Quark has a completely different vision on digital publishing than Adobe. Quark seems to take the publisher/publishing process as its departure point. This leads to a dramatically different approach on multiple levels.
Use your print design skills and one tool to create Web, interactive, and digital publications.
The mere fact that people still like the feel of paper and print is not enough for print media to overcome the many advantages of Web media. This is true not just for regular publications like newspapers and magazines, but basically for any sort of print media, even marketing flyers and brochures.
The biggest translation pain came with our customer magazine. OK, I say ‘magazine’ when what I really mean is “36 pages of thinly-disguised corporate rhetoric, product blurb and case studies that – when slapped together in a nice design – we grandiosely call a magazine”. But you get my point.
Quark, which is privately held, was previously owned by the Ebrahimi family, which bought it from founder Tim Gill in 2000. On August 1, the children of Farhad (Fred) Ebrahimi, who retired in 2005, completed a transaction in which they sold all of their Quark shares for cash, and handed over control of the company to Platinum Equity.
Quark has been tantalizing QuarkXPress users since January with news of a tool for turning page-layout files into applications that run on Apple's iPad. Now that capability has finally come to QuarkXPress 9 with the free 9.1 update, which includes a new layout space called App Studio.
Jay Nelson, who reviewed QuarkXPress 9 for CreativePro.com in April, will put the App Studio through it paces, too. Look for his ancillary review to appear on this site soon. But until then, here's Quark's description of the four App Studio components:
There are plenty of changes afoot on this year's list, as well as at the magazine. As you read through these pages, you'll notice a change in the EContent 100 categories--and a subsequent change in the companies we're honoring this year. As we focused less on enterprise content companies and more on the world of digital publishing and media, the judges had to re-imagine the list--and relearn the judging process. While many of the old standbys still made it onto this year's list, there are plenty of fresh faces as well--many of which are shaking up the content industry.
This free update for existing QuarkXPress 9 users adds 25+ new and enhanced features to make it easier than ever to create e-books and iPad apps. Please take time to read the accompanying documentation, ‘QuarkXPress 9.2 ReadMe’ and the updated guides for QuarkXPress 9 and App Studio.
Highlights in QuarkXPress 9.2 include:
de Persgroep Publishing distributes over 3 million print copies
every day and experiences 200,000 iPad downloads a week
thanks to automated content repurposing for over 15 titles