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Following yesterday’s news of Say Media acquiring Remodelista, this is shaping up to be the week of design-based buyouts. Early yesterday, the Denver-based publishing software company Quark announced that it has been acquired by the California-based private equity firm, Platinum Equity. Like with most purchases, the promise is immediately made that everything will stay relatively the same, thus appeasing dedicated users. “This wasn’t an exit play; it was a very specific opportunity to find an investment partner,” Quark’s CEO told the Denver Business Journal, who went on to write that “the deal won’t change Quark’s headquarters location, executives or employment numbers.” However, even with these reassurances, just the mention of an “exit move” indicates how Quark has struggled after losing its dominance in the publishing and design market to Adobe over the past decade, which seemed to have knocked it off its bearings to a considerable degree (DesignInfo has a great, quick overview of how the company has fared over the past 10+ years). Whether or not this new management can turn things around and head the company in the right direction is anyone’s guess, but it will be interesting to see how it all pans out regardless. Here’s a bit from Quark President and CEO, Ray Schiavone, in his letter about the acquisition:

As a global investment firm, Platinum Equity is well-positioned to help us continue to execute our dynamic publishing vision through their market reach, merger and acquisition experience, and operational support. Just as importantly, the firm shares Quark’s commitment to our customers. This is the natural next step in Quark’s evolution.

On behalf of the entire Quark team, I want to thank you once again for the relationship we have built and for your continued confidence in our capabilities. We look forward to earning that trust each and every day.

Although we don’t knit, we onced harbored an obsession with embroidery floss that still makes us go all tingly when in proximity to a Jo-Ann Fabrics, so when the knit-tastic Mary Beth Klatt told us that she had created an app about yarn, we said “Tell us more!” Designed for both the iPhone and the iPad, Yarn U is “an on-the-go reference guide to more than 170 yarns,” says Klatt, who has taught sewing at Chicago’s famed Vogue Fabrics and rarely leaves the house without knitting needles or crochet hooks. “It tells you on-the-spot, essential information about the yarn—such as yardage, fiber content, and stitch gauge—as well as pros and cons for the yarn.” Amateur knitters and seasoned experts alike can use the app to select the perfect yarn for a project and avoid all manner of yarn-related disappointments. The $2.99 iTunes download also includes plenty of examples to admire. Adds Klatt, “There are tons of pictures of completed projects that could be inspiring for future hats, sweaters, blankets, and more.” Put on your future hat and enroll in Yarn U today.

Got an app we should know about? Spin us a yarn at unbeige@mediabistro.com

“It’s like going to a Broadway stage crew, who are very talented at what they’re doing, and saying, ‘Can you help us create the next summer movie blockbuster?’ I think it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the way design works.

It’s obvious it wasn’t going to work. It’s only if you’re under the spell of this very traditional print-centric bias that you would ever think that this would work. I don’t know who the executive was that said this is the way we’re going to approach it, but this is not a decision that I would put on my résumé.”

-Design mind and former NYTimes.com design director Khoi Vinh on Condé Nast’s print-centric, ‘magazine replica’ approach to the tablet—which made existing art and production staffers from the print side responsible for making iPad layouts on Adobe’s platform—in a story by Nitasha Tiku in The New York Observer

Web Friends Photos altered with Pixlr-o-matic, a free online image editing tool.

Design software giant Autodesk has acquired Pixlr, a free online service for creating, editing, and sharing images. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in Sweden by entrepreneur Ola Sevandersson, three-year-old Pixlr has been likened to a browser-based Instagram. The site offers a trio of Flash-based applications—Pixlr Editor, Pixlr Express, and Pixlr-o-matic—as well as a screengrabbing tool and one-click photo sharing. Sevandersson, who has joined San Francisco-based Autodesk in the wake of the acquisition, focused on speed and ease of use in developing Pixlr. So what changes are in store for Autodesk-owned Pixlr? “Nothing, nada, zip,” wrote Sevandersson on the Pixlr blog earlier this week. “The people at Autodesk believe in the stuff we have done so far, and we are going to be free enough to still deliver kick-ass products. We are however going to be more people working on the service, so better, more stable and new products are going to be the result.” Autodesk plans to use Pixlr to provide image editing for its consumer products, such as SketchBook.

The annual Handmade issue of Wallpaper* comes with a high-tech twist, as it marks the launch of the design, fashion, and lifestyle magazine’s iPad edition. Now available to download from Apple’s App store, the oxymoronic iPad version of the Handmade issue includes all of the content of the print version (on newsstands this week) along with behind-the-scenes videos, user-controlled animations, and a specially commissioned soundtrack by Paris-based DJ and runway music svengali Michel Gaubert, who may be the only person alive (and certainly the only Parisian) with a larger album collection than Karl Lagerfeld. Other tablet-based goodies include an animated cover and how-to-use guide, which details the option to view the magazine in portrait or landscape format. “Our iPad app is a dazzling addition to the tactile touchy-feely print issue. An all-singing and dancing monthly fix with not-to-be-missed added extras,” said editor-in-chief Tony Chambers, in a statement issued by the magazine. “Thank you Jonathan Ive—it feels like the iPad was designed with Wallpaper* in mind.” And in fact the Handmade issue is full of objects actually designed with the magazine in mind, including London-based Kiwi & Pom’s marble and balsa wood “baking kit,” presented here with a recipe for rhubarb and cardamom pie (apple would have been too on-the-nose).

Got an app we should know about? Drop us a line at unbeige@mediabistro.com

Put on your dancing shoes and pick up your tablet device, because 2wice has released its first iPad app. The visual and performing arts journal tapped longtime collaborator Abbott Miller of Pentagram to design “Merce Cunningham Event,” a tribute to the late choreographer as the dance company he founded prepares for its final performances. Available as a free download from the iTunes Store, the app highlights 2wice’s collaborations with Cunningham, who died in 2009 at the age of 90. Users can scoll horizontally through a series of 10 “Events”—Cunningham’s term for his way of restaging aspects of his choreography—that come alive through live-action video, interviews, and historic dance photography. Readers of 2twice will recognize performances such as “How to Pass, Kick, Fall” and “Green World,” for which photographer Katherine Wolkoff captured members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company exploring the gilded-age jungles of Vizcaya in Miami. Holding out for the iPad 3 before you take the tablet plunge? Leap gracefully over to 2twice’s new website. Launched Monday, it contains an archive of issues from the magazine’s entire run.

Got an app we should know about? Drop us a line at unbeige@mediabistro.com

Our love affair with the work of artists such as Cecily Brown, Rudolf Stingel, and Kazimir Malevich (did you know he had a brief career as an amateur boxer under the name “The Black Square”?) takes a turn for the digital thanks to Gagosian Gallery’s new iPad app, designed by the nimble-minded wizards over at @radical.media. Available as a free download from the iTunes Store, the app is your source for Gagosian goodies that will change on a quarterly basis. The debut offerings include a touch-sensitive “sketch” view that reveals 20 states of a Picasso etching of his muse/lover Marie-Thérèse, gigapixel digital photography of recent paintings by John Currin, and archival footage of Robert Rauschenberg’s 1966 performance, “Open Score.” Can grainy film of a pugilistic young Malevich be far behind?

Got an app we should know about? Drop us a line at unbeige@mediabistro.com

(Photo: RISD)

This year’s Rhode Island School of Design commencement ceremony takes place tomorrow afternoon at the Rhode Island Convention Center in downtown Providence, and in addition to diplomas and the well-designed wisdom of commencement speaker Bill Moggridge, the 611 graduates will each take home an “artrepreneur kit.” Stocked with tools to help artists and designers present their portfolios, take credit card payments, and market their work online, the practical parting gifts include goodies from companies such as Square, Behance, YouSendIt, and Etsy, which is offering an Etsy RISD Fellowship to the 2011 graduate whose shop on the recently launched RISD Etsy Team Page shows the most promise. “A new kind of art-and-design-led leadership is needed to innovate in the current global economy,” said RISD President John Maeda in a statement issued by the school. “Artists and designers bring their intuitive, creative thinking to a broad array of fields, and with our artrepreneur kit, we are providing them with just a few of the tools and resources that can help launch their work into the public spectrum and help them make a living, in whatever way they choose.”

“People keep coming at me with the question, is it a painting or is it a photograph? Technically it’s a photograph. It’s a photograph because it’s photographic paper. But obviously I think about them as paintings, because they refer to the history of painting, right? I also have to think about them as sculptures, because every part of the process is part of the project. They’re sculptures because they play on the idea of what should be hanging in a gallery. In that sense they’re also kind of ready-mades….They’re uniques. I advertise them as being really easy to make, but the truth is, nothing is really easy to make. I make hundreds and hundreds of them, and then I edit down to the four that seem to work well together. But, of course, I try to play it up. Like, ‘Oh, they’re so easy. It’s nothing.’”

—Cory Arcangel, in an interview with fellow artist Mary Heilmann published in the April issue of Interview. An exhibition of new work by Arcangel opens May 26 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Starting next month, Adobe will be trying something that seems both a long time coming and might serve as a smart move for the company. This week, they’ve announced a new release of their Creative Suite line of products, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and others, used widely by designers. They’ve not moved on yet to CS6, as this latest will be just half, at 5.5, but beyond the usual improvements in the software, they’ve also introduced a new pricing plan. Instead of shelling out the hundreds or thousands of dollars for each new release, 5.5 and presumably all releases thereafter assuming this is successful, their customers will have the option to subscribe to their software. Don’t have the $2599 you’ll need to buy their everything-included Master Collection? You can rent it for either $129 per month (once you sign up for a full year), or $195/per, if you decide to just go month-to-month. Bloomberg reports that the move is designed to remove the initial cost barrier for users while allowing others to try out a product and then hopefully purchase it once they’re hooked. It’s an interesting idea and one we’re not surprised by at all that they’re trying out. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the move in the comments, so fire away.