The world’s largest international newspaper adopts QuarkXPress 7 globally

PRESS RELEASE

Metro International choos­es to upgrade to QuarkXPress 7 across its glob­al network 

LONDON – September 26, 2006 – Quark Inc. today announced that Metro International, the largest and fastest-growing inter­na­tion­al news­pa­per in the world, has cho­sen to adopt QuarkXPress 7 across its entire glob­al net­work to pro­duce the world’s lead­ing free dai­ly news­pa­pers. Metro International pub­lish­es 69 edi­tions in 93 major cities in 21 coun­tries and in 19 lan­guages across Europe, North and South America, and Asia. 

Metro has a unique glob­al reach that attracts a young, active, well-educated met­ro­pol­i­tan audi­ence of 18.5 mil­lion dai­ly read­ers and more than 37 mil­lion week­ly read­ers. Circulating free news­pa­pers to such large num­bers on a dai­ly basis means that Metro International is con­stant­ly look­ing to reduce costs while increas­ing qual­i­ty and effi­cien­cy, which was a key rea­son com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives gave for upgrad­ing to QuarkXPress 7, as it enables effi­cient and con­sis­tent desk­top design, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and production.

“All Metro edi­tions car­ry head­line local, nation­al, and inter­na­tion­al news in a con­sis­tent and acces­si­ble for­mat and design, so the abil­i­ty to col­lab­o­rate and share con­tent is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant. QuarkXPress 7 enhances col­lab­o­ra­tion with Composition Zones and Job Jackets. These fea­tures will allow all Metro jour­nal­ists and a net­work of free­lancers to reach new lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and efficiency.” said Michael Mendoza, glob­al IT direc­tor of Metro International.

“Metro International pub­lish­es in 19 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, and as QuarkXPress 7 sup­ports Unicode and OpenType fonts, it enables us to sub­stan­tial­ly stream­line our multiple-language pub­lish­ing, elim­i­nate many unnec­es­sary costs, and dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve qual­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. We are con­fi­dent that QuarkXPress 7 will pro­vide us with effi­cient, trouble-free pub­lish­ing, regard­less of the language,” he said.

Another aspect of the deci­sion process for Metro International was the lev­el of Mac OS sup­port in the appli­ca­tion, espe­cial­ly when com­par­ing it with the competition.

“As Metro has stan­dard­ized on Macs for pub­lish­ing, and the fact that QuarkXPress is the first major design and pub­lish­ing tool with Universal sup­port meant that it was an easy deci­sion for us,” Mendoza said. “As part of the selec­tion process, we eval­u­at­ed [Adobe] InDesign but decid­ed that it didn’t deliv­er the same lev­el of func­tion­al­i­ty as QuarkXPress 7, nor did it offer native sup­port for the new Intel Macs. Therefore, it sim­ply wasn’t an option.”

Matthew Wallis, Quark senior vice pres­i­dent of sales and mar­ket­ing EMEA and Asia Pacific, said, “Reducing costs and improv­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty have long been impor­tant to the news­pa­per indus­try and in par­tic­u­lar (in the case of the Metro International) where the busi­ness is based on free cir­cu­la­tion titles. We are thrilled that Metro International has com­mit­ted to Quark in order to achieve its objec­tives, and Quark remains com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing solu­tions that will stream­line pub­lish­ing process­es, reduce costs, and increase over­all effi­cien­cy for our customers.”

About Quark
Quark Inc. (euro​.quark​.com/en) is an inno­v­a­tive soft­ware com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing design, pro­duc­tion, and col­lab­o­ra­tion solu­tions that are trans­form­ing the busi­ness of cre­ative com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Quark has pro­vid­ed award-winning soft­ware for pro­fes­sion­al pub­lish­ers since its flag­ship prod­uct, QuarkXPress, changed the course of tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing. Founded in 1981, Denver-based Quark Inc. is pri­vate­ly held.