UK National Print College Upgrade To QuarkXPress 7

Edited by the Printingtalk editorial team Nov 16, 2006

Quark Inc announced yesterday that the UK's National Printing Skills Centre (NPSC), the business division of Leicester College, has upgraded to QuarkXPress 7 across its organisation.

Quark Inc announced yesterday that the UK's National Printing Skills Centre (NPSC), the business division of Leicester College and a provider of professional training for the print and graphic communications industries in the UK, has upgraded to QuarkXPress 7 across its organisation.

The NPSC, which has been awarded the highest training accolade achievable as a centre of vocational excellence (CoVE) in print skills, prides itself in keeping pace with technological advances within the industry and its decision to upgrade so rapidly to QuarkXPress 7 reflects its approach to education, said Quark.

The NSPC offers a portfolio of training courses in digital media, multi-media, pre-press, press and post-press that equip students with the necessary skills to thrive in today's industry.

Quark added that it is vital that students are trained in the latest technology and industry trends and the NPSC and Quark have collaborated to ensure the goal is achieved.

At the beginning of the current academic year, QuarkXPress 7 was implemented across the network and was also integrated in to all of the relevant courses at both the NPSC and Leicester College.

Damian Breen, education officer at Leicester College, said: "The NPSC aims to deliver effective training courses that are relevant to the ever-changing marketplace.

The feedback we are getting from our students is that QuarkXPress 7 is a very positive step forward for Quark.

The students feel that it is easy to use and are impressed with all the new features - in particular with Job Jackets, as it makes it easier for them to work together, optimise design and minimise production errors." He added: "It is important that we work with the key industry players and our relationship with Quark is instrumental in providing the latest technology to our students." QuarkXPress 7 supports a range of output formats, including PDF/X, Job Definition Format (JDF) and Personalised Print Markup Language (PPML) and is designed to support industry standards as they emerge - a capability that is of huge importance to the NPSC, said Quark.

The company added that the students are impressed with the Job Jackets feature, which helps enforce job specifications by linking projects to synchronised, dynamically design specifications that can be updated and which include everything from style sheets and colours to page size and count.

Ed Ewing, Quark sales director for northern Europe, said: "We are delighted that such a respected and well-known educational institution as Leicester College has chosen to strengthen its relationship with Quark.

The NPSC is committed to nurturing the next generation of designers and press and pre-press professionals and we welcome the opportunity to support the NPSC as much as possible to achieve this goal.".