Hamburg - Quark Inc. today announced that the SPIEGEL Group, after a comprehensive upgrade, is successfully producing more than 10 magazines with Quark Publishing System 8 and QuarkXPress 8. Over 500 Quark Publishing System 8 users and 70 QuarkXPress 8 users are designing and producing publications such as DER SPIEGEL, Harvard Business Manager, manager magazin, KulturSPIEGEL, UniSPIEGEL, "Dein SPIEGEL", SPIEGEL GESCHICHTE, SPIEGEL WISSEN, the SPIEGEL annual chronicle, and various school magazines using the latest publishing software by Quark.

The SPIEGEL Group is one of Europe's most renowned media companies with publications such as DER SPIEGEL – Germany's most prominent and Europe's most circulated news magazine – and manager magazin – the leading publication for German business. As all the SPIEGEL Group titles are produced with the highest standards for text and layout, the company requires the most reliable layout and design applications and an editorial workflow system for automating processes that ensures smooth integration with existing IT structures and allows for easy multichannel output.

The new software was implemented swiftly and without causing any interruptions in the production processes. Heiner Ulrich, the Deputy IT Director of the SPIEGEL Group responsible for the print production processes said, "I am particularly delighted about the trouble-free integration of Quark Publishing System with our existing systems. With this solution we can use the versatile, creative features of QuarkXPress 8 and Quark Copy Desk 8 within the Quark Publishing System workflow, which has meant a major step forward for us from a technical perspective. Page planning, advertisement and image workflow, as well as our archiving system can be connected without any complications to Quark components – an overall concept that allows us to design our production processes to be reliable, efficient, and cost-effective. In addition, the Web Hub for Quark Publishing System is providing us with excellent opportunities for integrating off-site employees into our production processes."

Outstanding design options combined with a sound simultaneous production process were the crucial factors that persuaded the Spiegel Group to upgrade to Quark's latest software. At DER SPIEGEL, a weekly magazine delivered in 173 countries and with an annual average circulation of over one million copies each week, quality is crucial in the production process. The brand look and style must be easily repurposed for all channels and consistent print quality must be guaranteed at all times.

Dr. Roland Klose, IT director for the Spiegel Group said, "Quark Publishing System is helping us to speed up and standardize processes through automation. In addition, Quark Job Jackets also contributes to quality assurance. We create our sample pages with Job Jackets from the start. This way, we don't need to wait for the production stage to detect and rectify technical faults, but we can do so at the source."

Axel R. Paesike, Director of Sales and Services in Central Europe for Quark, is delighted with the long-term collaboration with the SPIEGEL Group. "The company has made a wise decision: It has given the editorial, graphics, and production departments state of the art technology for cross-media automated publishing, without time-consuming and expensive IT training. The decision to upgrade to Quark Publishing System 8 and QuarkXPress 8 shows that Quark is right in focusing on constantly developing and enhancing our products across the board."