Quark's Logo -- It Could Happen To You

Through the din of the Quark logo brouhaha comes a quiet voice of reason.

In adver­tis­ing and pub­lic rela­tions there’s a say­ing: “no pub­lic­i­ty is bad pub­lic­i­ty.” That say­ing is the sin­gle great­est Truth of pub­lic rela­tions, and has been proven time and again. There are always, of course, excep­tions to every rule.

Great logo design­ers think alike…?
(Based on a col­lage of logos by Gene Gable, from Sometimes a Logo Is Just a Logo.)

When you’re the sub­ject of pub­lic­i­ty unan­i­mous­ly char­ac­ter­iz­ing you as arro­gant, dis­dain­ful of cus­tomers and fans, and either lazy or pla­gia­riz­ing, unless you’re a rock star it becomes dif­fi­cult to sal­vage any pos­i­tive result. For the major­i­ty of 2005, Denver-based Quark, Inc. has been chok­ing on the sin­gle great­est Truth of pub­lic relations.

During the spring and ear­ly sum­mer of 2005 the entire indus­try was abuzz dis­cussing Quark’s now infa­mous post­cards from the edge. The sto­ry broke on Quark VS InDesign​.com and was quick­ly picked up by near­ly every unbi­ased media agency in the industry–as well as dozens of blogs–just as Quark’s PR machine began to wind up its pitch for next ver­sion of QuarkXPress. At the time, Quark’s mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion activ­i­ties, which dwarfed every­thing the com­pa­ny had done dur­ing the entire pre­ced­ing five years, were just pick­ing up steam. X‑Ray Magazine was revived for a third run, a new print and direct mail adver­tis­ing cam­paign took flight, Quark re-opened the loud­ly closed Quark Forums, a new e‑newsletter mate­ri­al­ized, Quark appeared at trade shows and con­ven­tions, new pro­mo­tion­al pric­ing and third-party soft­ware bun­dles were announced every few weeks, and Quark even con­tributed to and held con­tests. All of that was eclipsed by the sto­ry of the Quark post­cards from the edge.

Earlier this month, just as the pub­lic exco­ri­a­tion over the post­cards began to taper off, Quark revealed its lat­est bid to counter the neg­a­tive publicity–a hip new logo and cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty. Like the sim­i­lar­ly tasked post­cards, the new logo backfired.

Within hours of the live unveil­ing on Quark​.com, accu­sa­tions of pla­gia­rism were lev­eled against Quark.

The new Quark logo, a styl­ized and styl­ish green cir­cle rem­i­nis­cent of a cap­i­tal Q with a point at its bot­tom right cor­ner, is sim­ple and stun­ning in Quark’s logo–and in the logos for Sterling Brands, Alcone, Artworkers, Midas Productions, the Designers Network, and, odd­ly enough, the first to be not­ed, the Scottish Arts Council–all of which pre­ced­ed Quark’s use of the shape by months or even years. Even faster than the Quark post­cards from the edge five months ear­li­er, news of the super­pos­able logos raced across media and the blo­gos­phere. Once again Quark was the excep­tion to the rule about bad publicity.

So wide­spread and uni­lat­er­al­ly con­demn­ing was the news and edi­to­r­i­al regard­ing Quark’s logo that hard­ly any­one noticed the lat­est sneak peek at QuarkXPress 7, includ­ing here­to unseen screen­shots. Both times this year, just as Quark wait­ed in the wings, brush­ing off its old tuxe­do and anx­ious­ly wait­ed to step into the warm glow of the spot­light, it has stum­bled. Instead of strid­ing grace­ful­ly across the stage to exu­ber­ant applause, Quark has tripped on its way through the cur­tain, fum­bling and land­ing flat on its face to rau­cous guf­faws and caus­tic boo­ing. Twice now, in as many sips, the taste of vic­to­ry has turned acidulent.

Now, as the shout­ing, laugh­ing, and hiss­ing reach­es a riotous crescen­do, a sin­gle, calm whis­per slices through the din.

In “Sometimes a Logo Is Just a Logo,” pub­lished today on Creativepro​.com, Gene Gable takes an objec­tive look at the nature and process of trade­mark cre­ation, con­flict search, and where he believes Quark and its brand­ing agency went wrong.

While I agree that Quark… made mis­takes, they’re not the mis­takes most peo­ple are talk­ing about. There is no evi­dence that Quark delib­er­ate­ly stole some­one else’s logo, or that the com­pa­ny was incom­plete in its efforts to find pos­si­ble conflicts.

“Quark’s real trou­ble with its new logo is…a pub­lic rela­tions sna­fu that must be han­dled appro­pri­ate­ly. Quark should vol­un­tar­i­ly change the mark and cite respect for the cre­ativ­i­ty of oth­er orga­ni­za­tions as the rea­son. (Quark says it has vari­a­tions on the logo; per­haps one of those dif­fers enough to pour oil on trou­bled waters.) If the com­pa­ny has already print­ed a lot of mate­r­i­al with the con­tro­ver­sial logo, the mon­e­tary cost of a change will be high. But what is the cost of the design com­mu­ni­ty’s ire?

Gene’s equa­nim­i­ty regard­ing the issue is refresh­ing, although he does acknowl­edge the fact that Quark is in trouble–the logo deba­cle is only the lat­est of Quark’s well-publicized, self-destructive blunders.

The true val­ue of “Sometimes a Logo Is Just a Logo” is not Gene’s posi­tion on Quark’s logo; the bulk of the arti­cle is far more valu­able and infor­ma­tive. It’s about the facts and process of trade­marks, includ­ing their legal nature, cre­ation, reg­is­tra­tion, and poten­tial for con­flict. Quark’s logo is used mere­ly as the impe­tus topic–the hook–to brack­et infor­ma­tion sore­ly lack­ing in the half-informed debates about Quark’s or any logo.

You might think that if obser­vant design­ers around the world can post sev­er­al sim­i­lar logos with­in hours of Quark’s pub­lic debut of the new logo, it should have been just as easy for Quark to have iden­ti­fied the same con­flicts. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly so.

Anyone who deals with intel­lec­tu­al property–which is to say, any­one who designs any­thing, not just logos–must under­stand the basic prin­ci­ples of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty law, includ­ing how trade­marks work. Gene’s arti­cle on Creativepro​.com is an overview, an intro­duc­tion, where any design­er should begin.

Quark is in trouble–with its logo and in oth­er respects–but by under­stand­ing just a lit­tle bit about trade­marks, design­ers can help keep them­selves from fol­low­ing Quark in that humil­i­at­ing stum­ble across cen­ter stage while the audi­ence roars in laughter.

The new Quark logo was cre­at­ed by Chris Wood, cre­ative direc­tor at SicolaMartin, a divi­sion of Young & Rubicam. SicolaMartin also designed Quark’s post­cards from the edge.