With QuarkXPress 6 or 6.5, making changes to text that repeats across a page or even multiple, disparate layouts is a matter of doing it just once with Synchronized Text.
QuarkXPress 6 introduced the concept of multiple print and/or web layouts in a single document. The idea, of course, is to keep related layouts in a project together in a single document as opposed to the typical way of making separate documents for each.
At first, many designers were confused by the need for Quark’s multiple layouts. Why not just keep doing it the way we’ve always done it—multiple files? Afterall, decades of doing it that way have taught creatives how to organize and manage their files to reduce confusion, clutter, and file misplacement.
Many designers are still doing it that way, even in Quark 6 and 6.5—creating a new XPress document for each new layout, regardless of how closely they are related or much information the layouts have in common.
There are, of course, drawbacks to putting all your layouts in one document. As with anything else, putting all your eggs in one basket means if something happens to the basket—file corruption jumps to mind immediately—you’ve lost the entire project instead of just one segment. But, there are also distinct advantages.
Quark R&D recognized that a large portion of its creative and production users typically work on multiple, closely related documents. Corporate identity material is the best example. Though they are laid out very differently, the information and basic style of business cards, letterhead, envelopes, and other identity material are virtually identical. So why require a designer to type and change multiple copies of the same information or style?
If Quark had left the multiple-layout functionality at just that, then its only value would be organization, reducing the file-management tasks for the project. But they didn’t leave it at that. They built in production functionality that takes advantage of multiple layouts in a single document.
Using the Synchronized Text feature, redundant information like address, phone number, website URI, and other bits of text common to multiple design projects like an identity package, only has to be typed once. Now, typing short bits of information a couple of times—or copying and pasting—isn’t that much of a chore. But how often do typos occur? How many times have you transposed two digits in a phone number?
Consider designs for product packaging, brochures, other promotion, and point-of-sale. How much information is redundant between those types of projects? Chunks of the copy is often repeated, verbatim, among at least some of them. The product name, tagline, and major copy points are invariably replicated from one design to another. Now consider how often the client comes back with copy changes to one or all portions of such projects?
Even a simple copy change across multiple layouts can be time-consuming and tedious. Sometimes the tedium itself leads to typos. Wouldn’t it be nice to change all the copy, across all related designs, in a single shot?
That’s what Quark was after when they built into XPress 6 multiple layouts.
If all related layouts are stored in a single QXD file, each in its own layout, text blocks can be typed only once—and updated only once—and then the changes are synchronized across the entire project. And it works for multiple instances inside the same document—think of business cards laid 6‑up on a page. Changing the phone number or e‑mail address doesn’t have to be change once, then copy and paste five times.
While writing this article (5 January 2005) QuarkParticles, Quark’s online newsletter, appeared in my inbox with a tutorial on–guess what?–Synchronize Text.
So, rather than publish effectively the same information in two different layouts, I will, after giving you the why, refer you to QuarkParticles for the how.