Quark of Fate

Maybe after a decade or so of working in the graphic arts trade press (or whatever twilight realm of it I'm in now) I've become abnormally cynical, but my feeling is that a company is getting desperate when it takes a one-in-four-years opportunity (like, say, a major printing trade show) to announce...a new logo. I love lines like this:

“PANTONE 368 was the perfect choice for an innovative company such as Quark. This yellow green, a symbol of growth, is invigorating and revitalizing, and breathes new life into a brand, in addition to drawing attention to it. By embracing this color for its new logo, Quark is giving its customers the connotation of the continuing growth of ideas and concepts, and that it is on the edge of new technologies.”

Yeah, I feel sorry for those dumb saps stuck with PANTONE 367--that color spells doom and failure, and connotes visions of corporate executives eating puppies.

What I suppose is even funnier is that the new logo appears to be a near-exact replica of the Scottish Arts Council logo (except that the SAC's logo is not PANTONE 368, so I have no idea how they go on living). An accident, I would think, but I guess it could be worse; it could have been the logo of a toilet cleanser or hemorrhoid cream or something.