Quark released another logo over a week ago after their previous redesign drew much ire from the community. First the good news, I love the new 'Q'. The fact that the straight line only resides within the circle makes it look like a small road, inviting you in to the product. Oh what wonders await you within QuarkXPress' GUI. Okay, that was a stretch, and now for the bad part of this entry.

Are the people at Quark out of their minds? How is this logo ANY better than the previous one? And the fact that it was designed in house makes me wonder about the caliber of the people there. Let's face it, the previous logo was much more fitting, even though it was so ubiquitous. I don't know how this beveled, lens flare, shadow/gradient button has anything to do with Quark. It looks like it should be the power button for the XBox 360. Everytime you look at it, doesn't it make you want to just push it? Maybe if we push it enough times it'll inject some life into the company.

Last week, when I first saw it, I figured I should take some time to get acquainted with the logo before I really commented on it. And each day that went by, I realized the logo itself was somewhat nice and cliche and so very unfit for Quark, but what really aggravated me was the small sparkle effect on the top left region of the outer and middle ring. Whoever thought that was a good idea should be stoned. Really, the stress just accumulates everytime I check the Quark site and see how awful it degrades. Take a close look at the logo on the top left corner of the site, doesn't it look like some artifact as a result of shrinking and compression?

They are so lost and the fact that they admitted that it was designed in-house, not good. 1) They should get a refund from Young & Rubicam for the first catastrophe, 2) I'm sure the Quark employees are great programmers, and obviously they know how to use Photoshop or whatever program they employed to come up with this new logo, but something tells me there's no concept behind it. I can already visualize it, bunch of people drawing Q's on their notepads... found one that looked different and Photoshop filtered the hell out of it.

Better luck next time. On their current path, the next logo they'll be designing will feature a tombstone - to oblivion and beyond. Very unfortunate since everyone always likes to root for the underdog, and Quark is very much the underdog right now.