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London College of Communication drives digital publishing momentum among students with QuarkXPress 9

Thursday 04. October 2012 - World leader in media and design courses chooses App Studio for digital publishing curriculum

Quark announced today that the London College of Communication (LCC), one of the six Colleges that make up the University of the Arts London and which specialises in graphic design and advertising, journalism and publishing, successfully introduced QuarkXPress 9 as part of the course programme at the Master of Arts (MA) in Publishing and saw enthusiastic uptake by students, who produced outstanding digital publications with the cross-media design functionality of App Studio.
The MA Publishing course is at the forefront of digital developments and actively promotes this aspect of publishing through course units such as ‘Future Applications for Digital Content,’ which enables students to experiment with the potential for new digital products. Keith Martin, Senior Lecturer on LCC’s MA Publishing course, explained: “We are embedding digital interactive publishing into the course at all levels: from theoretical and financial considerations through to practical production. The digital aspect of publishing is increasingly central to everyone in this industry.”
Martin continued: “QuarkXPress 9 has enabled our students to produce working digital prototypes and finished iPad magazines without fuss. This gives our students valuable skills and insights, and it helps them understand the implications and possibilities of the developments that challenge today’s publishers.”
Gabriela Sánchez-Curiel Nyssen, a graphic designer with experience working for Time Warner Inc. in Mexico and now a student at the London College of Communication, used QuarkXPress 9 to develop one of her digital projects: “I used QuarkXPress 9 professionally for the first time in a workshop when completing my MA in Publishing. It took me only two weeks to learn the program and to make the iPad design on QuarkXPress 9, and I really feel that I got an excellent quality result.”
“QuarkXPress is made for people like me: it’s easy to learn, very user-friendly, but most of all, it’s a tool made for a normal designer, and not for a very specialized engineer with a PhD in physics, requiring several man-years to learn and to write the code.”
Peter Schaebbicke, Quark European Channel and Education Programmes Director, commented: “It’s great to see universities like the London College of Communication raising the bar and allowing students to explore the intriguing complexity of today’s publishing industry: from producing and designing content to delivering it cost-effectively to multiple platforms. Thanks to QuarkXPress, students can learn skills that will help them to stand out in the ever-evolving publishing sector, where digital is driving revenue and innovation. Quark supports the education sector with very affordable pricing for teachers, students, schools, colleges or universities, who can have access to a professional publishing tool with a discount of up to 90 per cent on the original price.”