How is the layout done for a college or local newspaper? Is it hard to do?
There are quite few programs that do this. They are overgrown desktop publishing programs.
It’s easy once you learn the basics of the software. FOr my HS paper we used Adobe Pagemaker.
Hm. What about bigger papers, like, uh, LA Times or the NY one?
Adobe Pagemaker used to be the big deal, but has since been supplanted by Quark XPress. The new up-and-comer is Adobe InDesign.
The programs are not terribly difficult to learn, especially if you’re already familiar with graphics-based-programs.
My highschool paper used Pagemaker, my college paper (Indiana University) used Quark, and the newspaper I currently work at (a small city daily) uses Quark.
Quark XPress is definitely the industry standard, although Adobe InDesign seems to be making some headway.
For graphics, Adobe Illustrator is generally the preferred program, and for image editing, I’ve never seen a newsroom use anything but Adobe Photoshop.
Is it difficult? There is a bit of a learning curve. As always, it helps if someone can show you the basics rather than plodding through a “Quark XPress for Dummies” type book.
More difficult is tastefully designing pages. The absolute best book and a must-read for anyone interested in newspaper layout and design is the Newspaper Designer’s Handbook by Tim Harrower. It’s not a guide to Quark XPress or InDesign, but rather an easy-to-follow and practical introduction to the basics of good newspaper page design. This book is peerless and I cannot recommend it enough.
See this article more more about the fight between the two programs.
At our daily newspaper, the layout program is Quark Xpress. I’ve been using it every day for close to 16 years (starting with version 1.0!) and still have much to learn about it. It’s an incredibly powerful and sophisticated program and there are hundreds of third-party “extensions” that can be added for specialized work, such as book layouts. It also has its own set of quirks, depending on which version you use. And it’s expensive (Full product, version 6.5, is $945 on the Quark website, though it looks as if bona fide students or instructor can buy for $199 )
Probably its closest competitor is Adobe’s InDesign. That’s not unusual, considering Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat are (well-deserved) industry standards.
Many folks in the industry wish Adobe had purchased Quark instead of Aldus (PageMaker)…