Awkward, Quawkward, Quark

Quark New Logo

Honestly, the old logo from publication design software company Quark was outdated and ugly but at least it had some unique characteristics. On the left is the new one: pretty modern and cool but

Quark - Old Logo before Sep 2005
Old Logo

QuarkXPress, the flagship product of this Denver-based company, still holds the dominant share in publication design software but is threatened by Adobe’s InDesign, and handicapped by the dominator’s traditional problem of perceived insensitivity to the customer.

So this logo change is the signal that “honestly, we’ve changed!”

Designer Chris Wood emphasizes the importance of “Quark Green” (Pantone 368), saying “I was looking for something that would take Quark in a completely new direction and represent so many things that Quark has gone through: rejuvenation, growth and rebirth.”

In reality it is just copying and following the leader (Adobe’s InDesign) without rethinking (awkward) structures.

Even worse: Quark’s new logo is basically just the lower-case ‘a’ in the typeface GIRL designed by Dirk Uhlenbrock;
see FOUNTAIN catalogue; or the upper and lowercase Q and A from the typeface PopGod by Rian Hughes.

Quark Font

And Quark isn’t the only company using it as you can see below:

Similar Quark Logos

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