Quark XPress Beginners and Intermediates Training Course

Quark XPress beginners and Intermediates two day training course

Design Trainers are offering this two day course for beginners and intermediates in Quark XPress which will introduce you to the basics of desktop publishing and design with Quark XPress. This course will also show you how to work accurately and efficiently as you create more advanced document designs using master pages and style sheets. Ypu can also custom your Quark XPress training working with your own documents and designs.

This course is available on a one-to-one basis, or in small groups on-site in Birmingham and Midlands areas and around the UK.

This course is aimed at beginners and intermediates thus it is necerssary that you have good general computer skills. Additionally will be helpful if you have some knowledge of other design software, particularly Photoshop for image resizing and colour correction.

» See also the Designer Trainers Adobe Photoshop Beginners and Intermediates course

This Beginners and Intermediates Dreamweaver course covers the following areas:

Day 1: Quark XPress Course - Beginners Introduction

Introduction to QuarkXPress - tools, techniques and introduction to the basics of page layout and design with Quark XPress.

Creating a new Quark Xpress document

• Starting a new document:
• Setting document size and page margins and other options
• Saving a document and organising files
• Modifying page properties

Quark Xpress work area

• Moving around the document
• Zoom tool and shortcut keys for zooming in and out
• Using guidelines to help control layout

Tools

• Content & Item tools
• Picture boxes and text boxes
• Line and shape tools
• Text linking tools

Shapes and lines

• Creating shapes and lines
• Setting fill colour other properties for shapes
• Setting line style, colour and arrows for lines

Colours

• Colours palette - adding new colours
• Choosing RGB, CMYK or Pantone Spot colours
• Choosing colour for type, fills and borders
• Creating tints and gradients
• Importing colours from other documents

Working with Images

• Create a picture box - set size and position
• Import a picture (file type, size, quality considerations)
• Positioning an image within the picture box
• Scaling, cropping and rotating images
• Adding a border around an image

Text & Typography

• Creating a text box
• Modifying text box properties
• Typing text, importing text or using Jabber
• Setting type properties: size, font, style, alignment, hyphenation
• Basic typography settings: leading, tracking and kerning
• Paragraph formatting - indents, paragraph spacing
• Checking Spelling
• Changing the number of columns of text
• Flowing type from one text box to another
• Flowing type around images and other objects

Shapes and Selected Objects

• Shape Modifying – changing from one shape to another
• Converting between picture boxes and text boxes
• Using the Measurements Palette for accurate measurements and calculations
• Duplicating selected objects
• Spacing and aligning items on the page
• Create multiple identical objects with equal spacing using Step & Repeat
• Grouping objects together
• Locking objects to prevent accidental moving

Page Management

• Adding new pages, organising pages, deleting pages
• Basic overview of how a master page works and adding content to the master page

Create A Simple Document

• Create a small simple document such as a single page newsletter, with text and images. This could be a simple document of your own - e.g. a poster, leaflet, postcard, magazine advert, simple newsletter or other small document.

Day 2: Quark Xpress Course - Intermediate 

Intermediate Quark Xpress training, looking at time saving features like style sheets and master pages, and how to build and work correctly with multi-page documents. This is a typical course outline but may be modified to suit your requirements.

During the QuarkXpress training you will normally work through some of your own documents and designs, and the exact areas covered will usually relate to the type of documents you want to produce.

Pages and Master Pages

• Working with multi-page documents
• Creating a spread of 2 or more pages
• Creating Master Pages
• Applying a master page to document pages
• Editing and duplicating master pages
• Automatic page numbering

Type & Typography

• Controlling paragraph breaks and column breaks
• Paragraph formatting - drop caps, baseline shift, paragraph rules, keep options, etc.
• Tabs - creating hanging indents and tabbed lists
• Inserting Glyphs and special characters e.g. • © ™ etc.
• Inline graphics (graphics inside the type )
• Using Find & Replace to replace repeated text elements in a document
• Showing hidden characters (markers for paragraphs, tabs, spaces, etc.) within the text

Style Sheets

• Using Style Sheets to format type
• Character and Paragraph Style Sheets
• Applying and editing Style Sheets
• Importing styles from other documents

Tables

• Creating and working with simple tables
• Formatting cell colours and cell stroke properties
• Resizing cells, merging cells, adding or removing rows or columns
• Importing table data from spreadsheet documents or creating a table from existing text
• Formatting text, setting cell inset spacing
• Adding images to table cells

Images

• Using clipping paths or alpha channels in an image, to create areas of transparency
• Adding a drop shadow to an image or other objects
• Opacity settings

Layers

• Using layers to separate and lock various design elements

Output

• Collecting together all files and fonts needed for printing
• Creating PDF files for electronic distribution

Various

• Modifying default tool properties
• Automatically loading a predefined set of colours with every new document
• Font & Picture usage – check which images and fonts are used

Create a multi-page document

• Create a multi-page document of your own design or based on your own examples

Prices start at £400 (including discounts) but vary for on-site training. Please 'request information' for pricing specific to your requirements.

Design Training provides one-to-one and small group computer training courses for professional design software in Birmingham, the Midlands and around the UK.

Most courses can be customised to your requirements and intermediate or advanced courses will usually be based around working with your own projects and designs. Whether you and your organisation require training on-site at your own office, or you would prefer to come to our training centre, we will help you with your training requirements. Design Training offer you the following:

• Short intensive courses for design software
• One to one training and training for small groups
• Custom courses - tailored to your requirements available for most design software
• On-site computer training - delivered at your offices in Birmingham, Solihull, Redditch, Warwick and Midlands areas. On-site training can be arranged with trainers around the UK including in London, Yorkshire, Manchester and Bristol
• Training for one or two people are available at our premises in South Birmingham (PC based training)
• Workplace training on all systems.
• Experienced trainers with good design skills. Certified trainers are available for some courses
• One month of after-training support

Design Software Training Courses

Design Training specialises in short courses for professional web design, image editing, desktop publishing and graphic design software (including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign).

Training Locations

Most of the computer training courses are available at client's premesis - on-site in Birmingham and Midlands areas and around the UK, including : Birmingham, Solihull, Redditch, Bromsgrove, Worcester, Driotwich, Malvern, Hereford, Stourbridge, Kidderminster, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Telford, Stafford, Shrewsbury, Lichfield, Derby, Tamworth, Nuneaton, Coventry, Warwick, Leamington Spa, Stratford upon Avon, Evesham, Banbury, Oxford, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, etc.. Many of these courses may also be arranged with trainers in other areas of the UK, including Yorkshire, Manchester and London.

Additionally, most of the design courses are aso available for one or two trainees at our premises in Cofton Hackett, South Birmingham.

Customised Courses

Design Training offers customised courses for most applications, and most intermediate and advanced courses are intended to be customised to include working with some of your own designs and projects. Also, Design Training can help you with specific projects - if you are working on a project, training can be based on doing all the things you need to achieve the end result of a finished project.

Design Training offers intensive short courses in the following areas:

• Web design courses
• Photo editing courses
• Desktop publishing courses
• Graphic design courses

If you are interested in design courses and training for you and your business please 'request information'.