Quark's Logo 2006--Something Is In Motion

Quark's New 2006 Logo

This morn­ing Quark, Inc. debuted their sec­ond new logo in six months (dubbed “Quark Logo 2006” for clarity).

The 2005 mod­el, while strong and styl­ish in its sim­plic­i­ty, met with deri­sion and accu­sa­tions of pla­gia­rism. As the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty instant­ly point­ed out, that ver­sion bore a strong resem­blance to a hand­ful of exist­ing logos, and, but for its col­or, was iden­ti­cal to the logo of the Scottish Arts Council, who used the cir­cu­lar glyph with the bottom-right point to rep­re­sent a low­er­case a where Quark’s used the same glyph for a cap­i­tal Q. The sim­i­lar­i­ties, how­ev­er, were acci­den­tal; Quark’s brand­ing agency, SicolaMartin, had missed the marks of the Scottish Arts Council, the Designers Network, Alcone, and three oth­ers dur­ing their trade­mark research. Despite Quark’s own jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the con­fu­sion, as well as objec­tive expla­na­tions of how such a sit­u­a­tion may occur from inde­pen­dent media Quark VS InDesign​.com and Creativepro​.com, the September 2005 Quark logo missed the mark with designers.

Quark 2005 Logo

The September 2005 Quark logo.

Despite the con­tro­ver­sy, I liked Quark Logo 2005. It was a strong, min­i­mal­ist brand pro­gres­sive in its styl­ized treat­ment of the let­ter Q. It reflect­ed the rep­u­ta­tion of flag­ship prod­uct QuarkXPress for get­ting the job done. It was a pow­er­ful brand ele­ment for the pub­lish­ing stal­wart. More impor­tant­ly, it was an out­ward indi­ca­tor of the inter­nal changes hap­pen­ing with­in Quark. Seen by many as stag­nant and senesced, Quark need­ed a brand revi­sion to reflect its awak­en­ing vision of the future. Quark was a com­pa­ny in tran­si­tion, and the September 2005 logo showed that transition.

If You Want It Done Right...

When the Quark 2005 Logo debuted to the pub­lic, the com­pa­ny’s col­lec­tive chest was puffed with pride. Regrettably, the con­fu­sion with oth­er enti­ties’ marks knocked the wind out of Quark just as quick­ly. It was a painful blow to a com­pa­ny strug­gling to prove its re-invention. But every set­back is a les­son and a chance to spring back bet­ter, wis­er, and stronger once again. Admirably, Quark took that oppor­tu­ni­ty and used its dis­ap­point­ment to prove that the com­pa­ny real­ly is as adapt­able as it would like us to believe.

As Quark VS InDesign​.com was quick to point out in September, the fail­ing of the 2005 logo was not Quark’s. The com­pa­ny had vend­ed the rebrand­ing task to the sup­posed spe­cial­ists, brand devel­op­ment and adver­tis­ing agency SicolaMartin, whose respon­si­bil­i­ty it was to ensure that the Quark logo was dis­tinc­tive and unique. The 2005 logo is still fea­tured in SicolaMartin’s online port­fo­lio as a warn­ing to oth­er prospec­tive clients of the Austin, Texas firm seek­ing unique branding.

This time, Quark decid­ed to do it themselves.

Quark 2006 logo in relief

The 2006 Quark logo in relief.

“Quark lis­tened to the feed­back we received from the design com­mu­ni­ty in rela­tion to our re-branding ini­tia­tive in September and decid­ed to cre­ate a new logo that is both an evo­lu­tion of our visu­al iden­ti­ty and a strong rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the new Quark,” said Glen Turpin, Director of Quark’s Corporate Communications. “We believe the new logo com­mu­ni­cates growth and vital­i­ty as a sym­bol for what the new Quark is–a com­pa­ny that lis­tens to its cus­tomers, and is flex­i­ble and respon­sive to chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions. It’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the spir­it of the new Quark.”

Quark’s in-house cre­ative team designed the stun­ning new 2006 logo, prov­ing that if you want some­thing done right, you’ve got to do it your­self. Throughout the design process, feed­back and input were solicit­ed from a vari­ety of out­side design con­sul­tants, although the bulk of the work was done in-house.

Quark 2006 logo flat

The two-color flat ver­sion (pan­tone 368 and white or black).

A potent emblem, the 2006 logo both rem­i­nisces as a tar­get and com­mu­ni­cates action. It’s cir­cu­lar, three-dimensional relief in green is evoca­tive of a but­ton, imply­ing a call to action–click here to go. Offsetting the Q and plac­ing the tail only inside the let­ter’s counter cre­ates the sen­sa­tion that the but­ton may have already been pushed, that action is already under­way and some­thing is about to hap­pen. Subtle lens flares along the raised edges give the image a metal­lic new­ness and rein­force the lines of force estab­lished by the jut­ting diag­o­nal and off-center, vari­able weight letter.

I liked the 2005 ver­sion, but Quark Logo 2006 is tru­ly stun­ning. It falls in line with the mod­ern, forward-looking user expe­ri­ence of QuarkXPress 7. This is the pol­ished new Quark–something is in motion.

47 thoughts on “Quark's Logo 2006--Something Is In Motion”

  1. Brady J. Frey

    Hate it. Reminiscent of young design tal­ent – weak typog­ra­phy and lack­ing in depth… not to men­tion the access pho­to­shop work thrown in looks more like some­one played smart with their style effects more so than designed (beveled? c’mon, be inven­tive). This is not high end design, it will fall flat next to Apple and even old school Adobe. Now even more they are dis­con­nect­ed from the design community.

  3. Brady J. Frey

    That’s a fly­er for a local club, not a com­pa­ny that attempts to pro­mote qual­i­ty high end design. You can’t com­pare the two, just like http://​delight​ful​health​.com/ I designed to be a clean cut health com­pa­ny. The idea is to reflect design on the tar­get audi­ence… so I’m not sure where you’re lead­ing com­par­ing the two, they are dif­fer­ent mar­kets, and one is not even an logo design… and yes, I meant excess ( I have to stop typ­ing two things at once). I’ll say my design for http://​www​.bent​lyre​serve​.com is exces­sive pho­to­shop, but this is a large real estate property.

    There are about 10+ more designs at http://​logolounge​.com/ I designed, and I’ll be fea­tured in their book next year, feel free to log on and com­pare more.

  4. Pingback: pull to inflate » Blog Archive » Quark’s new logo loses big

  5. Andrew Smith

    At least it looks like the ‘off’ but­ton on a Mac.

    Andrew

  6. marco

    I’d say the real sur­prise is that Quark actu­al­ly lis­tened to the design-community.

  7. Jason Rooney

    Personally I like it. But only the relief ver­sion. I find the 2 colour real­ly lack­ing. I guess you can only come up with so many tru­ly inspi­ra­tional ideas but this new logo real­ly needs the 3D work to make it look its best.

  8. Rob

    Ugly. The “q” real­ly does­n’t read very well as a “q” even though you know that’s what it is sup­posed to be. Take away the word “quark” itself and see how many peo­ple can asso­ciate the logo with a “q.” I cer­tain­ly get no sense of action or of any­thing happening.

  9. Randy Preising

    ” … the stun­ning new 2006 logo …?!”

    It’s just a freakin’ Q!!! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry for them. Wait. I do know. I’ll laugh.

  10. Ammon

    I like the tail being inside the counter, but they def­i­nite­ly should have kept the font from the pre­vi­ous Quark logo. And although I also thought it pla­gia­ry, the pre­vi­ous 2005 is the bet­ter logo. Also the posi­tion of the Q is eat­ing at me. Why down and to the right? Why not up and to the right? It seems that up con­veys more that Quark is on to big­ger bet­ter things, not down.

  11. Bobby

    Horrid. Absolutely dread­ful. If I was forced to choose I would have to pick the flat ver­sion. The pho­to­shop work is a weak and taste­less attempt to com­pen­sate for a lack of vision.

  12. Pancake

    The Flat ver­sion works well but the beveled night­mare of a logo ver­sion is one of the worst I have seen. Seems like some­body just recent­ly dis­cov­ered the bev­el tool in pho­to­shop. They need to stick with the flat version.

  13. Randy Preising

    Actually, the more I look at it, the more it looks like some­thing you drop in your martini.

  15. Pariah S. Burke Post author

    The logo design cri­tique is inter­est­ing, but please, don’t bash Quark for mak­ing the change.

    Regardless of how you feel about the com­pa­ny or the logo design itself, you must rec­og­nize that the cre­ation of the new logo is an impor­tant setp for Quark. After the con­tro­ver­say over the September 2005 ver­sion, many com­pa­nies would have tak­en the atti­tude of get over it. Instead, Quark listened–really listened–to us, the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty, and invest­ed more effort and mon­ey in responding.

    You and I inspired Quark to redesign its logo. Think about that for a moment. A year ago, did you feel like any­one in Denver heard–or cared–what you had to say?

    I am prob­a­bly the most famous (infa­mous?) crit­ic of Quark, and I applaud the com­pa­ny for lis­ten­ing and then act­ing on what it heard. Quark spent mon­ey and put forth a lot of effort to react to what the com­mu­ni­ty voiced. Regardless of any­thing Quark did yes­ter­day or will do tomor­row, you must objec­tive­ly rec­og­nize that the exis­tance of this new logo is a sig­nif­i­cant event in Quark’s rela­tion­ship to the cre­ative community.

  16. Gonzalo

    The one with the effects looks nice, but let’s face it: the bev­el and flare thing is tired at this point. And even more when the naked ver­sion of it is so weak! People, I guess we all fall under fair­ly sim­i­lar descrip­tions (cre­ative, design­ers, what­ev­er) so we DO know that even though is great that the image of a prod­uct reflects a dif­fer­ent atti­tude, it means absolute­ly NOTHING if there is no sub­stance behind this, a true com­mit­ment to change and cus­tomer sup­port and yada yada yada. Do I have to remind you all of the unfor­tu­nate fate of ALAP’s InDi plu­g­ins, just a few days ago? Is this the “New Quark”? When the new reminds so much of the old, sth’s real­ly wrong. I’m not buy­ing this crap.

  17. Brady J. Frey

    I com­plete­ly agree that they lis­tened to our cries of change, and that all these com­ments about them rip­ping the logo sat ill with them – and I applaud them for doing some­thing about it. 

    Regardless, though, it’s a design rem­i­nis­cent of art direct­ed by mid­dle man­age­ment – wether the intent was to make an ‘eye’ for sym­bol­ism much like the fedex arrow, it is a poor play on visu­als, and an awk­ward lay­out for a com­pa­ny that wants to be the face of design.

    Their orig­i­nal idea to make them­selves ‘fresh’ and redesign their image may have just fall­en flat in gen­er­al, as far as their iden­ti­ty goes. I’ve always seen Adobe’s designs as unin­spired to some extent (their trash­ing of the macro­me­dia site to look like their ugly web­site is a clear exam­ple – though their print ads are always inter­est­ing), but their aged logo still has a nos­tal­gic appeal that Quark just killed. 

    Some say that’s a good thing, that their past needs to be erased – but all I think of now is Quark’s failed adver­tis­ing attempts I get in the mail boast­ing their destroy­ing inde­sign, I see a logo redesign that was ele­gant but a rip off, I see a new logo that looks like it was designed by a pro­duc­tion artist tak­ing cues from office man­age­ment. They lis­tened at our request to change, but they aren’t onto the pulse of the design com­mu­ni­ty in many ways.

  18. Goad Toad

    Ok, it’s not as much like the Sony Ericsson logo as the oth­er one was like the scot­tish what­ev­er. But…still…sony eric­s­son is a major major brand. This logo is def­i­nite­ly sim­i­lar enough to come across as derivative.

  19. Anders

    The new logo is tru­ly awful. You can’t real­ly see that those small white dots are sup­posed to be flares when viewed on low­er res­o­lu­tions. They should just have stayed with the old logo and wait­ed for peo­ple to for­get that it resem­bled some unknown logo from Scotland.

  20. Koop

    This Logo is all­ready 2 years out of date. For a logo to stay time­less it has to work as a flat object in B&W. After that then the col­ors can be chose. Mayby the 2007 logo will be better?

  21. optimus

    You know, i’m the last per­son any­body would say would stick up for Quark. But i’ve got to start to won­der if the design “com­mu­ni­ty” isn’t just out to rip Quark any­time, any­where for any rea­son. So they’ve got an infe­ri­or prod­uct, at least give ’em cred­it for try­ing to move for­ward into the 20th cen­tu­ry with their brand/logo. Hey, even if you can’t hit the “T” key to get the text tool, at least they’re try­ing to get this right.

  22. moon

    one step forth, two steps back. embarrassing.

  23. Typhanie

    I have to say that I admire the com­pa­ny for hav­ing the guts to lis­ten to their cus­tomers and change their logo so soon after it’s release. That was prob­a­bly my biggest prob­lem with the 2005 logo, that they did­n’t do the basic research and ini­tial­ly took a, “what­ev­er. We don’t care what you think,” stance. For them to stick their pride in their pock­et and under­go the very cost­ly process of rebrand­ing is a big step in the right direction.

    That said, though, I can’t say that I real­ly love the new logo. I like it bet­ter than their old logo, def­i­nite­ly, but I can’t say that it real­ly strikes me. I like the flat ver­sion of their logo just fine. The shapes are clean and sim­ple, and they don’t try to over­load your eyes at first glance. The beveled ver­sion, how­ev­er, just ahas a few too many pho­to­shop tricks for my taste. It seems like a good ver­sion to use for their online work, but it’s per­haps not what I’d like to see on print­ed material. 

    But I def­i­nite­ly have to give them props for their efforts. And there will always be peo­ple who don’t like it for one rea­son or anoth­er. That’s a prob­lem in this field, when so much depends on per­son­al taste.

  24. Jessica

    While I believe that releas­ing yet anoth­er logo in six months is a big mis­take on Quark’s part, you could argue that they real­ly did­n’t have a chioce if they were going to main­tain any integri­ty. I do how­ev­er believe that they went about design the WRONG way. You nev­er design a logo in large scale with­out test­ing what your small­er ver­sions will look like. The best way is to use a con­trol group. Get feed­back out­side the com­pa­ny. You’d be sur­prised what the aver­age per­son will catch in a design when you show them an image. The glint off the beveled logo scales down to look like a pix­el chunk miss­ing out of the design. This logo was not well thought out from a design standpoint.

  25. Jason Sheldon

    Hate the new logo… much pre­ferred the 2005 Scottish Arts Council logo…

    However, I have to praise Quark for this time ‘doing it for themselves’.

    I’d love to know how much the design agency were paid for ‘design­ing’ the 2005 logo, and how long it took them to design it..

    And while not want­i­ng to offend design­ers, but I do wish every logo did­n’t have to have a whole sto­ry about how the curves equate to the winds of change while the tail sig­ni­fies we’re lis­ten­ing blah blah blah.… All a load of bol­locks. Does any­one who buys the prod­uct actu­al­ly look at the com­pa­ny logo and recog­nise ANY mean­ing from the ‘mar­ket­ing’ bumph?
    Lets see… Shell Oil… sim­ple logo, instant­ly recog­nis­able… have no idea what the ethos behind the logo is, but I recog­nise it’s a shell and know it’s a shell gas station…
    Coca Cola… instant­ly recog­nis­able, I don’t care what the curves sig­ni­fy, I like the taste, and don’t dis­like the Pepsi logo any more than the Coca Cola logo…
    Kodak… oth­er than resem­bling a cap­i­tal K, I like the fact that it’s bright and again, instant­ly recog­nis­able. I’m sure there were some ram­blings about what these logos stood for when they were designed, but how many of us actu­al­ly think about them when we’re buy­ing a Kodak film, or a bot­tle of coke?
    To me, and please don’t flame me for this, all this hot air about the sig­nif­i­cance of the curves, swirls, shapes and colour is sim­ply for an expen­sive, sor­ry, ‘pre­mi­um’ design agency to attempt jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of their fees.…

    Give me a logo that looks nice, is cost effec­tive when print­ing let­ter­heads, and looks pro­fes­sion­al. I don’t care to know about the mood or poet­ic skill of the designer.…

    J

  26. Rob

    Actually, the Kodak “K” is his­to­ry: http://​www​.dpre​view​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​0​6​0​1​/​0​6​0​1​0​8​0​1​k​o​d​a​k​l​o​go.asp

    As for the mar­ket­ing descrip­tion of logos, of course no one believes any of that, espe­cial­ly the peo­ple that actu­al­ly design the material.

    In the case of the new, new Quark logo, they went par­tic­u­lar­ly over­board in try­ing to cre­ate an expla­na­tion for what is noth­ing more than a poor­ly styl­ized “Q” in a circle.

  27. Karim Joreige

    I have a hard time being objec­tive about the new logo of Quark, sim­ply because it is too sim­i­lar to the new Sony Ercisson logo.
    I mean if you place them next to each oth­er you’d be sur­prised at how much they are alike.
    So its either Sony Ericsson who are way off because it rep­re­sents bad­ly their image or Quark is way off. I pre­fer to think that Quark is way off because they have a soft­ware that offers no 3D what­so­ev­er, and is very flat because of its asso­ci­a­tion with layouts.
    The logo they pre­sent­ed in 2005 was very good if they could just fix the choice of type­face. The green mod­ern Q was very sim­ple and to the point, and on top of that it resem­bles the tip of a ink pen in a very flat way off course. Which is a big part of Quark. TYPOGRAPHY!
    If any­body from quark is read­ing this :) stick to the ink pen / Q but just pick a type­face that has bit more car­ac­tere thats all.
    Other than that… cool sim­ple and mod­ern logo.

  28. Scott

    WHO CARES! I haven’t used Quark in close to a year. A new , then anoth­er new logo isn’t going to bring me back. I’m a com­plete InDesign convert.

  29. Andy C

    Looks like some­one got sewed!!!! Why change the logo so quickly!
    Personally, I don’t mind the new logo. Its true, is quite sim­i­lar to the
    Sony Ericson logo, but still the logo isnt going to change a slack­ing page lay­out soft­ware pack­age. Get your soft­ware right 1st Quark, then your logo sec­ond. Personally If Quarks soft­ware was still any good it would­nt mat­ter what their logo looked like. Quark seems to have made extra work for them selves. You Guys should have kept the fist old logo to save your­selves­selves from embrasment.
    I feel sor­ry for you guys! Your loos­ing your market!

  30. pixelpusher

    None of this should be a sur­prise to any of us.
    Quark paid a lot of mon­ey for the 2005 and more than like­ly had no bud­get for rebrand­ing the com­pa­ny again. They had to change the logo, there was­n’t a choice since all the peo­ple who buy their prod­uct cares about all the things that went wrong with the 2005 logo. They are like so many busi­ness­es that don’t have the bud­get and don’t have the in-house capa­bil­i­ties and they said to them­selves how hard can it be to cre­ate a logo for our­selves. Even adver­tis­ing agen­cies will go to oth­er agen­cies for their own brand­ing needs. I am look­ing for­ward to the adver­tis­ing quark will start doing in-house, after all how hard could it be?!

  31. Swami Krishna Gautam

    Lily with green petals and old Quark logo was much refresh­ing than its new logo. If they want to cor­rect their mis­takes then it is not too late to go back to the orig­i­nal logo and lily which is pleas­ing to the eye.

  32. Peter

    You know what? WHO CARES!
    Quark can use a logo that looks like a trash­can, a 3d bounc­ing red and white ball (like in good ol’ Amiga days) or a green frog even that eats a butterfly… ;-)

    …as long as they make good software.
    And with ver­sion 7 they seem to, not only what my tests show but also wher­ev­er you look (reviews) and who­ev­er you ask.: Quark 7 seems to be a great and inno­v­a­tive product.

    So stop wor­ry­ing about the logo, rather ask where the Universal Binary builds are (from Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft and Quark).

    Greetings
    Peter

  33. roesi

    i don´t agree with most of your com­ments. I think the flat/ 2D ver­sion is a good choice. But you real­ly bored me to death with your inerran­cy. Sit down in front of your favourite tool and design some­thing that´s per­r­fect for quark. It´s seems to be soooo sim­ple! R

  34. LBS

    The orig­i­nal Quark logo was per­fect, sharp and smart. Why did they change it? Just to change it? And who exact­ly is design­ing the new logos? A five-dollar an hour design­er? At least the print­ers are hap­py with Quark for all of the extra busi­ness chang­ing let­ter­head, cards, print­ed man­u­als, freakin’ every­thing now twice in the last year. I per­son­al­ly think it was one of the most ill-advised changes ever in the his­to­ry of com­pa­ny identity.

  35. Paul_Randish

    Peter,
    first of all this is a pur­pose­ful and log­i­cal design dis­cu­sion based on quarks inabil­i­ty to cre­ate an impact­ful brand.
    2nd if I were to judge based on the beta, its still too lit­tle too late.
    Quark only “cares” now about its users after a decade because their in dispare.

  36. Pingback: Foreword

  37. Dave Marcoot

    One of worst logos i have ever seen. Insipid and unin­spired. Reminiscent of OX icons. Since when did lens flares and emboss­ing become the ele­ments of a good logo?

    The only thing this logo calls to action is to stop look­ing at your oper­at­ing sys­tem GUI for inspiration.

    “A potent emblem, the 2006 logo both rem­i­nisces as a tar­get and
    com­mu­ni­cates action. It’s cir­cu­lar, three-dimensional relief in green
    is evoca­tive of a but­ton, imply­ing a call to action—click here to go.
    Offsetting the Q and plac­ing the tail only inside the let­ter’s counter
    cre­ates the sen­sa­tion that the but­ton may have already been pushed,
    that action is already under­way and some­thing is about to happen.
    Subtle lens flares along the raised edges give the image a metallic
    new­ness and rein­force the lines of force estab­lished by the jutting
    diag­o­nal and off-center, vari­able weight letter.””

    The most ego­tis­ti­cal of artist would blush at such flow­ery prose. its obvi­ous where the author stands on the “quark vs inde­sign debate, when they cant sep­a­rate a pro­gram from its freak­ing logo.

  38. Dave Marcoot

    One of worst logos i have ever seen. Insipid and unin­spired. Reminiscent of OX icons. Since when did lens flares and emboss­ing become the ele­ments of a good logo?

    The only thing this logo calls to action is to stop look­ing at your oper­at­ing sys­tem GUI for inspiration.

    “A potent emblem, the 2006 logo both rem­i­nisces as a tar­get and
    com­mu­ni­cates action. It’s cir­cu­lar, three-dimensional relief in green
    is evoca­tive of a but­ton, imply­ing a call to action—click here to go.
    Offsetting the Q and plac­ing the tail only inside the let­ter’s counter
    cre­ates the sen­sa­tion that the but­ton may have already been pushed,
    that action is already under­way and some­thing is about to happen.
    Subtle lens flares along the raised edges give the image a metallic
    new­ness and rein­force the lines of force estab­lished by the jutting
    diag­o­nal and off-center, vari­able weight letter.””

    The most ego­tis­ti­cal of artist would blush at such flow­ery prose. its obvi­ous where the author stands on the “quark vs inde­sign debate, when they cant sep­a­rate a pro­gram from its freak­ing logo.

  39. hunter

    Hey every­one, don’t for­get that Quark did­n’t have a logo in 2005, they were just using the Scottish Arts Council logo. Now, despite what­ev­er every­one thinks about it, they do have a logo. The 3D ver­sion slight­lyf looks like Sony Ericsson’s but not enough to be objec­tion­able. I com­mend them for swal­low­ing their pride and find­ing the bucks to do a com­plete rebrand­ing. I just hope they got their mon­ey back from SicolaMartin. By the way, in my opin­ion all that crap about evoca­tive­ness and a call to action is just a bunch of dri­v­el. I’m thor­ough­ly fed up with artists and design­ers jus­ti­fy­ing ugly work or high prices with exot­ic comen­tary. Unfortunately folks that don’t know any bet­ter are thor­ough­ly impressed.

  40. Ninon Do

    I give Quark thump up for their new design. The fact that they decid­ed to move-on and cre­at­ed some­thing on their own. I have seen so many logos, ads are cop­pied by design­ers and I think that is such a lousy part of the agen­cies. Its not Quark to blame. I repect Quark and I love the new logo very much. Its mod­ern, cre­ative , sim­ple but has big mean­ing behind it. I am look­ing for­ward to their new release of Quark 7.

    I read an arti­cle about their new pre­flight fea­tures with­in the appli­ca­tion. I used PasteBoard and FlightCheck Professional from Markzware for over 7 years now. I think they have a patent on their prod­uct. I hate to see Quark and Adobe rip­ping off oth­er com­pa­ny patent. Adobe In-Design has pre­flight build-in but its so lame. I love Markzware prod­uct and I will con­tin­ue stick with them.

  41. Cherie

    For the design of their 2007 logo Quark should have a design con­test. This would at least get the design com­mu­ni­ty involved with their prod­uct. B.C. Govt did this for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver: http://​www​.van​cou​ver2010​.com

    Personally, I think this 2010 logo is an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter, but the price was right!

  42. Justin

    3d effects in a logo. tsk tsk tsk. looks like a cheesy sports logo or some­thing. or pac-man throw­ing up.

  43. Pingback: pull to inflate » Blog Archive » “Design Inspired”, maybe more than just inspiration?

  44. terry nicholls

    I have grown up using quark and admire the pro­gram some­what. I have to say this logo is a ridicu­lous come­back for quark con­sid­er­ing the huge orig­i­nal crit­i­cism. Clearly a brain-dead chair­man has been impressed by the bev­el effect in Photoshop and thought, “hey that’s not bad we should stick with this and save our­selves a few quid rather than get­ting it re-designed properly”

  45. J Post author

    The logo is too visu­al­ly con­fus­ing. It actu­al­ly makes my brain hurt.
    I feel sor­ry for the design­er, he prob­a­bly mocked up a cou­ple (includ­ing a few sug­ges­tions from head office) and they even­tu­al­ly went with the weak­est one.

    If this was the best of the bunch, what on earth did the oth­ers look like.

  46. M Jenius

    Yeah, I won­der what the oth­er ones looked like. I bet there was at least one or two (that did­n’t make the cut) that would have been a bet­ter choice. LOL, yeah I can see that this was prob­a­bly the pick of a “mar­ket­ing guru” or a “micro-manamaniac exec­u­tive” with total dis­s­re­gard to what the cre­ative direc­tor had to say. Or was there even a cre­ative direc­tor? In any case. I agree! they are try­ing, and kudos to them for that.

  47. Jason

    The effects seem tacked on because the logo is
    visu­al­ly weak. To me, espe­cial­ly on a white back­ground, it does look like ‘pac­man’ throw­ing up, because the green catch­es the eye. 

    I have no inten­tion on blam­ing design for this how­ev­er. These types of bevel/drop shadow/glow effects are only visu­al­ly strik­ing to some­one with no experience. 

    Time and time again I am asked to put a bev­el or a drop shad­ow on some­thing. It’s the age of the high school stu­dent and the inter­net. Most peo­ple don’t devel­op art skills beyond that and there­fore the world can be a top­sy tur­vey place with bad designs chas­ing good ones.

    A sol­id 2 colour logo with­out any of these effects is what is real­ly need­ed. It needs to look strong in its own right, flat.

    To me, it looks like some exec has told the design­er what to do, which is a prob­lem with our indus­try as a whole. 

    PLEASE. Leave the design­ing to some­one with some tal­ent and in turn they will leave your spread­sheets alone.

Comments are closed.