Quark VS InDesign.com Celebrates Quark and InDesign with Twin Postcard Design Competitions and Big Prize Chest

Quark VS InDesign.com announces simultaneous design competitions celebrating InDesign and QuarkXPress. Creative pros to compete for US$10,000 US$14,000 worth of prizes.

Portland, Ore.—11 April 2005—Quark VS InDesign​.com (www​.quarkvsin​de​sign​.com), The Authority for News and Opinion on the War Between Desktop Publishing Giants QuarkXPress® and Adobe® InDesign®, today announced twin design con­tests to cre­ate pro­mo­tion­al post­cards cel­e­brat­ing and hon­or­ing InDesign and QuarkXPress.

Following a 29 March exclu­sive report on post­cards dis­trib­uted by Quark, Inc., which mar­ket­ed QuarkXPress 6.5 (Quark for short) at the expense of unfriend­ly com­ments about Quark com­peti­tor Adobe InDesign, Quark VS InDesign​.com received tremen­dous and impas­sioned response from cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als who use Quark and/or InDesign. The lev­el of response gave editor-in-chief Pariah S. Burke an idea.

“There are mil­lions of QuarkXPress and InDesign users out there, and, like Ford and Chevy, Pepsi and Coke, peo­ple get fired up about their favorite design tools,” he said. “A Mustang or Camaro is just what you dri­ve; people’s jobs depend on how well they use InDesign or Quark. They depend on one or the other—or both—anywhere between four and six­teen hours every day—how can that kind of involve­ment not breed passion?

“I said to myself,” Burke con­tin­ued. “I bet our read­ers could turn their pas­sions into post­card designs that suc­cess­ful­ly pro­mote either QuarkXPress or InDesign with­out resort­ing to attack­ing or even men­tion­ing the oth­er. I got excit­ed. With a few calls, I had infect­ed every­one I talked to—half the com­pa­nies that sup­port InDesign and Quark users—with that excite­ment. With the assis­tance of some won­der­ful and gen­er­ous peo­ple, I lined up rough­ly $10,000 $14,000 in incred­i­ble prizes and got the two con­tests launched in a week.”

Among the prizes to be divid­ed between six win­ners (three for each con­test) are plug-ins and xten­sions from a dozen top devel­op­ers, InDesign CS and new Photoshop CS2 train­ing videos, stock pho­tog­ra­phy and design tem­plates, auto­graphed copies of the lead­ing InDesign and Quark ref­er­ence books, InDesign CS2 Expert Support con­tracts, sub­scrip­tions to X‑Ray Magazine and InDesign Magazine, the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tions QuarkXPress and InDesign, high-end pre-press soft­ware, 3 copies of QuarkXPress 6.5, and 5 copies of InDesign CS2, whose release should coin­cide with the announce­ment of the winners.

“This is unique—almost historic,” said Michael Taylor, a free­lance graph­ic design­er in Central Florida. “I don’t recall any oth­er par­ty doing some­thing like this for two such bit­ter ene­mies at once—and I don’t mean Quark and Adobe. I mean the bit­ter ene­mies that use InDesign or Quark. Everyone is tak­ing sides, but see­ing some­one like Quark VS InDesign​.com, whose whole rea­son for being is keep­ing both sides informed, give every design­er and pro­duc­tion per­son on both sides a voice in the war is absolute­ly amaz­ing. Not to men­tion the huge prize chest! Bravo, Quark VS InDesign​.com!”

Burke added: “We’re ecsta­t­ic to launch these con­tests! This is a chance for every Quark and InDesign user to have fun shout­ing about her favorite tool in the way she com­mu­ni­cates best: graph­ic design.”

Competition Dates and Eligibility

Both the “Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition” and “Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition” begin today, and accept entries for three weeks from stu­dents, pro­fes­sion­als, and seri­ous hob­by­ists, work­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly or in teams. Entrants must be res­i­dents of the United States (except Puerto Rico) 18 years of age or old­er. Entries must be received by Quark VS InDesign​.com by 11:59 PM Pacific Time, Monday, 2 May 2005. Judging will take up to two weeks fol­low­ing the dead­line, after which win­ning entries will promi­nent­ly dis­play on the Quark VS InDesign​.com website.

For more infor­ma­tion, and to enter either or both com­pe­ti­tions, vis­it the offi­cial web­site at http://​quarkvsin​de​sign​.com/​c​o​n​tests/.

About Quark VS InDesign.com

Everyday mil­lions of design and pro­duc­tion per­son­nel the world over pro­duce tens of mil­lions of pages of news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, books, adver­tise­ments, and oth­er print­ed mate­r­i­al in page lay­out soft­ware; that work is done almost exclu­sive­ly in InDesign or QuarkXPress (Quark for short). Historically, the graph­ics com­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­tries have not long tol­er­at­ed two equal appli­ca­tions for the same tasks, opt­ing instead to stan­dard­ize across the indus­tries on one. With bil­lion dol­lar empires stand­ing on either Quark or InDesign, a rival­ry as bit­ter and leg­endary as the Hatfields and the McCoys, the world’s unblink­ing eye scru­ti­nizes their every clash.

Quark VS InDesign​.com (www​.quarkvsin​de​sign​.com) is the author­i­ta­tive cor­re­spon­dent in this bloody war, chron­i­cling every sal­vo of each bat­tle between entrenched pub­lish­ing work­horse QuarkXPress, which ruled unchal­lenged for over a decade, and InDesign, the nim­ble new­com­er built by the com­pa­ny that pio­neered desk­top pub­lish­ing and devel­oped every oth­er stan­dard appli­ca­tion in the print designer’s tool belt, Adobe Systems, Inc.

Quark, QuarkXPress, and their relat­ed logos and indi­cia are Registered Trademarks of Quark, Inc.

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

TAGS: design quark inde­sign adobe graph­ics con­tests