Quad’s brand has always been a mix of dynamic leadership, employee empowerment, and excellence in commercial printing. Over five decades, the company has incrementally updated, but never changed the recipe. 

Quad called on Champions to develop their first visual design system, growing the brand along with the company’s expansion from a Midwest commercial printer to international marketing experience company.

Harry and Betty Quadracci founded Quad/Graphics in 1971 because Harry envisioned “a better way.” This expression has since evolved into “the way extraordinary gets made,” but the heart of Quad remains its people.

Quad’s new design system uses three key components derived from the Quad Bug: Fractiles, Kaleidoscopes, and Type. 

The Quad Bug is a heritage mark created at founding in 1971 by Harry Quadracci to serve as a shorthand for the company name and also a visual reminder of its commercial print offerings. 

Strategic updates to naming track with the company’s expansion of offerings over time. The bug endures, unchanged to this day.

Reimagined as fractiles, the Quad Bug makes up the DNA of the kaleidoscope system. Previously ever-present as a stamp, it now finds more abstract and expressive forms to support messaging and tell the Quad story.

The Quad Kaleidoscope is the most “extraordinary” manifestation of Quad’s brand and a full display of its heart.

Since 1994 everyone who works at Quad from the C-suite to the production floor has come to work in Quad Blues.  The core belief was that each person contributed equally to the success of the company. Quad was a team. 

With the pandemic, work changed, but the belief system held firm. Quad Blues migrated from inside the office building out to a visual expression of the brand. 

Quad Signet is an update to Arthur Baker’s Baker Signet (1965) by Commercial Type. 

The new Q tail replaces the calligraphic swash with the geometries of the Quad Bug, then that new spirit of futurism is carried through the rest of the lettering and font. 

In the end, it’s really all about giving the type a haircut – clipping the ponytail of the original Q – and introducing a double-story “g” for improved readability.

Q - The weight of the mark is bolder, and it introduces a new ‘Q’ tail pulled from the Quad Bug. It increases the scale of the name ‘Quad’ by shortening the ascender of the ‘d’ and making the ‘Q’ bigger.

u - A more compressed ‘u’ drawn to balance out the wordmark.

a - Ball terminals drawn to give strength and modern boldness.
a, d - Terminals have their own distinct flairs.

d - The x-height is increased while the ascenders and descenders are abbreviated to give the four letters in Quad a gravitas of scale. 

The symbols font, created in partnership with Dresser Johnson, is crafted with inspiration from Quad Signet and is built to be a functional complement to the larger graphic system.

The icons feature details that tie them closely to the Quad Signet letterforms: subtle tapers, flared serifs, ball terminals, and an interplay of thick and thin strokes.

Set up as a font file, Quad Icons is easier to control and implement in application than a vector set. Just like any font, Quad Icons can be periodically updated, allows for easy color swaps, and enables proportional scaling with Quad Signet.

The supporting typefaces take all the same Bug-inspiration as Quad Signet and apply it to more industrial fonts.

Quad Graphik Condensed and Quad Graphik Bold adopt the iconic Q tail. They also introduce a double-story “g” for improved readability and rounded punctuation to sync with the Quad Bug.