Tuesday 8 June 2010

'Cannot Chase Paperchase' - when your designs are stolen!


As a small Graphic Design agency we are aware that the work we do for our clients should be unique, represent their company effectively and most of all, not be copied from another designer or company.

The beauty of social media has highlighted 2 cases in the last week where a large company has taken/copied/replicated/stolen the design of a smaller design agency.

Problogger a.k.a. Darren Rowse was alarmed to see his 'PROBLOGGER' logo (below bottom) blatantly copied by beamdotmy (below top).
View beamdotmy's comments here.

Twitter has also helped Graphic Designer HiddenEloise as her original design was 'copied' by Paperchase and used extensively via Amazon for online sales. Go here to see how easy it was to 'borrow' a design that someone else has created.

What was the response from Paperchase? Go here to read

In both cases, the designers appealed for public intervention via twitter, generating huge public interest via retweets, saving a fortune in legal bills and achieving their desired result of having the 'stolen' logos dropped from advertising campaigns.

So no design or logo is safe from exploitation even with copyright, but there is some consolation knowing how easy it is to generate public support and intervention via social media.

What is your opinion?

3 comments:

Peter Lunn said...

That's very interesting Rachel. Thanks for the links. Whilst we have all been inspired to follow a new style or see another design and push in a new direction, it is shocking how these designs have blatantly been ripped.

More power to social media these being discovered and being able to do something to respond.

Hope all is well with you. :)

Jenny said...

Wow...it just goes to show how Twitter can have it's advantages...what a great way to generate a campaign to get a company to drop their logo/images for free, no nasty legal bills.
Good research Rachel and thanks for posting this.

Anonymous said...

I read about this recently and would have liked more detail and less links but the the story is so big I get that you couldn't put it all down here. Thanks for sharing good news, and I hope that PROBLOGGER is happy now.

Steven Bruschel
Brighton