QuarkXPress 7: Job Jackets will Keep You Out of the Rubber Room!

One of the biggest problems with working in a team environment is a lack of communication between the budget people, the designers and the print publishers. Any miscommunication during the production phase can manifest itself negatively by throwing your budget out of whack. For instance, let’s assume your printing budget is very tight. Every dollar counts. You can afford to print 5,000 copies of a four-page newsletter. And you can afford to use a few spot colors. As the art director for the newsletter, you type up the strict specifications and send the instructions, along with the assets needed to create the newsletter to your QuarkXPress expert.

The newsletter is completed and sent to the printer. All is right with the world. Until–you get the bill from the printer. The newsletter was six pages instead of four. And the layout "accidentally" used process colors instead of spot colors. As a result, your bill is significantly higher than you budgeted. Ooops!

Say hello to Job Jackets! You can create a Job Jacket that controls the specifications of a layout at the time it is created. And you can create rules in the Job Jacket that will evaluate the layout before it is sent to the printer and flag anything that doesn’t follow your specifications.

Create a New Job Jacket

1. Display the Job Jackets Manager by choosing Utilities > Job Jackets Manager
   
   Any Job Jackets previously created would be listed in the Job Jackets Manager. There are two modes: Basic and Advanced. By default, the Job Jackets Manager appears in Basic Mode.



2. Click the New Job Jacket button



The New Job Jacket dialog box appears.



3. Give the Job Jacket a name and destination
4. Click OK

Create a Layout Specification

1. Click the Advanced Settings button (in the lower left of the dialog box)

   The Job Jackets Manager splits into three panes.

2. From the Resources area, scroll down and select Layout Specifications

   
   

3. From just above the Layout Specifications area, click the New Item button

   

   An item named Layout Specifications appears.

4. Click Save

Set Resource Specifications

1. Display the Job Jackets Manager (choose Utilities > Job Jackets Manager)
2. Select your Job Jacket from the Job Jacket list at the left
3. Select Layout Specifications from the list of Resources

   The Layout Specification item you created earlier appears in the panel below.

4. Click the plus sign (or Triangle) to the left of Layout Specification

   Typical job specifications such as Page Count, Page Width and Page Height appear in a list.

5. Click the word Any to the right of Page Count and
   type 4
6. Click the word Any to the right of Top Margin and
   type 12p
   
   

   Any layouts based on this Job Jacket will now automatically contain 4 pages. Each page will also have a top margin of 12 picas (2 inches)

7. Click Save

Stay tuned! Next week you will learn how to create a Ticket based on a Job Jacket.

Want to learn more about QuarkXPress 7? Click here.