Quark Are Different… Kinda

By Alex Walker | September 13, 2005 | CSS

I’m probably stretching the connection to design here, but I thought this was worth at least a chuckle.

With Adobe’s InDesign receiving quite a bit of positive press in recent times, Quark appear to have responded in part by freshening up their branding — a worthwhile step to get people to take a fresh look at you.

However, while simple logos are often beautiful logos, by definition there isn’t much to them. As pointed out by Josh Pigford (RockNRollPig) in the forums, their new logo bears an unfortunate resemblance to a couple of pre-existing logos.

Comparison of Logos

I guess the reality is that it is virtually impossible to google for related logo designs.

Alex Walker

Alex manages design and front end development for SitePoint.com and writes for Design Festival's monthly design newsletter.

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{ 7 comments }

AlexW March 19, 2006 at 7:30 pm: Nice job.
The ‘tricked up’ version is a bevelled to within an inch of it’s life and will age pretty quickly, but the flat version is a really good foundation logo. You could imagine them reversing it, chroming it, running leopard spots over it. Very versatile.
Have to have a crack at the site that announced it though.
Why change the name of something that your audience already understands (i.e. a ‘Search’ text field) to the name of something else they know about (‘Pathfinder’ – an Adobe drawing tool), but that is completely unrelated to the concept of searching? Hmmm…
Kevin Yank March 18, 2006 at 9:15 am: Quark has had another go at its rebranding, and the results are more distinctive this time.
artemis September 16, 2005 at 5:59 am: I recently noticed that Abbey National have changed there logo yet again but at least this time they don’t look like a beauty parlour http://www.abbey.com/ I like the quark logo but it is a shame that it is so un-original
Andrew K September 15, 2005 at 2:35 am: How much did they spend on that sooper piece of original logo design!
Frozentoast September 14, 2005 at 4:34 pm: I’m pretty confident that the symbol used is part of a dingbat font – which would be worth more than a chuckle.
AlexW September 14, 2005 at 7:26 am: Yep, I could see that. Nice idea.
BerislavLopac September 14, 2005 at 4:23 am: Hmmm… It strikes me that it shouldn’t be too difficult to alter that green Q to resemble the tip of a fountain pen while still evoking a letter. And it would be quite appropriate to the application.