Honestly, I don’t see the similarity.

Just kidding. That is incredibly pathetic. What’s more, I saw this kind of thing in design school, and the instructors would just let it slide, knowing full well what was up. Is that commonplace?

This is awful Jem. (Btw: I love your work!)

I think it is apparent that some of these plagiarised logos at whyboq have never been printed. Just take a look at those chopsticks here: http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00008XV3P.03.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

And the napkin ring is here: http://www.conran-restaurants.co.uk/media/images/products/large/grey-napkin-ring.jpg

You should contact them and ask them to remove your work from their website.

Ragnar Freyr
www.onrushdesign.com
www.formislandia.com

holy ----. I would definetly send them evil, scary emails.

“You should contact them and ask them to remove your work from their website.”

Thanks Ragnar, really nice work on your site too.
I definitely intend to ask them to remove our work from their site. I guess this is one of the down sides to an on-line portfolio.

I wonder how much of the work shown is actually theirs, there are too many different visual styles for my liking.

(and yes we did not stick the Marmalade logo on chopsticks or Conran napkin rings, god forbid!!!!)

Oh.. My.. It even still says ‘Marmalade’ on ‘their’ sample image of the menu card..

On this site he is directly claiming it as his work.

“Below are some of the most effective Identities I’ve designed & a few of their applications.”

http://www.atravisscorrydesign.com/identity_building.html

It puts a name to who’s been ‘borrowing’ work anyway. Not good.

>and the instructors would just let it slide, knowing full well what was up. Is that commonplace?

I’ve had some of my students cheat in this manner, but no so blatantly. Plagiarism is not always immediately apparent. If I didn’t notice it at first, I’m hesitant to bring it up, because I feel stupid for not having called them on it immediately. I wouldn’t want to make them redo an entire project because I had failed to point out a mistake earlier, that would be my fault, wouldn’t it? Because I had failed to draw the distinction between homage and plagiarism. So, if I notice plagiarism, I check with other staff, and give the student the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t know what they did was wrong, explain why it was, don’t make them redo the project, and apologize for having to give them a lower mark for the work.

Usually, plagiarization is not so blatant as the 3 grey blobs.
But just suppose it was a slightly different color, slightly different arrangement of 3 blobs…

***

But hey, this is a typography forum.
Plagiarism is no big deal in type design — large software companies have appropriated others’ type designs with impunity. Looks like it’s infectious.

***

File sharing:

With the present consensus on the acceptability of file “sharing”, this kind of plagiaristic design behavior may well now only be considered wrong for not giving accreditation: recycling a design, even copying files, is the way of the future. You know what they say — embrace the technology, the law is out of date…

Thanks Jem

You can also talk to their hosting service if they will not comply to your request. Who would host a thief?

Ragnar Freyr
www.onrushdesign.com
www.formislandia.com

Thanks edeverett,
yes I found his site too on the “Vancouver Graphic Designers Meetup web site.”
Nice photo, looks like he is fleeing the police! ; )

Hi Jem,

I’m apalled by the guy!

Send a formally written email. Then persist - let him know you’re fully prepared to seek legal advice to take the matter further.

Once he’s aware you’re on his case, I’m sure your work will *mysteriously* disappear from his site. I find it frustrating even if & when (I really hope it’s ‘when’ and not ‘if’) the work is removed, to know that he might well have used yours and others’ work to attract clients.

I really like your work, by the way!

Si

Get used to it, folks: the latest issue of Wired magazine has an entire section devoted to the Remix Revolution, otherwise known as cut-and-paste with the stars. As you doubtless know, this particular pastime freely appropriates other people’s work, and claims its merit by the “artistic” rearrangement or juxtaposition of elements. In almost all of the cases where practitioners were interviewed, they clearly viewed the finished product as their own work.

Related phenomenon: the curator-as-artist/artist-as-curator
to be followed by:

The client as artist.

There was a lovely joke about this in an episode of Nathan Barley, where the opening shot of a TV producer shows him viewed through an award, a glass plate on his desk, with the motto “Commissioning is art” etched in it.

There’s a difference between ‘artistic remixing/sampling’ and just lifting someone elses work and pasting it into your portfolio for the sole purpose of gaining employment.

Looking at that site’s home page, it appears to not be a ‘guy’ or ‘design firm’ as much as it is a temp agency…sourcing designers from all over the place.

Perhaps the logos shown are so varied in style simply because of the varied designers they may have hired…and perhaps one (some) are into the plagiarizing thing.

But that’s just a theory…maybe it is one guy and he’s just an ---.

>There’s a difference between ‘artistic remixing/sampling’ and just lifting someone elses work and pasting it into your portfolio for the sole purpose of gaining employment.

True, but the ethos of remix/filesharing culture is “Whatever you can get away with is OK”, which makes that subtle distinction irrelevant.

Actually, that seems to be the general principle of Western society today.

It’s certainly all put togther by that one person. Looks to me like a reused portfolio of student work for fictional or arbitarily chosen existing companies.

“Wat Serwat” turns up no search results at all in Google and “viburnumtrilorum.com” is not a registered domain.

And yes the that “GO” logo looks very familiar.

Looks to me he wanted a client portfolio for his new venture (2005 according to resume) and realised with no clients he’d have to shortcut.

> “Wat Serwat” turns up no search results at all in Google

Sounds like a Thai temple. Try a variant spelling of “Serwat” - Thai transliteration can be quite free-wheeling.

hhp

The Gourmet Organix logo “GO” is by the UK design agency Form.

As a student and future designer this is incredibly disturbing. I was not aware that theft of creative property could be so obvious and blatant. Do instances like this happen often for designers?

Nick Shinn’s comment about the prevalence of “Whatever you can get away with is OK” is pretty much spot on. Several people have “appropriated” many of my freeware fonts and resold them at a profit—without my consent and without offered me a cent—and they don’t think twice about it. Kinda like found money…but, really, more like outright theft.

I knew it!

Thanks Yipyop
I will be letting “form.uk.com” know about Mr A. Travis Corry.

The Sliced Butter and Indoor Garden are also from Form!
Sliced Butter is a badlly altered Staverton campaign and Indoor Garden is reproduced unaltered!

And are those Shag tikis in the Tropical Poker campaign?

Who is this Guy?

Good lord, even his own company logo for Boq is a direct copy of Forms “Wasted Talent” logo.

http://www.wastedtalent.com/

Kinda makes ya wish you knew a guy named “Nunzio” who could make this guy an offer.

ChrisL

Contact their client and mention that you will need to get paid since you did the design. That should get their attention via the client.

Nice. Or even better: Tell them you’re going to contact the client -and maybe alert all their other clients while you’re at it- about the plagiarism, but you’d like to give them a chance to “suggest an alternative”… You might use the telephone to do that, instead of putting it in writing. And remember to stay cool - it’ll make your hold on their balls that much more firm.

hhp

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

Yes we have left it to our client to contact him, they are not happy at all.
We will keep out of it for now.

Wow, if I didn’t see this with my own eyes I would have thought it was a joke. My heart goes out.

As of this morning he has removed our work and Form’s work from his site.
Good.

Anyone seen the “Wat Serwatt” identity before?
No such company exists on the web, hmmm.

http://www.atravisscorrydesign.com/identity_building.html

Hmmm… poor guy. What’s left isn’t very impressive. ;-)

I’m going to take a wild guess and suppose that if he got rid of everything that’s not his, only Tropical Poker.com would be left.

Hello everyone. Many thanks for alerting us to this, and your email support. It’s really appreciated. Paul (Form)

his page appears to be down, but i swear I saw this on his page as well.

http://www.electricheat.org/images/lujoxmascover.jpg

Having witnessed the life of this thread, what an interesting read it has been. If someone captured the original website page before it was edited (it was a single jpg image) it would be useful to post it again so that others can see what this discussion has been about. I must say one thing… the guy had good taste in what he stole!