IN THIS MONTH'S EDITION... We like to start the New Year on a positive note with our New Year Upgrade Offer. If you haven’t upgraded to v8 yet why not start the new year with a shiny new v9, and you’ll save up to 30% on the normal prices. What’s more we have a Web Pack bundle offer on all copies of Web Designer Premium and Designer Pro at the moment, so you’ll get even better value. More info below. That’s not the only bargain. If you already own v9 you might want to check out one of the MAGIX video titles, because there are New Year deals to be had on MAGIX Movie Edit Pro Plus, Video Pro and Photostory. Details below. We have some particularly good tutorials this month. Firstly an explanation of layers and the Page & Layer Gallery, and secondly from Gary Bouton on the Xara Xone a look at creating proper plastic and metal reflections in your illustrations. More info below. We also have a double helping of Art this month, with a Xara selection in Inspirational Art as usual, plus Ron Duke stars as Featured Artist on the Xara Xone (including a bonus interview with Ron). In Other News you’ll find that we’ve finally caved in to requests from the Google+ fans amongst you and created a Google+ page for Xara. Google+ers, let’s see if you really exceed Facebook fans (target, 45,000)!

INSPIRATIONAL ART // ART MIX 1 We're taking a break from themes - this month we've simply picked our choice of images from posts on TalkGraphics and Featured Artists on the Xara Xone. - Find out more

NEW YEAR UPGRADE OFFER

Visit the Xara graphics forums to discuss or find answers to your graphics needs. Our pick of Top Talk this month: A new year brings new challenges and 2014 brings more than most! This month there's plenty of opportunity to join in one of the challenges in the Challenges Forum, which includes Minimalist Poster, Scribble and Drop Cap challenges. You can always try something less challenging. Why not browse thru the 73,000+ posts in the Xara Art Gallery. New work this month has included dancing fairies and contemplating cats, and it's great to see works based on the Xara Xone gears and compass rose tutorials. Plus Rik's Nib post sets the bar high for what can be created from the scribble challenge!		MOVIE NEWS Here's a short speed drawing video of a thunderstorm from Denis Sazhin, where he shows the process of drawing an icon for a weather set.

FEATURED TUTORIAL // PHOTO & GRAPHIC DESIGNER // DESIGNER PRO Working with layers

OTHER NEWS Russian Version of Photo & Graphic Designer 9 MAGIX has just released the Russian version of Photo & Graphic Designer 9, and you can buy it right now on the MAGIX site. Дополнительная информация All non-English versions Xara's Google+ Page We now have a sparkling new Google+ page, an alternative or addition to Facebook for news, views and reviews. We will be in both, the choice is yours! Why not join us now @ google.com/+XaraGroup, all +1s welcome of course! More Free v9 Patches We’ve recently released some more updates for all v9 products. These are free if you already own v9, make sure you have the latest by selecting Help > Update within the program. Designer Pro and Web Designer include some further improvements to publishing reliability following the recent problems caused by a Windows update. Additional details Xara News, As It Happens You can be first to receive Xara news by signing up to the RSS feed on our News page, or you can join more than 45,850 followers in our Facebook community or if you prefer our new Google + page, or follow our tweets at twitter.com/xaragroup.		HINTS & TIPS Import Website Text and Graphics In Web Designer and Designer Pro v8 & 9 you can import text and graphics from any site online, so if you want to recreate a site in Web Designer or Designer Pro that you originally created in a different package, then you don't have to start from scratch. Just go to File > Import text and graphics from web...(Ctrl+Alt+W).   USER TESTIMONIALS "This program simply blows me away. Over the years I have used CorelDraw, Macromedia Freehand, and Adobe Illustrator, and more recently Serif DrawPlus. Designer is superior to all of them in so many ways. It's so much fun. I have yet to use it for DTP and haven't fully explored how it performs in that area, but I may well replace QuarkXPress 9 which had recently replaced InDesign. The web design features look likely to replace Dreamweaver too. Thanks Xara. I wish I had discovered this gem years ago." Frank McGeachy on Xara Designer Pro X9

MASSIVE SAVINGS ON MAGIX TITLES

IN THE XARA XONE THIS MONTH...

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