Many years ago I remember using the first Quark Xpress design software on an Apple Classic. After years of Cowgum, 3M Spraymount, CS10 board and Rotring pens it came as an occupational career jarring shock. It took several months to change my mentality in how I approached artwork along with an entire generation of artworkers, paste-up artists and graphic designers.

Some dropped out of the industry while the rest of us struggled on and eventually embraced the technology. In fact the first desk top publishing package I used was Pagemaker. I even briefly taught an evening class in the package at Weston College. Its main drawbacks was it was rather clumsy and you couldn’t see all the elements you were working with.

Quark Xpress was next and that quickly became the industry standard before Adobe introduced Indesign as its successor software which for many has become the favourite for designers as links up with Adobe suite of Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

Corel is another software suite used by some studios although it is no longer available for Macs. I’ve met some people who swear by it although the main competition seems to be Indesign and Quark Xpress. Both packages have been transformed in recent years and flipping back to an old version makes you realise how things have changed.

Printable version Send to a friend Contact us