Good-bye to an Old Friend

Back when I started using computers for design, you were either a PageMaker person or you ran QuarkXPress. (Don’t even get me started on those fringe FreeHand fanatics—who did everything and anything in that one program.) I was a diehard QuarkXPress girl starting with version 2 all the way (and 20 some odd years later) through to version 10.

For the entire time I have been freelancing, I have been running QuarkXPress. And a large part of my income was directly related to my ability to get XPress to jump through hoops. It was a program that just made sense to me. (Did anyone ever really understand those silly PageMaker text-box window shades? I know I didn’t.) I loved XPress’s precision. I loved that it did exactly what I wanted it to do and nothing more. It never tried to second guess me. I loved the way it set type. We were true partners, but sometimes even the best partnerships must come to an end.

The industry has moved on and I have to move on too. Adobe InDesign is now the program of choice for page layout. So my New Year’s resolution is… when I start a new design project, I will start it in InDesign. It won’t be a hard resolution to keep (I have been running InDesign for over 10 years), but it will be strange to no longer think of myself as a QuarkXPress girl.