Quark VS InDesign .com Announces Winners of Twin Celebrate InDesign and QuarkXPress and InDesign Postcard Design Competitions
Quark VS InDesign .com (www.quarkvsindesign.com), The Authority for News and Opinion on the War Between Desktop Publishing Giants QuarkXPress® and Adobe® InDesign®, today announced the winners in its twin design contests in celebrating and honoring InDesign and QuarkXPress.
The contests, which began on 11 April 2005, initially announced a $10,000 prize chest to be divided amongst six winners. Within hours additional announcements had to be made when the total prizes increased to first $14,000 then $15,500 when the entire desktop publishing support industry showed its support for the contests, the design community, and QuarkXPress and InDesign.
While Quark VS InDesign.com and the industry honored its affinity and passion for two of the graphic communications industries’ greatest powerhouse tools, the design competitions were truly about providing a vehicle for Quark and InDesign users to express their passions. And they did.
The Competition
“Though with an open forum for extolling the virtues of two tools that have so vehemently polarized a dozen industries and with such a valuable prize chest, we had anticipated a greater number of entries, particularly in the QuarkXPress contest, we did receive some amazing examples of graphic design,” said Pariah S. Burke, Editor-In-Chief and judge of the competitions.
The postcard format of entries presented two distinct challenges to entrants:
First, the small space constrained the amount of copy that could be employed to describe the layout application or its features. In a postcard advertisement, which would arrive in a mailbox amidst a hail of bills and advertisements, the use of compelling visuals was essential-even more so when advertising the tools of visual production. That constrained the space available for copy, forcing designers to weigh the value of each word against the space it would occupy.
Second, because a postcard is double-sided and one can never predict which side will greet a viewer, both sides had to be equally engaging. And, rather than all-or-nothing design possible with one-page publication advertisements, entrants were forced to create a story and visual identity that traversed the flip and unified the front and back of each postcard.
“I was impressed with the way each design met these challenges and with the unique vision each designer brought to the same topics, particularly in the Celebrate InDesign Postcard Contest where we received so many more entries,” Burke said. “Each entry displayed talent, dedication to the crafts of design and illustration, and, most of all, passion for their subjects. I truly wish I could give all the entrants a share of the prizes. But, through long and difficult evaluation, of all the amazing designs submitted to the twin competitions, it is the six designs below that best exemplify creative originality, attention to structural detail, good typography and use of space, and, most importantly, a passionate celebration of their respective subject matter.”
The Winners
Dividing a massive prize chest of the latest in professional layout and production software, publications, training services, and stock photography, totaling US$15,500, are six talented winners of the Quark VS InDesign.com Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition and Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition.
- 1st Place – Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition
Migrate, by Jeremy Schultz of Jeremy Schultz Artist (W DesMoines IA)
- 1st Place – Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition
QuarkMan Delivers, by Matt Bargell of Rodderboy LLC (Sterling CO)
- 1st Runner-Up – Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition
Fly with InDesign CS, by Bonnie Wetzel (Windsor CT)
- 1st Runner-Up – Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition
Redefining Layout, by Michael Piperno of Imbue Creative (New Hope PA)
- 2nd Runner-Up – Celebrate InDesign Postcard Competition
Daisies, by Vadim Litvak of easternBLOCK Design (SF CA)
- 2nd Runner-Up – Celebrate QuarkXPress Postcard Competition
Definition, by Stephen Cheslik of Casper Star Tribune (Casper WY)
To view the winning entries, read interviews with the designers behind them, or view a complete list of prizes to be awarded, visit the official website at https://quarkvsindesign.com/contests/.
About Quark VS InDesign .com
Everyday millions of design and production personnel the world over produce tens of millions of pages of newspapers, magazines, books, advertisements, and other printed material in page layout software; that work is done almost exclusively in InDesign or QuarkXPress (Quark for short). Historically, the graphics communications industries have not long tolerated two equal applications for the same tasks, opting instead to standardize across the industries on one. With billion dollar empires standing on either Quark or InDesign, a rivalry as bitter and legendary as the Hatfields and the McCoys, the world’s unblinking eye scrutinizes their every clash.
Quark VS InDesign .com (www.quarkvsindesign.com) is the authoritative correspondent in this bloody war, chronicling every salvo of each battle between entrenched publishing workhorse QuarkXPress, which ruled unchallenged for over a decade, and InDesign, the nimble newcomer built by the company that pioneered desktop publishing and developed every other standard application in the print designer’s tool belt, Adobe Systems, Inc.
