friday productivity at an all time high

i`ve been working all day. no bookworm, no distractions; well i`ve been cruising about here, but that`s not so much a distraction as a necessary part of the day.

i`ve been making changes to an annual report, i didn`t design this project, the other artist that was here did it and i`m finishing up. i have to say i like annual report and brochure work, it`s not entirely mindless, but there is a structure to it, that needs to be maintained, so your play area is mostly typographic. this however may be the last project in quark for our little shop, quark has been flaky and unresponsive under OS X and with each upgrade adobe`s killer app, InDesign is getting better.

the first time i used quark it was like pulling teeth, the agency i was working for was doing a christmas brochure for a furniture store and the printer required artwork in quark native format.

even then quark was flaky, but it was a damn sight better at managing pages and type than pagemaker. i taught myself Quark in two weeks as i build the 48 pages of the brochure, i never looked back, . when it came to tabs and pagination, there was nothing that could beat it; until now.

i`ve been a loyalist, in newspaper pagination, annual reports, books, brochures, corporate identity manuals, but this week i`ve been fooling around with indesign and unless quark does something truly spectacular, they`re doomed. more and more newspapers; one of the bastions on quark`s business; are switching.

indesign brings the familiarity of all adobe`s other tools in a true pagination app. the work flow is spectacular, all the adobe apps are inter-linked so it`s pretty much once click edit placed items and pdf presets are built in for easy export.  it`s taking me a while to unlearn some of my 12 years of quark habits, but i have to say i`m really happy with indesign and i`m not having many qualms about abandoning quark