Quark DesignPad

The old complaint that the iPad is ‘only good for consuming content’ is thoroughly debunked now. As if to help bury it completely, Quark – makers of veteran desktop publishing software QuarkXPress – has released Design Pad, a layout creation tool that’s part sketchbook, part wireframe design tool, part layout starter kit. It’s a curious tool, but once you start playing with it you’ll start to see its value.

Tap the Start a New Design button to begin. You’re presented with a selection of ready-made layout types; brochure, business card, classified ad, display ad, fact sheet, and so on. Pick one, and then fine-tune it with the Size controls (US Letter, A4, or custom sizes) and then the Layout options. This provides a wealth of tools for adjusting the layout structure, in terms of its columns and rows, number of content boxes (picture and text), headline box size, background image box, captions for pictures, and so on. If you’re looking for ideas here, tap the dice icon and you’ll get a random set of options dialled in for all but a few core attributes. Keep tapping until you see something you like, or fine-tune these settings by hand. You can save these for reuse if you like – very handy considering how many variables there are here.

Tap a box to tag it (headline, subhead, copy, caption, logo, photo, and so on), or jump straight to the Add Content stage. At this point, it’s worth noting that while you can remake layouts quickly and easily, you can’t go back to play with these options later. That’s not a big deal, but it does mean you should nail down these things first.

It’s great to see how Design Pad encourages solid grid-based design. This doesn’t mean things are inflexible; although it’s true that this isn’t as free-form a layout tool as the blank page you get in regular DTP software, the layouts are still highly configurable. Picture and text boxes that are generated as part of the initial layout specification process will automatically follow changes to the grid. Press and hold on any grid gutter and you can drag it around; the grid itself and all the existing boxes will change shape to follow this. You can add new text and picture boxes to customise the design further, but they don’t follow changes in the grid structure. They also can’t be shuffled behind existing content, so plan accordingly.

This stage is also where text and picture content and the fills and outlines of objects are set. Tapping an item brings up a set of icons for customising the appearance and contents. Picture boxes can be filled using content from your own iPad photo library or from a ready-made stock image library. Unlike your own pics, stock shots are bundled into the layout output option – but more on that in a second. Text boxes are pre-filled with lorem ipsum placeholder content, and sliders and scrolling font lists give control over font size, face, inset, alignment and colour. The typefaces available are the regular iPad set, so choose the nearest to your final plans and be ready to adjust later.

Which brings us nicely to output: you can email a rendered PNG graphic of your layout, which is great for a quick demo to a client or colleague. You can tweet it if you prefer, but what makes this more interesting is that you can also email a link to a regular QuarkXPress document that’s generated from your Design Pad efforts. This app isn’t meant for making finished layouts ready for repro, but you can knock together a wireframe-style page layout with pictures and text in minutes, email yourself the QuarkXPress version, then fine-tune it in Quark’s professional desktop publishing software. For a designer with an iPad, this is rather stunning. Who ever said the iPad was only for content consumption? Not us – and certainly not Quark, either.