LogoThief

http://www.logothief.com/

by eksith • 13 years ago

58 35 13 years ago

skaushik92• 13 years ago

At 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• 13 years ago

There'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• 13 years ago

"Good artists copy, great artists steal."

That one?

marquis2• 13 years ago

Which 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/

prawn• 13 years ago

The 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• 13 years ago

I 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• 13 years ago

While several of the examples posted are egregious, I also find several not all that compelling.

phaus3• 13 years ago

Really? 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• 13 years ago

I 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?

DanBC3• 13 years ago

I agree, but which designs on the subbed site are less compelling?

GhotiFish• 13 years ago

this one by a wide margin

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-...

Even I designed a logo like that once for a coffee shop at my university.

TillE• 13 years ago

The Joca one is definitely "inspired by", but likely not rising to the level of copyright infringement. Same with Milagros Urbanos.

allochthon3• 13 years ago

Honestly, 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• 13 years ago

Are you real?

mparlane• 13 years ago

Are you just fantasy?

hristov• 13 years ago

I 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.

allochthon3• 13 years ago

You'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.

kazagistar2• 13 years ago

There are demonstrations where, given a set of cues, or just a vague description of a products, designers converge of very very similar designs. We all live in the same culture, and are exposed to the same stimuli... unintentional or convergent replication of ideas is not only possible, but reasonably common.

Additionally, many industries are IP-free, and are doing excellent nonetheless: recipes and fashion come to mind.

AnotherDesigner• 13 years ago

While 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.

sheetjs• 13 years ago

Is there any form of recourse if you discover that a designer you hired actually stole a logo?

coldtea3• 13 years ago

Sue him?

kordless• 13 years ago

And it's not just limited to logos: http://www.geekceo.com/static/images/zoto_zoho.png

LogoThief

Related Stories