Logo Theft?
It really pisses me off when people steal my logos. Excuse my French. It’s the same for any designer. You put a lot into every logo and some nutter comes along and just takes it.
Then I had a wake-up call.
It’s easy to expose “logo thieves” on your web site or blog, and there is a lot of finger pointing out there.
Here’s one:
Now that “jack” logo clearly is “inspired by” the BBC Knowledge logo. It’s a “j” instead of a “g”, but the similarities are hard to ignore.
Stolen.
If not the logo then at least the idea was stolen.
Right?
Wrong.
See, I designed the jack logo.
I was not familiar with the BBC Knowledge logo. It’s not even subconscious as I only saw the BBC Knowledge logo after I created the jack logo.
The problem is that an upside down question mark is too obvious. Too generic. It’s a design feat that is bound to be repeated (not necessarily copied) over and over.
How many of the “stolen” logos that logo designers whine about are innocent repeats of an idea that is so generic that it begs to be repeated? If a thousand monkeys can eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare, a thousand logo designers can probably end up with an upside down question mark every so often.
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Good post. We either need to take more care in producing logos that aren’t generic, or not cry when we find out someone else’s logo contains a similar thought.