Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition

This Competition Has Ended and is No Longer Accepting Entries. View the Winning Entries Below.

Everyone knows that the last time post­cards were used to pro­mote soft­ware they weren’t exact­ly a stun­ning suc­cess. Quark VS InDesign​.com thinks you can do bet­ter. At least, that’s what we keep telling every­one. If you can prove us right, your work might be fea­tured on Quark VS InDesign​.com and you could win your share of US$15,500 (approx­i­mate val­ue) worth of some seri­ous­ly cool stuff.

Our name may be Quark VS InDesign​.com, but these twin con­tests are about show­ing appreciation—ours and yours—for QuarkXPress and InDesign. These con­tests are not about which one you don’t like; they’re about which one you do like, which one you can’t work with­out, and, hope­ful­ly, which one excites you. They are not about bash­ing the com­pe­ti­tion or prov­ing which is bet­ter. And, this is not about the com­pa­nies; it’s about the appli­ca­tions, each on its own mer­its, sep­a­rate from the other.

This is about cel­e­brat­ing and hon­or­ing two incred­i­ble tools of our trade, tools that spare us from the gru­el­ing labor of hand-cutting ruby lithe and wax­ing up head­lines, tools that save us from hav­ing to get real jobs.

The Competition

These are two sep­a­rate, con­cur­rent­ly run­ning design com­pe­ti­tions, with sep­a­rate and inde­pen­dent entries, win­ners, and prizes.

The “Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition” from Quark VS InDesign​.com is a design com­pe­ti­tion to cre­ate a mar­ket­ing post­card pos­i­tive­ly pro­mot­ing or fea­tur­ing Adobe’s InDesign® prod­uct (ver­sion CS or CS2). The pur­pose and intent of the con­test is to encour­age cre­atives to have fun while sup­port­ing and cel­e­brat­ing InDesign. Each per­son or team may sub­mit a sin­gle, two-sided post­card design in cel­e­bra­tion of InDesign.

One win­ning design and two run­ners up (col­lec­tive­ly “win­ners”) will be cho­sen from the qual­i­fy­ing entries to occu­py First Place, First Runner-Up, and Second Runner-Up. The prizes list­ed below for each place will be award­ed to the cre­ators of the win­ning entries.

Qualifying is easy. All entrants must agree to the “Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition” Official Rules and com­plete a reg­is­tra­tion form to accom­pa­ny an orig­i­nal entry design that meets the fol­low­ing sim­ple cri­te­ria. The entry must:

  • Be an orig­i­nal design cre­at­ed by the entrant (an indi­vid­ual or team) sole­ly for the pur­pose of enter­ing this con­test and can­not have been pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished or used for adver­tis­ing or pro­mo­tion­al purposes;
  • Be rel­e­vant to its sub­ject mat­ter (InDesign CS or CS2);
  • Not dis­par­age or neg­a­tive­ly por­tray any brand, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, Quark, Adobe, QuarkXPress, InDesign, Quark VS InDesign​.com, or any per­sons or per­son­al­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with them;
  • Free from pro­fan­i­ty, vul­gar­i­ty, and nudity;
  • Adhere to the mechan­i­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions below;
  • And, of course, the entry must be from eli­gi­ble entrants.

1st Place

Jeremy Schultz

Migrate
Jeremy Schultz
Jeremy Schultz Artist
W DesMoines, IA

Migrate 1st Place

Click thumb­nail to view actu­al size front and back (2.5mb PDF)

How long have you used InDesign?
Started using InDesign 1.5 in 2000

What is it about InDesign that makes you a pas­sion­ate user?
QuarkXPress is a mediocre tool that has rest­ed on its lau­rels for a decade. In con­trast, InDesign has always had amaz­ing lay­out tools and Adobe has con­tin­ued to inno­vate and devel­op the appli­ca­tion. That’s the atti­tude and com­mit­ment to excel­lence that I want in all the equip­ment I use in my business.

What inspired your win­ning design? How did it come about?
“Migrate” was inspired by a com­bi­na­tion of things: the image of migrat­ing but­ter­flies, the notion of design­ers “migrat­ing” to InDesign (Adobe uses the term “switch­ing”), and the idea of using Photoshop to col­or the but­ter­flies pink like the InDesign icon. Together they make a pret­ty pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing state­ment that fits well with Adobe’s own message.

How was it cre­at­ed (soft­ware and ver­sions), what tech­niques did you use?
Ironically, InDesign was nev­er used dur­ing the process. I used only Photoshop CS2, and col­or­ing the but­ter­flies was done by using Color Range to select the orange in the mon­archs’ wings, expand­ing the selec­tion, then adding two layers:

Top: Red fill, Overlay lay­er mode, 50% white Inner Glow lay­er effect
Bottom: Magenta fill, Color lay­er mode, 50% white Inner Glow lay­er effect

The type­face is Myriad Pro, which is what Adobe uses on their packaging.

Tell us about your best design assign­ment. Include as much detail as you like (client name optional).
I cre­at­ed a pho­toil­lus­tra­tion of Miller Lite bot­tles run­ning at the Drake Relays track meet for Miller Brewing Company. It involved advanced Photoshop tech­niques that I don’t always have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to use, and the image was good enough to win last year’s Guru Award for Photo Retouching from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.

Tell us about your worst design assign­ment. Include as much detail as you like (client name optional).
Early in my career I attract­ed a lot of bad clients. One in par­tic­u­lar con­tract­ed me to design a web­site and she sup­plied me her logo only on a busi­ness card. I had to recre­ate it. The next day she calls up and wants me to give her the logo file so she can use it for all her mate­ri­als, “and I fig­ure it will only take you a half-hour to do so I’ll pay you $20.”

What’s next for you? Where do you want to go in your career?
Currently I’m a senior graph­ic design­er for a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny, but after that I envi­sion myself work­ing as a free­lancer and con­sul­tant, spe­cial­iz­ing in graph­ics for print and the web and work­ing with clients who enjoy the design process and appre­ci­ate what design can do for their brand.

What is your dream assignment—a type of project or for a spe­cif­ic client or brand?
Working with Adobe on their brand­ing and mar­ket­ing of the Creative Suite. I love Adobe and their prod­ucts because they mean so much to me and my col­leagues, and to be able to shape how they are expe­ri­enced by the design com­mu­ni­ty would be an honor.

1st Runner-Up

Bonnie Wetzel

Fly with InDesignCS
Bonnie Wetzel

Windsor, CT

Fly with InDesignCS 1st Runner-Up

Click thumb­nail to view actu­al size front and back (2.5mb PDF)

How long have you used InDesign?
1.5 – 2 Years

What is it about InDesign that makes you a pas­sion­ate user?
With InDesignCS I can make any­thing real­ly, and the dif­fer­ent tools it offers lets me work fast!

What inspired your win­ning design? How did it come about?
Truly feel­ing that I could real­ly do some­thing great and pro­grams (InDesign) will help me get there! The piece is about design­ers dis­cov­er­ing their true talents.

How was it cre­at­ed (soft­ware and ver­sions), what tech­niques did you use?
InDesign CS. Pen tool for shapes, gra­di­ent fills, trans­paren­cies, placed pic­tures and type paths.

Tell us about your best design assign­ment. Include as much detail as you like (client name optional).
My sis­ter’s wed­ding invi­ta­tion, a logo and help­ing with table set­tings, pro­grams and the whole bit! 

Tell us about your worst design assign­ment. Include as much detail as you like (client name optional).
Some have start­ed out as the worst but I like to think of them as reeeal­ly inter­est­ing challenges ;)

What’s next for you? Where do you want to go in your career?
I’d like to have my own com­pa­ny someday(far from now) and pub­lish a book that inspires designers. 

What is your dream assignment—a type of project or for a spe­cif­ic client or brand?
A huge event, film fes­ti­val or awards show! Something big with lots of col­lat­er­al & media variety! 

2nd Runner-Up

Vadim Litvak

Daisies
Vadim Litvak
easternBLOCK Design
San Francisco, CA

Daisies 2nd Runner-Up

Click thumb­nail to view actu­al size front and back (2.5mb PDF)

How long have you used InDesign?
Since 2003

What is it about InDesign that makes you a pas­sion­ate user?
InDesign places a famil­iar inter­face to a pow­er­ful prod­uct that allows my cre­ativ­i­ty to flow from one project to anoth­er and every bit inbe­tween. Using oth­er prod­ucts in the Adobe Suite, I can seem­less­ly cre­ate what­ev­er I need with­out break­ing my con­cen­tra­tion while jump­ing through pro­grams whose inter­faces could be sig­ni­fi­cat­ly dif­fer­ent and jarring.

What inspired your win­ning design? How did it come about?
Repetition is a nec­es­sary ele­ment to a sol­id cre­ative and/or pro­duc­tion work­flow in the office. With that in mind, I set about to depict this notion by dis­play­ing one of the most con­sis­tent and repet­i­tive ele­ments I could think of: Nature! Discovering the Daisies image helped bring the over­all lay­out together.

How was it cre­at­ed (soft­ware and ver­sions), what tech­niques did you use?
Layout: InDesign CS 3.01
Image: Photoshop 7.0
Images: Big Daisies by g2010, Exclusive iStockphoto Photographer from www​.istock​pho​to​.com
Fonts: Myriad Pro
Colorization tech­nique (for that extra UMPH!): Fake Lomo Effect from here.

Tell us about your best design assign­ment. Include as much detail as you like (client name optional).
One of the most reward­ing assign­ments I’ve had was work­ing on the mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als for a young adult-oriented reg­u­lar event at the San Jose Museum of Art.

While at my first agency gig, a cowork­er and I had the great oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op a strong rela­tion­ship with the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, a small, not-for-profit art gallery which hired us to devel­op pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als for their open­ings and spe­cial events. These small post­card and poster projects led to SJMA con­tact­ing us to help them con­ceive a hip, excit­ing evening event to announce their extend­ed hours and bring in more young peo­ple from the community.

After meet­ing with them, we quick­ly brain­stormed some ideas for names (the event was­n’t even named yet!) and over­all con­cepts for the iden­ti­ty. Walking back to the stu­dio, we thought of the chang­ing nature of the muse­um art­work, the move­ment asso­ci­at­ed with dance and per­for­mance (a fea­ture of this new night­ly par­ty), and the ener­getic crowd our client was try­ing to appeal to. We real­ized that the muse­um was in a state of flux and so that became the name of the par­ty – In Flux!

Now armed with a name, we were able to put the pieces togeth­er for an iden­ti­ty. We knew we want­ed to keep ele­ments of SJMA’s Pentagram-designed logo, specif­i­cal­ly the quirky star, and we want­ed the iden­ti­ty to embody move­ment. Inspired by Saul Bass’ work, we moved for­ward to devel­op a fre­net­ic look and feel for In Flux

What’s next for you? Where do you want to go in your career?
I’m cur­rent­ly work­ing as an in-house design­er at a real estate agency. I enjoy the chal­lenge of mak­ing the same assign­ments bet­ter each time through the use of my var­i­ous tools, such as Adobe InDesign. With it, I can go from a one page list­ing fly­er to a multi-page, multi-format inter­ac­tive PDF with the con­fi­dence that InDesign can han­dle those demands and con­si­tant­ly give me what I want and what my clients expect.

My next move will be to push my abil­i­ties with either a small agency or on my own as a free­lance designer.

What is your dream assignment—a type of project or for a spe­cif­ic client or brand?
Wow! A dream assign­ment? Pretty much any­thing that lots of peo­ple see. I dis­cov­ered awhile ago that one of the things that real­ly, tru­ly sat­is­fies me as a design­er is know­ing that my work, or a project I’ve been involved in, is get­ting atten­tion from hun­dreds and thou­sands of people.

Prizes

The fol­low­ing prizes will be fur­nished to the win­ning entrant in each place.

First Place Winner

First Runner-Up

  • 2 Copies of InDesign CS2 from Adobe
  • InDesign CS2 Product Expert Support Contract (1 year) from Adobe
  • 4‑Disc Set of David Blatner’s InDesign CS videos from Software Cinema
  • 1‑Year Subscription to InDesign Magazine
  • Choice of Text Count or History plug-in by DTP Tools
  • Overset Manager plug-in by SoftCare
  • Notes Manager plug-in by SoftCare
  • Commercial Press Template of choice by StockLayouts

Second Runner-Up

Acknowledgements

Quark VS InDesign​.com sin­cere­ly thanks the com­pa­nies and pri­vate par­ties who fur­nished prizes for their gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tions. Each of these com­pa­nies is com­mit­ted to serv­ing the graph­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­tries and their peo­ple, as plain­ly evi­denced by their gen­eros­i­ty. We hope you will sup­port these com­pa­nies and turn to them to answer your soft­ware, stock pho­tog­ra­phy, news, and oth­er needs.

Pariah would espe­cial­ly like to thank a few indi­vid­u­als in par­tic­u­lar for their invalu­able assis­tance in help­ing launch two con­cur­rent con­tests on such short notice: Christy Siebler, Samuel John Klein, Cyndie Shaffstall, Michael Taylor, and a few oth­ers who have asked not to be embar­rassed by being sin­gled out—they know who they are, and Pariah hopes they real­ize how much he appre­ci­ates their help.

Adobe, Acrobat, InDesign, and their relat­ed logos and indi­cia are trade­marks or Registered Trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc.