Topic awaiting preservation: pc and mac

I work with Illustrator on a PC and produce marketing materials for an investment firm. In the next few weeks I will be responsible for designing brochures for some new products, but currently do not know quark. The next quark class meets 5/20-5/23 in new york city. Until then, I will have to rely on doing brochures in Illustrator.

Questions:

1. Is illustrator adequate enough to design/prepare brochure files?
2. Will the work I do on a PC be able to be handled by a co-worker using a MAC?

Thanks.
CRO8

1. Yes, it can get complicated depending on how many pages, etc, but it is totally adequate. Just keep in good communication with your print house.
2. Yes, but there will probably be a little difference in layout since the fonts between the two operating systems are different...You could, of course, always convert your type to paths and do a save as and give that file to the mac person...

Jeni

thanks! I was wondering if you would show up in good ol' Print Graphics section. Nice, direct answers. Exactly what I wanted. . .

thanks.
-CRO8

IMO you don't really need a class to learn Quark. It's easy enought to teach yourself the basics. I mean, you know Illustrator which suggests that you can figure your own way around Quark, especially if you run through the "preview to Quark" book that comes with the program.

I literally knew nothing about Quark when I started my current job (which demands use of Quark all day, every day). I knew PageMaker and PhotoShop, so Quark was pretty simple to pick up. I just stayed late and did some self-imposed 'homework' until I felt comfortable. Now I consider myself an above-average, border line expert user of the program.

Got questions about the program ... just ask!

OK- I will give it a shot. I taught myself photoshop and illustrator- so why not Quark? Good enough. Besides the "Using Quark" book that comes with the program- know of any good tutorial sites?

I work in a print house using Macs and dealing with PC users all the long day and here are my suggestions to make your life a LOT easier:

1.)If possible, include your fonts! Your printer should have a conversion program to make the make the Mac compatable (such as TransType). The reason for including them is if you need to make changes or something along those lines you can't expect them to have the font you need. This assumes that you are using a layout program like Quark or Pagemaker. If you do decided to convert to outlines in Illustrator, make sure that your final project is perfect becuase corrections will be tough if they are done at the printer.
2.)Include all your graphics. Don't trust that a composite to represent what you want as embedded pictures are re-coded and can have changes. Pagemaker has been especially notorious for this, especially when using PMS colors.
3.)Talk to you printer. He/she should know what messes up the process and if they are just a representative then ask to speak with the pre-press department and get all the facts. Life becomes so much easier for everybody.

I also learned Quark from scratch with no previous layout program experience except for PageMill 2, a low end web layout proggy from Adobe. Really pretty easy to learn. I am actually starting to enjoy InDesign 1.5 and it's capabilities but if you want to go to the top end of things, go Quark.

cool. . . .Thanks zro1zro. Yeah- I pretty much hammered out much of the details you allude to In Illustrator, create outlines, EPS, include all fonts, images. For the next few projects I will be sending my finished files to our parent company to print- this is where MAC isues surface. Thanks for the heads up.- I will let you know how it goes. . .

CRO8

CR08,
I don't know if this helps at all, but we are using Adobe InDesign in school right now. According to my instructor, many colleges are dropping the Quark instruction in lieu of InDesign. It's very easy to use and if you know Photoshop, you are halfway there!

Don't be fooled! One of the biggest reasons that Quark is getting dropped is cost. The discount that Adobe gives colleges is huge but quarks is not very good and their "student" pricing is worse. With the massive budget cuts that the Bush administration has been handing to colleges, they have to go with cheaper materials to make their courses work.
InDesign is a great program but in the long run, it's too much like Pagemaker which makes it too rigid. Quark is truly the most versatile and powerful program on the market. It would be like saying that there is a better program than Photoshop for image editing. There may be some that streamline processes or have built in coolness like 3d text or somthing but for overall you still need Photoshop. Quark especially makes setting up your negs for platemaking a breeze. Offset or distortions for Flexo presses, you can't go wrong with Quark.

Meant to add this... My mother works as a teacher in "a" state university and does part time in the appropriations office so she's got a lot of inside info on that sort of thing. She emails me all the time talking about the BS that they go through.



[This message has been edited by zro1zro (edited 04-29-2002).]