Interview: David Blatner

Mr. QuarkXPress turned Mr. InDesign, David Blatner is an interesting fellow. The QuarkVSInDesign.com exclusive interview with David Blatner.

David Blatner

In addi­tion to writ­ing arti­cles and opin­ions on every­thing from OS X to graph­ic design, David Blatner is the author of more than a dozen books run­ning the gamut from The Joy of Pi, Judaism for Dummies, The Flying Book: Everything You’ve Ever Wondered About Flying On Airplanes, and Silicon Mirage: The Art and Science of Virtual Reality. He is best known, how­ev­er, for his incred­i­bly suc­cess­ful series of books relat­ed to graph­ic design and design indus­try tools, includ­ing as author or co-author of: Real World Photoshop, Real World QuarkXPress, Real World InDesign, Real World Scanning and Halftones, Desktop Publisher’s Survival Kit, and InDesign for QuarkXPress Users.

I’ve been read­ing David’s arti­cles and books for years. While with Adobe I used David’s books to help train Adobe Technical Support rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Real World Photoshop, which he cowrote with Bruce Fraser, Real World InDesign, co-authored with Olav Martin Kvern, and solo books Real World QuarkXPress, Real World Scanning and Halftones, and InDesign for QuarkXPress Users are essen­tial ref­er­ences for Adobe Tech Support.

I have yet to read any com­put­er or soft­ware book cover-to-cover. I don’t read books to learn prod­ucts; I learn by pick­ing a project and cre­at­ing it in the appli­ca­tion. Books I use as a reference—when I can’t remem­ber every XPress Tag, I reach for Real World QuarkXPress 5. But, David Blatner’s books aren’t typ­i­cal com­put­er or soft­ware books. Though I haven’t read any of them cover-to-cover either, I have caught myself eas­i­ly read­ing sev­er­al chap­ters when my intent was sim­ply to look up a key­board short­cut. David’s friend­ly, easy going writ­ing style draws the read­er in. Even on a top­ic as dry and—when you find your­self in need of look­ing it up—infuriating as QuarkXPress print-time PostScript errors, David keeps the com­pli­cat­ed why’s and how-to-fixes light, humor­ous, and acces­si­ble with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the depth or detail of need­ed information.

Keeping a friend­ly writ­ing style and a sense of humor all the way through 991 pages is in itself a colos­sal feat on par with pro­duc­ing the defin­i­tive how, what, when, and why ref­er­ence for such a quirky, clunky pro­gram as QuarkXPress. Playing off the com­pli­men­ta­ry sens­es of humor of part­ners Bruce Fraser and Olav Martin Kvern, David’s Real World Photoshop and Real World InDesign, respec­tive­ly, are equal­ly enjoy­able to read while also equal­ly as detailed and thor­ough as his Quark and oth­er solo books. Yes, that’s cor­rect: I said read­ing a soft­ware book is enjoy­able—at least if it’s a David Blatner soft­ware book.

For more than a decade David has been the most knowl­edge­able author­i­ty on Nineties desk­top pub­lish­ing king QuarkXPress, earn­ing him the unchal­lenged title of Mr. QuarkXPress. With the release of Adobe’s InDesign CS last November, David has cast off the dusty and frayed sash of Mr. QuarkXPress and is the judges’ favorite for the crown of Mr. InDesign.

At next mon­th’s InDesign Conference in Boston (July 15–17), David will debut a new project with CreativePro​.com, the first peri­od­i­cal devot­ed the next-generation pro­fes­sion­al lay­out tool, InDesign Magazine.

Recently I had the great plea­sure of talk­ing with David about InDesign Magazine, his books, his opin­ions on InDesign, Photoshop, and the future of Quark, and what he want­ed to be when he grew up.

Quark VS InDesign​.com Next month you’re launch­ing InDesign Magazine in coop­er­a­tion with CreativePro​.com. What are your goals for InDesign Magazine?

David Blatner My goal has always been to get the best infor­ma­tion about pub­lish­ing tools out to users. I mean, many peo­ple just don’t have the time nor incli­na­tion to sit and sift through man­u­als and sup­port pages every day to get the infor­ma­tion they need. InDesign Magazine is a great way to get need-to-know info to users.

PB What areas will it focus on (i.e. how-to’s, plug-ins, new devel­op­ments, etc.)?

I find it a quite frus­trat­ing step back­ward to use XPress.

DB All of that. I love tips and tricks, but we’ll also do in-depth arti­cles on top­ics like trans­paren­cy, print­ing, styles, script­ing, and so on. Plus, we’ll have reviews of cool plug-ins and util­i­ties rel­e­vant for InDesign users, and news updates so peo­ple can keep up with what’s going on in the InDesign world. And we’ll also fea­ture design­ers who are pro­duc­ing great stuff with InDesign.

PB Why PDF-only rather than a print edition?

DB PDF lets us pub­lish infor­ma­tion faster and less-expensively to read­ers all over the world. Many (per­haps even most) InDesign users are in Europe and Australia, and we want them to be able to read this stuff, too. PDF also lets us do more with the mag­a­zine. For exam­ple, we might include small QuickTime movies show­ing a tech­nique rather than just writ­ing about it.

PB Excellent! The pow­er of PDF. Are you the sole writer, or are you both writ­ing and edit­ing out­side material?

DB The val­ue of InDesign Magazine is that it comes from lots of dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, not just mine! Writers include Sandee Cohen, Olav Martin Kvern, Steve Werner, Mordy Golding, John Cruise, and a whole bunch of oth­er great brains. Pam Pfiffner, who used to be the editor-in-chief for Publish and MacUser mag­a­zines and is now the edi­tor at cre​ative​pro​.com, is our editor-in-chief.

PB How much cre­ative and edi­to­r­i­al free­dom do you have with InDesign Magazine?

DB We’re not spon­sored by Adobe or any oth­er com­pa­ny, so we can say any­thing we want. I’ve always tak­en an inde­pen­dent position.

PB Are you accept­ing sub­mis­sions from out­side writers?

DB Sure! People can con­tact edi­tor [at] inde­sign­mag [dot] com with ideas and writ­ing samples.

PB InDesign Magazine sounds very excit­ing. I can’t wait to see it. And that brings up anoth­er top­ic I’d like to talk about. With your pub­lic state­ments about InDesign CS, your books, and InDesign Magazine, Mr. QuarkXPress is becom­ing Mr. InDesign. Do you still use XPress for cre­ative projects?

DB I use QuarkXPress only when I need to open lega­cy doc­u­ments with­out caus­ing reflow or when I’m doing work for a client who still uses XPress. InDesign is so far supe­ri­or in almost every way now that I find it a quite frus­trat­ing step back­ward to use XPress. For new projects, I reach for InDesign.

PB Why do you believe Quark wait­ed so long after the release of OS X to unveil an OS X‑native ver­sion of XPress?

DB I think it takes Quark a long time to change. QuarkXPress is like an air­craft car­ri­er that needs to plan out a turn miles in advance. Personally, I don’t think their tar­di­ness is real­ly that big a deal. If their oth­er fea­tures were com­pelling enough, it would­n’t have mattered.

PB XPress and Quark are almost uni­ver­sal­ly reviled by its users and cus­tomers. Do you feel that’s a true state­ment? Why or why not?

DB No, there are a huge num­ber of peo­ple who are either hap­py with Quark or are at least neu­tral about the com­pa­ny. I talk to peo­ple all the time who equate Quark with QuarkXPress, and they love QuarkXPress. However, the com­plaints we do hear about come loud­ly, and they’re usu­al­ly jus­ti­fied. There are many exam­ples of how Quark has treat­ed its cus­tomers unfair­ly or at least in unpop­u­lar ways.

PB In January, Kamar Aulakh took over from Fred Ebrahimi as CEO of Quark. Have you heard much about his strat­e­gy for lead­ing Quark, and what do you think of Aulakh’s plans?

DB I keep hear­ing about 2004 bring­ing “a new Quark,” and there is some indi­ca­tion that they are chang­ing for the bet­ter. Quark is now offer­ing dis­counts on soft­ware and ser­vices; the QuarkSummit con­fer­ence is an excel­lent way for them to con­nect with cus­tomers; and they’re actu­al­ly mar­ket­ing their soft­ware and show­ing up at trade shows. But hon­est­ly, it’ll take a few years of this kind of behav­ior before I’m con­vinced that it’s real­ly a long term change and not just anoth­er one of their short-lived bursts of energy.

PB And, on that note: Do you think Quark and XPress will still be around in five years?

DB Oh yes. No doubt. I still have PageMaker on my machine, so I’m sure I’ll want to have QuarkXPress around.

PB What must Quark, Inc. do to survive?

It’s like try­ing to bring back the Pinto or Gremlin.

DB It’ll sur­vive with­out much trou­ble, but how will they com­pete? Bring QuarkXPress up to par­i­ty with InDesign and cut their prices rad­i­cal­ly. For instance, it’s absurd that you have to buy QuarkPassport just to pub­lish some­thing in English and Spanish, but then you can’t bring that file back into a reg­u­lar ver­sion of QuarkXPress! There’s no such runaround or road­block with InDesign, and InDesign is sig­nif­i­cant­ly less expen­sive than XPress!

PB What’s on your wish list for the next ver­sion of Quark?

DB Unicode sup­port, trans­paren­cy fea­tures… plus, it should be a lot faster. QuarkXPress has got­ten slow­er with every ver­sion, while InDesign has got­ten faster with each new ver­sion. It takes about twice as long to make a PDF with XPress 6 as it does with InDesign. They need to do some seri­ous optimization.

PB Do you think upstarts like RagTime or minor play­ers like Corel Ventura (now owned by Vector Capitol Group) have a chance at break­ing into the Big League lay­out appli­ca­tion field?

DB No, not real­ly. It’s sad, because those pro­grams have some cool fea­tures and a long his­to­ry. But it’s like try­ing to bring back the Pinto or the Gremlin car mod­els. You can put a great car radio in them, but they’re not going to sell in today’s market.

PB While we’re on the top­ic of com­peti­tors, do you think any cur­rent image edi­tor has the poten­tial to rise up in the near future and present seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion to Photoshop?

DB I haven’t seen any­thing on the mar­ket that has the poten­tial, no. But that does­n’t mean that some­thing could­n’t make a good stand against it. I think there is def­i­nite­ly room for com­pe­ti­tion here. QuarkVista, while it’s not real­ly com­pe­ti­tion against Photoshop, might let peo­ple do a bit more while stay­ing in XPress rather than hav­ing to switch to Photoshop.

PB Critics of Photoshop charge that it has reached a func­tion­al­i­ty plateau, that it answers its mar­kets’ needs so thor­ough­ly that there is no longer room for growth beyond bug fix­es and minor fea­ture tweaks. Do you agree with this assessment?

DB People who believe in func­tion­al­i­ty plateaus are peo­ple with­out imag­i­na­tion. Just look at what Fireworks or Expression can do with apply­ing raster effects to vec­tor lines. Look at the qual­i­ty of paint­ing in Painter. Look at the speed of some lean, mean Unix image edit­ing apps.

PB What’s on your wish list for Photoshop 9 or 10?

DB I wish Photoshop would run faster on a giv­en machine (rather than forc­ing us to for­ev­er upgrade to faster com­put­ers with more RAM). I’d like to be able to run fil­ters as a lay­er effect so I could go back and change the para­me­ters lat­er. I real­ly want to be able to do resolution-independent com­posit­ing, so I could import a high-resolution image on a lay­er, scale it way down, rotate it, then lat­er come back and scale it back up with­out hav­ing lost any res­o­lu­tion or detail. There’s no way to do that now in Photoshop. That’s why I do a lot of pho­to­com­posit­ing in InDesign; when I’m done, I just export as JPEG or PDF and open it in Photoshop.

PB How do you feel InCopy stacks up against Quark CopyDesk in a pro­duc­tion workflow?

DB It’s night and day. CopyDesk is a clunky old heap com­pared to InCopy. InCopy’s work­flow is clean­er, the inter­face is clean­er, the fea­tures are better.

PB Revolutionizing the world of print­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the debut of the com­bi­na­tion of Macintosh, PostScript, desk­top laser print­er, and PageMaker has been com­pared in glob­al social sig­nif­i­cance to the inven­tion of the print­ing press. Twenty years after the birth of PageMaker to Paul Brainerd and Aldus, Adobe announced PageMaker’s demise. What was your reac­tion to hear­ing Adobe final­ly offi­cial­ly pro­claim the long rumored death of this sig­nif­i­cant piece of design history?

DB I was less sad than I had expect­ed to be. I mean, real­ly, there’s only so long you can keep a piece of soft­ware on life sup­port. PageMaker was pret­ty good (and it was a lot bet­ter than most XPress users gave it cred­it for), but as soon as I start­ed work­ing with InDesign 2, and then InDesign CS, PageMaker just did­n’t make sense anymore.

PB Did you keep any memen­tos of PageMaker?

DB I have old copies in box­es, but I pre­fer to col­lect more obscure stuff. Quark Catalyst (signed by Tim Gill!), Apple eWorld discs, soft­ware pro­tec­tion don­gles for soft­ware that no one remem­bers any longer… that sort of thing.

PB What’s on your wish list for the next ver­sion of InDesign?

DB Oh, I’ve got a nine-page single-spaced wish list; hun­dreds of things. I want object styles (like para­graph styles for stroke, fill, and so on). I want drop shad­ows to include noise, like Photoshop’s. I would like bet­ter inte­gra­tion between Acrobat and InDesign so that I could read PDF anno­ta­tions from with­in InDesign. I’d like a kern pair edi­tor. And so on. Just because InDesign is the best page-layout tool today does­n’t mean there’s not a lot of room for improvement.

PB Any can’t-live-without plu­g­ins for InDesign?

DB I’m work­ing with devel­op­ers on design­ing two plug-ins for InDesign; I’ll let you know more about them lat­er this year.

PB Please do! Let’s talk about David Blatner. Your book, Real World InDesign CS, just shipped last week. What are you work­ing on now?

I nev­er enjoyed writ­ing while in high school or col­lege. It was such a chore.

DB Oh, there’s always anoth­er update. We’re updat­ing InDesign for QuarkXPress Users, but mak­ing it more gener­ic by adding infor­ma­tion for PageMaker users, too. Obviously, we’ll have to change the book’s name! I’ve got a bunch of oth­er books cook­ing, but InDesign Magazine and The InDesign Conference are tak­ing a lot of my time right now.

PB Your books are indis­pens­able sta­ples of any cre­ative pro’s library. What books are indis­pens­able to your library?

DB That’s very kind of you to say. Ironically, I don’t actu­al­ly enjoy read­ing com­put­er books very much. I tend to learn bet­ter by watch­ing peo­ple work and by play­ing with the soft­ware until I under­stand it. That said, my book­shelves are filled with books on typog­ra­phy (includ­ing Spiekermann’s Stop Stealing Sheep) and ref­er­ences (like Zap: How Your Computer Can Hurt You and What You Can Do About It).

PB You’ve writ­ten and co-written sev­er­al leg­endary books of course on Photoshop, InDesign, Quark, and the ever indis­pens­able Real World Scanning And Halftoning, but you also wrote Silicon Mirage: The Art and Science of Virtual Reality, The Flying Book, Judaism For Dummies, and The Joy of Pi. That’s a pret­ty eclec­tic mix of top­ics. What oth­er inter­ests do you have?

DB Too many! I keep get­ting excit­ed about var­i­ous things, from the num­ber pi to how air­planes fly. I’m always curi­ous about reli­gion and meta­physics and why peo­ple do the wacky things they do.

PB When you aren’t writ­ing books, what are you doing?

DB Playing with our two young sons, unpack­ing box­es left over from our last move, updat­ing my Netflix queue with movies I don’t have time to watch anymore.

PB How long have you been writing?

DB Steve Roth, who co-authored Real World PageMaker back in the late ‘80s, sug­gest­ed I write a book back in 1989. He was then my edi­tor on The QuarkXPress Book, which shipped in 1990, I think. So it’s been almost 15 years. The irony is that I nev­er enjoyed writ­ing while in high school or col­lege. It was such a chore. But as soon as I start­ed writ­ing about what I want­ed to write about (back then, QuarkXPress), it was fun.

PB Is it all tech­ni­cal non-fiction, or is there a David Blatner nov­el somewhere-perhaps still wait­ing to burst forth?

DB That would be fun!

PB What was your start in the design business?

DB My “start” was my step-mom giv­ing me a bunch of Letraset rub-on and Format cut-out type and art sup­plies when I was 10 or 11. She and I would sit around design­ing album cov­ers for fun. But my start in com­put­er pub­lish­ing came at an out­put ser­vice bureau in Palo Alto in 1987 called LaserWrite. That’s where I start­ed learn­ing how to pro­gram in PostScript and use QuarkXPress and PageMaker and so on. As a col­lege stu­dent, I pirat­ed a bunch of soft­ware from friends to fig­ure out which pro­grams were the best, and lat­er bought the soft­ware I used in my work.

PB Wow! That takes me down Amnesia Lane. As a kid I would spend most of a day on the sub­way in Boston, scour­ing the city’s art sup­ply stores for new rub-on type­faces and dif­fer­ent peel-n-stick Zip-A-Tone gra­di­ents, mez­zot­ints, etc. I used to make J‑cards for my home-made cas­sette tapes. At age 14 I land­ed my first free­lance assign­ment with a print shop after show­ing a mag­a­zine page lay­out I’d set entire­ly in rub-on type.

How long have you been flying?

DB No, no… it’s a myth that I’m a pilot! I’d love to learn to fly, but in the mean­time I’m just a pas­sen­ger. I wrote The Flying Book large­ly because I want­ed to read this sort of book myself and it did­n’t exist. Why do air­planes fly? What hap­pens to your lug­gage when you hand it off? What is tur­bu­lence? That’s the kind of thing I was clue­less about, but now I understand.

PB Any flying-related anec­dotes to share?

DB The best expe­ri­ence I had while research­ing The Flying Book was being able to fly in the cock­pit of sev­er­al flights along the West Coast and up to Alaska. I had to get spe­cial FAA per­mis­sion, back­ground checks, and so on. This was just before 9/11, so I don’t expect many non-pilots will be giv­en the chance any­more. Too bad, because sit­ting up with the pilots was incred­i­bly eye-opening for me as a passenger.

PB When you were nine years old, what did you dream of doing when you grew up?

DB At nine or ten, I was con­vinced I would be a com­put­er pro­gram­mer. At 16, I was sure I’d be an actor or the­atri­cal pro­duc­er. At 21, I had to put food on the table and became a desk­top pub­lish­er. Now I com­bine all those skills togeth­er in the pub­lic speak­ing, the con­fer­ences, the com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy, and so on.

PB Any regrets?

DB Not at all. Except for that one time in Istanbul… or was it Reykjavik? It was a dark and stormy night… hey, maybe I do have a nov­el in me after all.