…And so are photographs by San Francisco-based photographer Doug Menuez.

[As promised, something quite different this week in Quark Online Digest. Welcome to the first in what we hope will be a series of periodic articles and companies who use Quark products. If you have a unique story about how you use QuarkXPress, QuarkImmedia, QPS, or mTropolis in your day-to-day business operations, we'd like to hear from you. Email us at webmaster@quark.com (list the subject as Dear QOD).]

This week's installment of QOD introduces you to a photographer who, when the design firm upon which he was depending closed shop, was "forced" to learn QuarkXPress and lay out the pages of his printed promotional piece himself. Here at Quark we've sometimes pointed out that QuarkXPress, for all of its high-end capabilities, is inherently a democratic tool that gives professional publishing power to individuals and small businesses. Doug Menuez's unique direct-mail pieces (there are three of them now: Beauty Truth; Drag Meet; and Boy, 8) prove us right.

"When my designer folded his company and moved to Europe, I was forced to learn QuarkXPress and finish the Beauty Truth folio myself. This was a wonderful thing, cause I've fallen in love wit design and now I'm one of the worst things on the planet… an amateur designer."

What began as an imaginative way to promote himself has evolved, for Doug, into a separate outlet for his visual creativity . He hopes to produce a new mini-folio every four to six months, and the efficiency, precision, and flexibility of QuarkXPress will make it relatively easy for him to do that even as he maintains his current busy schedule of advertising shoots, fashion layouts, commercial work, and self-created "coffee table" publications like Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton. Menuez' work takes him around the world to places like Argentina, Europe, and the North Pole, and he has a 150,000 mile-a-year frequent flyer account to prove it. Just another day at the office, right? But does Menuez complain? Hardly. "I love everything that I do," he says. "I'm so lucky I get paid to do this." His next mini-folio will showcase his work from the 1997 Italian Spring Fashion Collection, shot in Argentina and featuring the clothes of Dolce & Gabbana, Armani, and Versace.

"I have never read the manual but almost everyday I do something in QuarkXPress. It's such a blast taking my photographs and putting them into layouts myself. It's the same pleasure as going into the darkroom."

Doug Menuez became interested in photography at age of 10. At 12 he built his own dark room, and he's been shooting ever since. Now 40, he has studied at the Art Institute of San Francisco, and has operated studios in both New York and San Francisco. Somewhere along the way he developed a client list that reads like a Who's Who of corporate America like Reebok, IBM, Sprint, Hershey's, Compaq, Eddie Bauer, and Apple.

We'd like to thank Doug for telling us his story about how QuarkXPress has helped make his life a little easier, and for letting us show you some of the content from his direct-mail folios. If you have a story that will show people how you use QuarkXPress, QuarkImmedia, QPS, or mTropolis in your day-to-day business operations, we'd like to hear from you. Email us at webmaster@quark.com (list the subject as Dear QOD).