Special Notice: Celebrate QuarkXPress Contest Winner

Late Thursday night it was brought to my attention that Matt Bargell, the First Place Winner in the recent Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition, is a contract designer for X-Ray Magazine, one of the companies furnishing prizes for the contest.

UPDATED: Monday, 6 June 2005

Additionally, X‑Ray’s pub­lish­er and edi­tor, is Cyndie Shaffstall, who also runs the QuarkAlliance pro­gram for Quark, Inc. Cyndie was also instru­men­tal in arrang­ing some of the prizes that were con­tributed to the QuarkXPress Postcard Competition, which began dis­tri­b­u­tion from var­i­ous points to the win­ners of that con­test imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the Tuesday announcement.

After ini­tial­ly learn­ing about the mat­ter Thursday night, I ver­i­fied the infor­ma­tion Friday. At which point I con­tact­ed Matt, who con­firmed via e‑mail that at the time he entered he did know that X‑Ray Magazine sub­scrip­tions were among the prizes for which he was com­pet­ing (though, giv­en his asso­ci­a­tion to the mag­a­zine, I doubt it was a prize he real­ly needed).

The rea­son com­pe­ti­tions of this sort dis­al­low entries from employ­ees et al and their fam­i­lies is to remove the temp­ta­tion for, and appear­ance of, bias in judge­ments. During the hand­ful of e‑mail mes­sages Matt and I exchanged (all relat­ed to the con­test), the only pro­fes­sion­al affil­i­a­tions indi­cat­ed by Matt were to his design firm, Bargell Studios, and Rodderboy, his appar­el com­pa­ny. X‑Ray was nev­er mentioned.

Until Friday when I con­firmed Matt’s cred­its in the X‑Ray mast­head as well as on the mag­a­zine’s Website, I was com­plete­ly unaware of his sta­tus as a con­tract design­er to X‑Ray. Though I am a sub­scriber to that mag­a­zine, I also sub­scribe to InDesign Magazine, Step Inside Design Magazine, Proxy, Photoshop User, Popular Science, and a dozen oth­er peri­od­i­cals I read, glance through, or allow to pile up month­ly. Rarely do I have the time to read every word of a mag­a­zine, much less know the names of every­one in the mast­head unless I was the one to lay it out. In fact, I would be hard pressed to name any­one but the edi­tors and my favorite colum­nists at any of the above periodicals.

While judg­ing the con­test entries I was not aware of Matt’s affil­i­a­tion with X‑Ray.

Similarly, I do not believe Matt intend­ed to con­ceal that fact. Neither he nor any of the oth­er entrants dis­closed a client list, nor was it request­ed. Like any suc­cess­ful graph­ic design­er, Matt gets around. X‑Ray was just one of his clients.

What should be done now… Is a moot question. 

Despite sub­stan­tial pub­lic­i­ty for the Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition includ­ing ver­i­fied and repeat­ed pub­lic­i­ty on, among oth­ers, QuarkVSInDesign​.com, CreativePro​.com, TUAW​.com, The PowerXChange, X‑Ray Magazine’s web­site, The Design Weblog, The Magazine Weblog, About​.com, Quark’s own Quark​.com User Forums, the world’s largest and most active QuarkXPress dis­cus­sion groups and mail­ing lists, and the Websites and newslet­ters of many of the com­pa­nies fur­nish­ing prizes, we received exact­ly three entries cel­e­brat­ing QuarkXPress. While it should not be con­strued in any way as dimin­ish­ing the tal­ent and cre­ativ­i­ty evi­dent in the designs, all three entries are on dis­play as win­ners of the contest.

In the Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition the num­ber of entries was sig­nif­i­cant­ly greather than three, though the exact count is not rel­e­vant to this dis­cus­sion. This con­test received only the min­i­mum num­ber of entries required to sat­is­fy the win­ning slots. In fact, before receiv­ing Matt’s entry on 1 May, 2005, I had already resolved to nul­li­fy the Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition should it ulti­mate­ly receive few­er than three entries. I remained fast to the res­o­lu­tion, even with Matt’s entry in hand, until the arrival of the third entry more than a week later.

The ques­tion that tru­ly mat­ters is whether Matt’s asso­ci­a­tion to X‑Ray or any oth­er enti­ty fur­nish­ing prizes was known to me and had an effect on my judge­ment of the con­test entries and upon the award of his cur­rent sta­tus as 1st Place Winner in this com­pe­ti­tion. The answer to both is no.

As his asso­ci­a­tion to a prize con­trib­u­tor was not known until days after the pub­lic con­fir­ma­tion of his design as a win­ner, it could not fac­tor into my judge­ment of the win­ning entries. Matt’s high­ly cre­ative, whim­si­cal, and obvi­ous­ly skilled “QuarkMan Delivers” design clear­ly was, and remains, the best of the entries received in the Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition. Therefore its sta­tus as 1st Place Winner stands.

Sincerely,

Pariah S. Burke
Editor-In-Chief

Update: Monday, 6 June 2005

Saturday, after pub­lish­ing my state­ment about the Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition and reaf­firm­ing Matt Bargell as the 1st Place Winner, I received an e‑mail from Matt in sup­port of my statement.

Moreover, though my deci­sion that Matt’s entry retain its sta­tus as 1st Place Winner enti­tles him to keep the prizes award­ed to that posi­tion, he has vol­un­tary elect­ed to donate his win­nings to his home­town junior col­lege and high school.

The below is quot­ed direct­ly from Matt’s e‑mail to me (with permission):

I am in com­plete sup­port of any state­ment or any deci­sion you feel is nec­es­sary even if this meant my fore­go­ing any of the prizes and/or being dis­qual­i­fied as the win­ner of the contest.

If I am to remain the win­ner, I would like to request that my prizes be donat­ed to a respect­ed design school or some kind of stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion (or anoth­er indi­vid­ual) that we decide is wor­thy. I feel like this would be the right thing to do on my end. Honestly, the fact [that] you chose my design is reward enough for me.

After look­ing into which orga­ni­za­tion is more in need of which prize, Matt will donate his win­nings to either, or both, Northeastern Junior College and Sterling High School, both in Sterling, Colorado.

While I thought win­ning this con­test hon­ored Matt and his design, it was in fact he who was hon­or­ing QuarkVSInDesign​.com and the oth­er win­ners and entrants of these two con­tests. I hope you will join me in applaud­ing Matt’s integri­ty and generosity.