Spore is almost here. Almost. Release date for Europe is Septmber 5th, and two days later for pretty much everywhere else. For anyone who doesn’t know, or doesn’t care what Spore is, you can watch the preview here.
08.15.08 // Mixed emotions about Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone has announced that it’s changing it’s format, effective the end of October. It’s losing it’s over-size format as well as it’s staples, and will be printed on different paper. I’m sad to hear this icon is changing. It’ll be easier to stock, likely make more money, and perhaps even invite new readers with it’s smaller size, but for me, I’ll miss the nostalgia, as Jann Wenner willingly admits.
I remember the day I bought my very first issue, and I remember exactly who was on the cover. I spent summer holidays floating in the pool at a friends house, reading Rolling Stone, Raygun, & Spin. My walls were covered with the full-page photos from these massive publications, and I still have many of these issues today, albeit in poor condition. I don’t consider the look, feel and texture of Rolling Stone in the same way I do other magazines, because nostalgia has so much to do with it. As a reader, I’m not just handling a magazine and extracting the content, I’m remembering what it was like the first time I discovered music and life outside suburbia. With Spin having already made the switch, and Raygun sadly long gone, Rolling Stone is the last vestige of music mag culture before the digital age. It may be a necessary change, long overdue, but I’ll still shed my tear for the loss of it’s special format.
08.04.08 // Quark 8 now Available. Do you Care?
Quark has just announced that Quark Xpress 8 is now available for purchase. Is anyone still using Quark? Will anyone who has switched to InDesign really go back?
In the Canadian editorial industry, many big companies have made the switch in the past three years. Some still linger on with dated versions of Quark, mainly because of CopyDesk, or the cost of updating several or even hundreds of workstations. Others are just stubborn, afraid that learning a new software will affect production.
Recently, I worked with a small publishing house, which was still using Quark Xpress 7. Having been working with InDesign for about a year, going back to Quark was a complete nightmare. I watched them struggle with preferences across workstations, waste time on unnecessary clipping paths, use ill-represented colours… And these are good designers who know what they’re doing. They’ve just been working in Quark for 20 years. A designers relationship to Quark is an abusive one— We know Quark loves us, we really do. And when it works, it works and we’re happy. But so often, (almost always in the middle of production), we experience its tragic flaws that ultimately hurt us.
Our creative energy shouldn’t be wasted on managing a software’s shortcomings. Using Quark means we lose valuable design time. And why would I go back to that when InDesign does everything I need to do, exactly how I want it to? Maybe I shouldn’t judge before downloading Quark’s generous 60-day trial version. But to be honest, even if I had the time and inclination t0, it would have to be bloody spectacular. Am I wrong?