Many of us grew up working with QuarkXPress as our desktop publishing tool. After all it was the industry standard for years.

Aldus was the only other player in the market with Pagemaker, but Quark stole the show. Adobe purchased Aldus, acquiring its two major hitters, Freehand and Pagemaker. Freehand’s legacy was doomed from the start since Adobe already had one of it’s major applications Illustrator on the rise. But Pagemaker was different. Adobe launched another version of Pagemaker, but the reality was that it did not compete with Quark.

Quark was King.

Then Adobe launched it’s newest baby, InDesign. At first, Quark lovers had no fear at all, afterall, they were on top of the mountain, and let’s be honest, the first two versions of InDesign lacked quite a bit. But slowly over time, especially with the integration of the entire Adobe suite of products, InDesign began to gain traction.

Fast forward…..

InDesign is by far the most preferred Desktop Publishing tool in the industry. In an informal survey of designers and pre-press production facilities, Quark has fallen from grace and not fallen gracefully.

This article from TechCrunch tells some of the details of the acquision… Read the Article.

The once giant has been purchased, now we will have to wait and see what comes from this acquisition and if Quark resurges or just fades away.