6 ms·
LogoThief
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- skaushik92 13y agoAt what point does this go from plagiarism to creatively modifying another piece of art? For example, epic nation's logo is clever in that by rotation, it changes the EZ logo to EN. Is that necessarily plagiarism? Isn't that more akin to a "remix"?
- Dogamondo 13y agoThere's an old saying by one Mr Picasso that fits this nicely. It's often mistakenly attributed to one Mr Jobs an awful lot too...
- gk1 13y ago"Good artists copy, great artists steal." That one?
- marquis 13y agoWhich in itself is attributed to many - I first heard it via Stravinsky, but apparently it's not Picasso's either. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/
- phaus 13y agoI wouldn't be surprised it Picasso hadn't ever said it at all. Even if he had, Picasso created his own genre of art. Actions speak louder than words. It really doesn't matter where the quote came from. Even when put into proper context (which has rarely happened in the past) the logic behind it is shaky. Great artists do imitate, as students they copy the techniques and methods of those who came before them, in order to learn and master the skills they will need to make their own art. When they are ready, the truly great artists then proceed to create things that we've never seen before.
- marquis 13y agoIn the context of Music, which I understand better than the visual arts, imitation is what a young composer or musician will do. Once they develop their own voice, 'stealing' becomes a thing of great skill: remixing, as it were. In Stravinsky's case, he lifted content from Webern and made it new. Bartok did it with Shostakovich who did it in turn to Tchaikovsky and on and on and circularly.. one of the wonders of studying musical history is tracing the influences, and the mastery of those who took what came before them and made it new.
- prawn 13y agoThe process is much more about using another idea as inspiration and a starting point. It's a way to get out of a rut. You'll almost never end up with anything like your starting point. I've always assumed that this is what the quote is referencing rather than taking actual elements in full as is the case in a few of these examples.
- vwadhwani 13y agoI once hired a designer to create a logo and only months later discovered he had poached it from somewhere else. Not all of these companies are "logo thieves", some simply didn't know that the designer they paid to create something original had copied something.
- Glyptodon 13y agoWhile several of the examples posted are egregious, I also find several not all that compelling.
- phaus 13y agoReally? I looked at all of them and only found one that wasn't an obvious copy. I've seen similar sites where lots of the accusations seemed sketchy, but these are all really blatant.
- bung 13y agoI used to live with a designer who independently came up with many ideas that we ended up seeing show up over the years. He had come up with this video idea of people's thoughts bubbling over their heads, nothing special, and in the short term a Toronto Dominion bank commercial had the exact same thing. Many designers read/resource all the same sites, it's no wonder there are similar designs. I figure this explains some of the "less compelling" duplicates, perhaps it was just people thinking along the same lines?
- DanBC 13y agoI agree, but which designs on the subbed site are less compelling?
- GhotiFish 13y agothis one by a wide margin http://www.logothief.com/jose-cant-think-outside-the-square/ http://www.logothief.com/jose-cant-think-outside-the-square/ also some of these are different enough to very easily be reached independently. http://www.logothief.com/the-great-international-coffee-cup-rip-off/ http://www.logothief.com/the-great-international-coffee-cup-... Even I designed a logo like that once for a coffee shop at my university.
- phaus 13y agoA couple of the coffee cups might not be direct copies, but the majority of them clearly are. The proportions and shapes are all nearly identical. If you described this logo to ten random web designers and asked them to draw what you described, you would end up with ten considerably different looking cups of coffee. With these logos, almost all of the coffee cups are the same.
- DanBC 13y agoThe coffee cup: Many of the cups are identical. Not similar, but identical. I think that different designers would sketch cups that are very nearly the same, but I find it hard to accept that they'd create identical cups. Using steam for F is an idea that many people would arrive at, but these examples are again identical spirals and lengths. (The coffee bean example in the lower right corner stands out because it's obviously nothing like the logo)
- allochthon 13y agoHonestly, I don't think this is stealing in more than just a technical sense. This is little different that a mashup or a cover of an older song. And some of the newer versions are a little better. Not a big fan of the concept of "intellectual property." The site itself is kind of fun.
- mattermill 13y agoAre you real?
- mparlane 13y agoAre you just fantasy?
- hristov 13y agoI think it is stealing and it is pretty bad. Intellectual property can be misused when it is used to capture something (whether an artistic expression or an invention) that is not very unique or inventive or creative and would have been easily used and discovered by many others had the original "inventor" or "artist" not created it. At that point, intellectual property becomes oppressive. But this is not the case here. These are unique artistic expressions. True they are simple, but it is impossible to imagine someone creating the same thing without knowing the original. There is practically an unlimited number of ways one can convey a logo. Protecting the rights of one logo does not meaningfully limit the rights of others (if you ignore the "right" to get artistic work done for free). In these cases we should allow the artist to have a right to their creation.
- allochthon 13y agoYou've described the technical meaning of stealing very well. But I don't think it's ontologically possible for a person to own something like these logos. Such ownership is a legal fiction set up by legal traditions whose intellectual property protections have started to become more of a problem than a solution. Their remaining relevance it seems to me is to empower corporations such as IBM and Microsoft to extract rent (in the context of patents), and to give money to attorneys and politicians and lobbyists. It is hard for me to have much sympathy for the notion that such protections are in place in the present context primarily for artist making the logo (in the case of trademark, etc.) when there are so many other interests that hang just a little bit back in the background. In most cases on the site the copies are undeniably in bad taste. But not something to be protected by law, in my opinion.
- AnotherDesigner 13y agoWhile designers like myself often think of ourselves as the victims here, often the companies are victims as well. Many of them spent money, good money in some cases, to end up with a shady designer or agency ripping off work and selling it as their own. The client is not only left without a mark to represent their brand, having to start all over but they've lost the money they already spent and risk lawsuits for the infringement. This is another good reason to find a reputable designer you can trust. A local designer you've met face to face and know a real name and address will help tremendously as many shady "designers" like to hide behind the anonymity of the internet. This is also the reason why many crowd-sourced services and competitions have been caught with blatantly stolen logos for sale.
- kordless 13y agoAnd it's not just limited to logos: http://www.geekceo.com/static/images/zoto_zoho.png http://www.geekceo.com/static/images/zoto_zoho.png