Design Heads - Indesign Vs Quark

Dubious

man i hadnt realized people were even still rocking quark... but I've started a new gig and the other designer they've brought on is a SERIOUS quark head.. i mean LOVES quark.. hates illustrator / indesign... dude is a big press / print guy as oppossed to an all round designer type dude like myself.now i havent logged too many hours in either program so im not exactly biassed but i was kinda under the impression that Quark was going the way of the dinosaur and personalyl i'd rather stick with adobe.am i being a dumbass rockin indesign over quark?we've got a 100 page catalogue to do next week and i'd like to get it settup in the best program.

gloom

people are still using quark, but i do see it on the out. obviously this will take some time though. when i was doing page layouts, i was using quark, and ive only messed with indesign on a limited basis. indesign is on "the come up" and adobe will take over all avenues of design eventually (see macromedia merge/purchase)

http://www.quarkvsindesign.com/

TheeeCasualMale

use indesign.

Dubious

gimme some ammo peeps

dude rolls his eyes that i want to design a bizniz card in illustrator "that program is good for drawing but that's it"!!

DJFerrari

use indesign.

Sticking with Quark is like refusing to use Serato

Dubious

use indesign.

Sticking with Quark is like refusing to use Serato

nice analogy1

but shit i still only play vinyl..

i need a quark killing argument otherwise dude is gonna seize the day and im gonna be running quark all next week... which is NOT something im looking forward too... my typical experiences with quark involve much hair pulling and "who the hell uses this hunk o junk"

DJFerrari

use indesign.

Sticking with Quark is like refusing to use Serato

nice analogy1

but shit i still only play vinyl..

i need a quark killing argument otherwise dude is gonna seize the day and im gonna be running quark all next week... which is NOT something im looking forward too... my typical experiences with quark involve much hair pulling and "who the hell uses this hunk o junk"

Here's a better argument... I manage a few designers in a few different countries. I also have to deal with printing companies. As far as compatibility with files, colors, etc. Indesign is the clear winner as everyone is on the same Adobe platform. Quark causes too many headaches these days.

Dubious

Here's a better argument... I manage a few designers in a few different countries. I also have to deal with printing companies. As far as compatibility with files, colors, etc. Indesign is the clear winner as everyone is on the same Adobe platform. Quark causes too many headaches these days.

see dude is telling me the EXACT opposite.. his argument is that al lthe printers are still in quark and that noone will take indesign files and that pdfs arent good enough to send (WTF!)

gloom

Here's a better argument... I manage a few designers in a few different countries. I also have to deal with printing companies. As far as compatibility with files, colors, etc. Indesign is the clear winner as everyone is on the same Adobe platform. Quark causes too many headaches these days.

see dude is telling me the EXACT opposite.. his argument is that al lthe printers are still in quark and that noone will take indesign files and that pdfs arent good enough to send (WTF!)

this dude is an idiot.

funky16corners

Here's a better argument... I manage a few designers in a few different countries. I also have to deal with printing companies. As far as compatibility with files, colors, etc. Indesign is the clear winner as everyone is on the same Adobe platform. Quark causes too many headaches these days.

see dude is telling me the EXACT opposite.. his argument is that al lthe printers are still in quark and that noone will take indesign files and that pdfs arent good enough to send (WTF!)

this dude is an idiot.

Big idiot. I work in IT at a daily newspaper and we switched over to Indesign a long time ago.

DJFerrari

Here's a better argument... I manage a few designers in a few different countries. I also have to deal with printing companies. As far as compatibility with files, colors, etc. Indesign is the clear winner as everyone is on the same Adobe platform. Quark causes too many headaches these days.

see dude is telling me the EXACT opposite.. his argument is that al lthe printers are still in quark and that noone will take indesign files and that pdfs arent good enough to send (WTF!)

Interesting... do you have any contacts at the printing companies you work with? You could try and confirm that he is wrong. Also, are you using Photoshop and Illustrator? You could try the color compatibility argument.

Sounds like a stubborn dude, which leads to a very difficult situation. Maybe try to go above him in the corporate ladder (if it exists) and state your argument. Good luck!

Dubious

yeah this is really kinda irking me.. dude is mad convinced of Quarks suppossed superiority... and its getting to be one of those mind boggling arguments like which is better mac or pc...

Dubious

well here's the problem... company was hiring a desgner.. i was interviewed but didnt get the job.. they hired this dude... he couldnt take the job right away.. company reasseses situation and decides to hire both of us.

fine by me there's plenty of tasks around to do...

problem is dude is older, more "experienced" from a print / prepress background so he is the defacto go to guy for all quoting on print runs now.

im placed in a position wherein he's the dude who's sitting in the meetings with marketting, he's calling the printers, etc etc.

He's bascially considered the know it all tech dude whereas im the young hip design dude or something.

i need a leg to stand on if im gonna start disagreeing with the dude... my argument of "wow i didnt know anybody actually liked using quark" isnt gonna cut it me thinks

mordecai

just give him a good noogie.

soulmarcosa

I've been a professional print designer since 1994. Started out in PageMaker but grudgingly moved to Quark out of necessity around '96. Quark was undeniably the industry standard at that point, so much so that Adobe's first release of InDesign barely made a dent in its dominance.

But ever since Adobe discontinued PageMaker, improved InDesign with just about every feature Quark had and more, plus made it easy to use on both Mac & PC, InDesign gained the upper hand. Quark, meanwhile, has been sluggish to upgrade and has made those upgrades insanely expensive, while offering few of the advantages of InDesign, and without InDesign's seamless integration with Photoshop & Illustrator.

I haven't used Quark since 2004 and I've been designing for print the whole time, with no problems with InDesign-created PDFs. Plus, I don't think there's a single professional printer out there that doesn't support InDesign.

The writing is on the wall and Quark is definitely on its way out. Basically your coworker needs to get over his unbiased fear of InDesign and get used to the fact that Quark is a dinosaur, as he will soon be if he doesn't make the switch.

If those opinions from a 10 year veteran doesn't convince dude, then have him read these:

http://www.quarkvsindesign.com/about-war.php

http://quarkvsindesign.com/news/archives/2005/03/quarks-postcards-from-the-edge/

JoshD

InDesign all damn day

alieNDN

is the dude still using Corel?

dCastillo

dude rolls his eyes that i want to design a bizniz card in illustrator "that program is good for drawing but that's it"!!

I would like to see this dude's portfolio.

grandpa_shig

hey design heads! sorry i cant answer the question or whatevers cuz i dont know what you guys are talking about.

but...

i have a question. or a statement. tell me everything you know about printing on linen. plaese! more specifically, is it still done and if so is it noticably more expensive than printing on regular paper.

also, ive been wondering about old color processing and how they achieved the color effects on old postcards and ephemera. it looked like they dyed negatives or maybe did some sort of 3color technicolor thing but im not in the know. plaese someone hip me to it all!

thank you

bennyboy

On a slightly different tip, it's fine to use something like illustrator to create elements of a design, as it has its strengths, BUT it drives me crazy the amount of designers these days who use illustrator to actually layout artwork, linking in 20 huge photoshop pics, saving massive files, and thinking its all good.

I work in music design, we still use quark, mainly 'cos we have always used it. But the industry is changing, printers are slowly asking for PDF's instead of native files, & all the younger designers use Indesign.

I can also remember making the change from Pagemaker to Quark, on my little se-30. Blimey, I can remember when THERE WERE NO COMPUTERS!

Them were the days - cow gum, spraymount, letraset and rotring pens.

*wipes tear from eye*

Dubious

the good ole days! when i took typography we didnt even have any computers (the 4 mac's were reserved for the final year students!)... i still miss the smell of the hot wax paste up machine.

funky16corners

the good ole days! when i took typography we didnt even have any computers (the 4 mac's were reserved for the final year students!)... i still miss the smell of the hot wax paste up machine.

Aaaarrgh! the proof coater! I worked in newspaper production for 12 years before I moved into systems. I still have nightmares about getting that fucking wax all over my clothes, hands etc.

PSellers

I worked on two magazines a year back and it was all Quark. Indesign seems the standard now though. It seems logical to use Indesign like others have said, the standard at the printers is .pdf so Indesign surely suits this. I have such small knowledge in Indesign is Quark knowledge pretty transferable? I quite like Quark for what it's worth for the basic sub-editing type jobs. It may be a bit of a British thing to still use Quark I see colleges still teaching via Quark.

bennyboy

Ha ha, I can remember the computer room at our college, also reserved for final year students. We were let in for about an hour each week to look at the one mac. We all thought it wouldn't last. I broke new ground once by PRINTING OUT some text, and sticking it on a board. Brilliant.

bobbydee

use indesign.

Sticking with Quark is like refusing to use Serato

nice analogy1

but shit i still only play vinyl..

i need a quark killing argument otherwise dude is gonna seize the day and im gonna be running quark all next week... which is NOT something im looking forward too... my typical experiences with quark involve much hair pulling and "who the hell uses this hunk o junk"

Here's a better argument... I manage a few designers in a few different countries. I also have to deal with printing companies. As far as compatibility with files, colors, etc. Indesign is the clear winner as everyone is on the same Adobe platform. Quark causes too many headaches these days.

To use another analogy, its like the advantage of using Protools. Whether or not it is the best isn't really the issue- if your gonna be taking it to get mastered or mixed (ie printed) then you want to have the least fuss in handing the project over. So going with the industry standard is always going to be the best option.

Adobe (in all it's incarnations) has gotta be the most accepted format, hands down. I freelance, plus work for a large format digital printer, so i'm on both sides of the fence.

hogginthefogg

My company is trying to get me to start using InCopy (which is like InDesign, right?) because our Peru office is on it. But here's the deal: I'm a copywriter, not a graphic designer. Is it worth it?

Also, what's the learning curve? It looks like I'll be saddled with learning it on my own.

Thanks.

TheeeCasualMale

dude rolls his eyes that i want to design a bizniz card in illustrator "that program is good for drawing but that's it"!!

weak. illustrator is one of the most useful tools a (contemporary) graphic designer can ever have.

i use it for logo design, for designing and developing typefaces, for laying out pages of text (all of my CD liner notes i've ever designed were laid out 100% in illustrator), and yes... even for "drawing."

i'm scared to see this guy's portfolio.

TheeeCasualMale

Ross - I've never heard of InCopy, but if it's like InDesign, it should be pretty intuitive. There's not much to learn and you probably won't have to do much more than lay out some text boxes, flow text from one to another, and have them co-exist with some photos. I learned the basics of Quark, which is similar, in about a week.

paren

InDesign hands down.

InCopy intergrates with InDesign very nicely. The learning curve bad either, Ross. It supports editing, commenting, and change tracking, for instance. It's proven most beneficial when working on the design / layout of lengthy but priority in-process documentation.

---

my current 9-5 is strictly Word and Visio and SharePoint... all...day...long...

dCastillo

i really want to see this guy's portfolio. the proof is in the pudding.

nrich

InDesign is the way to go. Much more flexibility, many more options. Plus for all of the Quark purists you can set the InDesign shortcuts to mimick Quark's shortcuts.
Layers, transparency, color sampling, was that so hard to figure out. Plus, Quark had no history function for the longest time (what the fuck?)