files are converted to.pdf quite often. This is dependent upon what each individual printer requires. I work in print exclusively.

Last edited: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at 6:36:37 AM

I am a Quark veteran of 14 years. I've produced everything from catalogs to ads to posters in Quark.

I've been using InDesign since Jan 2006. If you want to really learn InDesign fast, just convert the ID keyboard shortcuts to Quark short cuts. ( Google the instructions.)

I chose not to do this and now I'm fairly amphibious between the two.

I now prefer InDesign over Quark for most design work I do.

Then again I always preferred FreeHand over Illustrator.

All in all, I don't think it's a "vs." situation but more like and "and/or"

Sniper

Last edited: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at 8:50:08 PM