July
 2004

The battle between Quark Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. has moved into new territory as newspapers begin assessing which app will support their future layout and design requirements.

After years of market dominance, Quark  has seen its QuarkXPress software lose ground within newspaper production offices as Adobe has aggressively marketed InDesign.

It didn’t help that Quark was 18 months behind Adobe in rolling out an OS X-compatible version of its software, giving San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe an opening to exploit.

And the vendor applied even more pressure against Denver-based Quark when it expertly bundled InDesign as part of its CS suite, which includes heavyweight Photoshop and de facto standard Adobe Acrobat as core apps.

Finally, Adobe struck alliances with editorial and advertising management vendors such as Digital Technology International, which means that when a paper selects DTI’s apps, InDesign is soon to follow (see sidebar below).

Some defections

Indeed, although Quark still retains the lion’s share of the market, some high-profile defections are beginning to alter the balance. Within the past few years, papers such as the (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot, the Boston Globe, the (Phoenix) Arizona Republic and the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News have made the switch from QuarkXPress to InDesign. More recently, The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., said it would begin using InDesign as part of its deployment of Unisys’ Hermes-10 editorial app, in the process abandoning the Quark Publishing System, an editorial production suite of apps built upon QuarkXPress.

And The San Diego Union-Tribune (383,224; Sunday, 444,527) is the latest to leave Quark, putting into motion plans to migrate to InDesign over the next several months.

Ryan Webb, creative services director for the Washington (N.C.) Daily News, said he switched to InDesign because of more attractive pricing and support.

“Adobe not only offered more attractive upfront and ongoing pricing for software and support, but also provided a high level of consistency and integration across its applications not possible with proprietary software,” he said. The News began using InDesign in March 2003 after investigating the benefits of an all-Adobe workflow.

Sophisticated pages

The Daily News pegged the rollout of the new software to a redesign of the paper, Webb said.

Despite some reluctance among staffers who were wary of learning a new app, little trouble developed, he said.

“Once staff members learned of new features that helped in completing their specific duties, a certain level of appreciation developed,” he said.

To help train the production staff, four staff members were charged with learning how to use the software. Those four in turn trained the Daily News’ remaining 10-member production staff, tailoring the training to their specific job functions.

Webb said the integration among the various Adobe apps was a strong selling point.

Users can now easily drag and drop Photoshop files into InDesign and use Photoshop tools more elegantly, he said.

“Adobe InDesign offers new capabilities for enhancing the look of the newspaper,” he said. The Daily News’ feature and Living sections now sport transparencies and gradients to “create more sophisticated-looking pages,” he said.

The Anchorage Daily News, meantime, went live with InDesign in November 2002, according to Mary Steiert, systems editor.

“We like the ability to copy edit in layout mode using (Adobe’s word processing app) InCopy,” she said.

“We’re also able to do design functions in InDesign that we had to do in Photoshop before, then place into Quark.”

Steiert said the learning curve with InDesign was steep at first, but that users have grown to like the software.

The flight to InDesign

Newspaper consultant and InDesign proponent Kevin Slimp said that he’s seen an increase in the number of newspapers interested in moving to InDesign.

Slimp said that he believes the app is superior to Quark and (InDesign predecessor app) Adobe PageMaker in many ways.

“InDesign includes font features that are far beyond anything seen in a page layout application previously,” he said. “Newspapers appreciate that InDesign won’t allow them to make many common font mistakes that keep PDF files from printing correctly.”

Slimp also said newspaper graphic artists like the fact that they can perform special effects in one application, rather than having to jump between programs. “Drop shadows, feathers and other InDesign features allow the user to do most of their work in one application,” he said.

For their part, Quark and Adobe have been content to move beyond slinging arrows at each other; instead relying on new upgrades as bait designed to lure users.

Adobe was first out of the gate, releasing its OS X-compatible version of InDesign in January 2002, nine months after the introduction of the Mac OS.

Quark followed with QuarkXPress 6.0, its OS X app, in June 2003. A few months later, in September, Adobe released InDesign CS, part of a package of apps that included new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat and GoLive.

Late to game?

Quark acknowledged it had to play catch-up in the realm of OS X compatible versions of QuarkXPress and Quark Publishing System software.

“A lot of newspapers in the past couple years have been planning their migration to OS X and admittedly we were late for the game with QuarkXPress 6.0 and QPS,” said Glen Turpin, director of communications at Quark. An OS X version of QPS is expected to be released this summer, he said.

Turpin said Quark has also initiated a new approach in the way it handles software companies interested in packaging its technology.

“In the past we hadn’t been very aggressive about licensing our technologies to other companies so that other vendors can use QuarkXPress as a page layout program.”

At this year’s Drupa, Quark unveiled a program making some of its code available to OEM vendors.

Change approach

“We changed our approach to the market, where in the past we didn’t want anybody to use our technology and let them integrate it into their system,” Turpin said. “So if somebody’s choice of a workflow tool went to a competitive product that often meant their page layout tool went along with it.” 

Quark is also working to polish its battered image with customers.

In January, the company named a new president, Kamar Aulakh, and also rolled out a new customer service program.

“We know that not all our customers are happy about how we worked with them in the past and we are making a lot of strides to change that,” Turpin said.

Case in point: Quark is changing its single-user license agreement to let QuarkXPress 6.0 customers use the software at home as well as in the office.

That might not mean much to larger newspapers with big production staffs, but smaller dailies might find some additional flexibility by letting artists finish up special projects at home without having to come into the office.