Type on a circle using QuarkXPress

Have you ever wanted to put some type in XPress on a circular path or perhaps some other shape? I learned the following trick I'm going to show you from a coworker in my early years in the newsaper business. That was with QuarkXPress 4.1 on Mac. I don't believe you can do it on 3.x or below as it involves shapes that Im pretty sure were only introduced with version 4.0.

In any case, for this demonstration I'm using XPress 8.5 on a Powerbook 1.67Ghz. The steps below can be used on any version of XPress from 4.0 to 8.5. Note that you can also get this tip over at the Quark Forums. I've given the tip many times over there, but never with pictures. So, here we go…

1. Draw a circular shape on screen. It doesn't actually have to be a circle, but it does need to be a closed shape.


2. Convert the shape to a freehand shape.


3. Convert the shape content to text.


4. Click on the shape to insert your text. Notice that your text insertion point will be at the bottom of the shape. To fix that, center your text and the text will appear at the top of your shape.



5. Type in your copy.

6. Style the text as you like. Fonts, bold, italics, etc. You can also flip or reverse the text by using the command in the modify box, or you can baseline shift to bring the text down. If you need to angle the text, rotate the box. The box can also be resized or the shape of the box changed. If you want the shape itself to have a line then just enter a border size of 1 or more and set your color. If you do not want ANY line to print then just make sure that you have the line set to 0pt and a color of none. The only thing you can't do is have more than line. For that you should duplicate the box on top of itself, resize the box proportionally and then adjust your type/box settings with the new text.

Pretty simple if you know how to do it. What do you think?