Recently in Theft of Idea Category
Designers and professional art directors know there are plenty of career opportunities to take the easy road to complete jobs. It's littered with Google images, online download sites and image banks where one might find a photograph or illustration suitable for a comprehensive or research material for an illustration. It is much easier to ask permission than to use material illegally. Why risk it when you might get famous in the process and end up surrendering half of all your earnings plus punitive damages due the originator of the work you "borrowed"? My advice is don't even think about it. Jeff Koons makes a very good living selling stuff he calls art; though taking a postcard of a group of dogs shot by professional photographer Art Rogers and shipping it off to Italian artisans to have it reproduced as sculpture is not art. That pseudo art sold 3 sculptures at $367,000 each. Rogers, who owned the rights to the photograph used on the postcard, sued and won. The court found "substantial similarity" and that Koons had easy access to the picture; as a result, the sculpture was judged a copy of Rogers' work. Koons attempted to use Fair Use laws as a defense but lost anyway.
Oh, beat me about the head and neck with a big stick so I can have digital tunes. I would have more respect for Bill Gates and Microsoft if just once they would come up with an original idea instead of adopting everything Apple. Their latest “Make That Mine” idea is the ZUNE, a semiconscious parody of the iPod. Remember the PlaysForSure? That was Microsoft’s first attempt to knock the wind out of the iPod, taking only a few crumbs from Apple’s marketshare before it totally bombed due to a completely tedious interface between player, music retailers and software. Do your own thing, Bill--it’s obvious you can’t do what Steve Jobs does (which is innovate) so be a good boy and stick with boring apps for big blue, yeah?
Last year, three guys in NYC transformed a vacant storefront into F Line Bagels, using props, color scheme, and icons familiar to any subway rider as a draw to passing traffic. They put their heads together (and their money and sweat) and made their store look like a clean, modern subway car with hanging straps, straddle poles and Euro-style signage. They used the almost generic symbols of a single san serif character in an orange circle--the same signs subway riders use to pinpoint stops. They added 2 neon signs for a heads-up to transit seekers too preoccupied to notice they were entering a space clearly not on tracks and incapable of moving them to any destination short of the nearest bagel. If you've ever been in a NYC bagel shop, there are big clues everywhere that you are not in a subway car; the aroma of hot baked goods, big bins of fresh baked bagels, and the flurry of activity as the paper bags are whacked open in the air. Try to get a bagel for a token--can't be done.
