Prepress
Quark extends its reach beyond art and design faculties in Universities across Europe
Wednesday 18. February 2009 - Quark aims to equip students with additional skills for todays competitive job market
Quark Inc. announced today the launch of a new University Pack Program which aims to broaden the appeal of QuarkXPress beyond the design faculties of Universities across Europe. Quark is now offering Universities the opportunity to purchase a special package, which will enable them to make QuarkXPress widely available to students across all faculties and potentially every computer on campus, as well as provide them with free training, flexible licensing, and affordable student pricing.
Traditionally, desktop publishing software was predominantly used by students on professional design courses. However, as presentation and design become increasingly important in todays business environment, students from all disciplines are required to learn additional skills to represent their knowledge, ideas, and research in a visually compelling format. With Quarks new University Pack Program, students who prepare business reports, dissertations and market analyses can now use QuarkXPress 8 to easily produce these documents in a high quality designed layout without having any previous design skills. Given the current economic climate, it is more important than ever that graduates are armed with a range of skills in order to secure a job and to differentiate themselves in this highly competitive environment – being proficient in QuarkXPress will help them achieve this.
Creative students in particular can benefit from the recent enhancements in QuarkXPress 8, as they can build an impressive portfolio with print, Web, and Flash design without having any coding skills. They can also integrate motion, sound, animation, and interactivity into their designs, create and manipulate images directly in the page layout, as well as achieve stunning text with designer-driven typography.
“We welcome Quarks University Pack Program, as it enables us to provide all our students with additional skills which will make them more employable when they graduate. It also gives us much more flexibility with regards to our budgets, as the University Pack payment plan allows us to spread the cost over 3 years – this is a huge benefit for any University,” commented Chris Priestman, Head of Media Arts and Design, Staffordshire University. “This initiative really demonstrates Quarks commitment to education and we are thrilled by the level of support that they are offering to help us deliver this program to the students with relative ease.”
“Quarks University Pack program enables us to offer students across all faculties access to the latest version of QuarkXPress, as well as provide them with free training from a dedicated Quark specialist. This is a huge benefit to our students, as they need to be equipped with a wide range of skills when they enter the workforce and being proficient in QuarkXPress will give them a competitive advantage. In addition, Quarks new payment plan and flexible approach to licensing means that we can monitor and manage our costs more closely, which is a major benefit for us,” said Jost J. Marchesi, IT-Manager, Zurich Technical and Vocational College. “We are really impressed with QuarkXPress 8 and particularly like the new streamlined user interface, as it has a really modern uncluttered feel. Quark has made some really great enhancements in this release and we are confident that our lecturers and students will really embrace the program.”
As part of this initiative, Quark education specialists will work with Universities to help train lecturers on how to use QuarkXPress, so they can adopt new techniques for delivering lectures and class materials and create coursework targeted at the general student body. Quark will also provide training materials which cover all the major features in QuarkXPress 8, which comprises of individual lessons that include instruction about both the basics of a feature and its more complex uses. Universities will also have access to the Teacher Resource Guide, targeted at students learning the software for the first time as well as experienced QuarkXPress users, and which is available for both Mac and PC in a single, downloadable file.
“We recognise the constraints that Universities face with regards to budgets and the University Pack program addresses this issue in particular by offering more flexible payment plans. Universities can now purchase QuarkXPress 8 from $3998 (excl. VAT) per year for 350 seats as part of a three-year maintenance and payment plans which covers both new purchases and upgrades. They will also benefit from flexible educational licensing and will have Quark License Administrator to manage QuarkXPress licenses. In addition, students will be eligible for affordable student pricing on QuarkXPress $99 (excl. VAT), even after graduation as well as have access to free technical phone support, online chat, and Web-based troubleshooting for 24-hour support,” commented Peter Schaebbicke, Quark European Channel and Education Programs Director.