An Old Friend Gets New Clothes

Quark announces a new identity with an email to existing customers.

Have you seen Quark’s new corporate identity?

Quark announced it’s new identity today!

I got an email this morning titled â€œBe the First to Know” leading me to Quark’s slick new webpage and their new identity. In the top left corner, freshly green and redesigned, sits the new logomark, a stylized letter Q over the company name. I like the new logo, but it struck me as familiar â€“ something I’d seen on the street, in a club, at the mall. Then it struck me: the new Quark mark looks a lot like the hip-hop clothiers Akademiks mark.

Since today is the start of Fashion Week in New York maybe the folks at Quark figured it’d be a good time to launch their new look just as their hip-hop cousin is displaying a new clothing line for the season.

Do you think we can expect to see seasonal changes for Quark from now on? A fall forward line of packaging and Xtensions perhaps? A slimline case for the Installation CD in the Spring? Maybe they’ll next take the Abercrombie & Fitch route by photographing production designers dressed in bikini tops and board shorts at their workstations in the Summer?

I can’t wait!

I am thrilled that QuarkXPress, the aging stalwart of the page layout scene, has donned some new garb and seems to now be looking into a cleaner, prettier, more designer-friendly (both fashion and page layout) future. It’s a good move for them, cleaning out the closet and rebuilding the wardrobe, and I expect more interesting things to come from them soon.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here the text from the email:

Change is good.

I would like to take this opportunity to present you with an exciting change at Quark. As you can see from this e-mail message, we’ve re-designed our logo and corporate identity to reflect our evolution over the past couple of years.
You’ll see our new look in e-mail messages, on Quark.com , and on everything we do.
As I’m sure you have noticed recently, our logo and corporate identity are not the only things that have changed at Quark. We have grown into a company that listens and responds, and we’re happy to show off our new look to compliment our new outlook.
Let us know what you think â€” about our new logo or whatever is on your mind.

Just send an e-mail message to cservice@quark.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Elisabetta Bruno takes a deeper look into Quark’s current marketing and rebranding efforts in D:Desktop Publishing: Quark’s New Face

09 September 2005