Initial caps and text runarounds are the bells and whistles of setting text in a page layout program. But while they seem like pure adornment, drop caps provide important points of entry into text-heavy pages and text that runs around graphics breaks up densely packed columns.

QuarkXPress 6 gives you all the tools you need to create text effects like text runarounds, masked type, and initial caps. But the results can look predictable. You can take these text effects to the next level by learning a few tricks and employing additional techniques such as clipping paths and Restrict to Box options.

In this excerpt from "QuarkXPress 6 for Print and Web Design," Germany's top designer Michael Baumgardt shares a few of his favorite tricks for adding punch to ordinary initial caps, type outlines, and text runarounds.

We've posted this excerpt as a PDF file. All you do is click this link "Design Techniques: Initial Caps" to open the PDF file in your Web browser. You can also download the PDF to your machine for later viewing.

To open the PDF, you'll need a full version of Adobe Acrobat (5 or higher) or the Adobe Reader, which you can download here:

.

To learn how to configure your browser for viewing PDF files, see the Adobe Reader tech support page.

Excerpted from "QuarkXPress 6 for Print and Web Design" © 2004 Michael Baumgardt. Reproduced by permission of Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Peachpit Press. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.