Partners In Design

5.31.2007

Design Plagiarism

It is said that imitation is the ultimate form of flattery. But when does it stop being flattering and start being illegal. This is something that I have kept meaning to post, but I keep forgetting. I am now listening to the latest Debbie podcast with Steve Heller and it reminded me of an older podcast with my female designer crush Carin Goldberg.

She made a cover for The New York Times Magazine a while back. And a then (fairly recently) was totally ripped of by an automotive company. I believe she is taking legal action. I would like to open up a discussion on this situation. What your opinion is on the theft of her design and how far can one go when drawing inspiration from another artist/designer.

4 comments:

Laz said...

I've been thinking about this issue since i heard that podcast as well.. I feel as though, as designers, we are very receptive to the design world going on around us. Especially our generation, is expected to dabble in all forms of design and artforms in order to survive in the competitive world of design. With most cases, any artist's work can be traced back to particular inspirations or even things they "borrowed" and adopted as their own technique as they were in favor of the elements or styles. The issue at hand with this piece, is that there was really no pieces taken from the original to inspire a new piece of work. From the original to what i think is a "replica", there was nothing that moved it forward. If this piece were treated a different way, if it used another object form, then maybe the argument could be stronger. But here, there is nothing that makes it anything other than a copy.

Alexandra said...

Wow seeing this completely offends me (and I wasn't who made the original), and she should totally take legal action against the agency and the designer who threw that together.

First of all, I completely understand where an artist takes an element from a painting/design and makes it there own. That is how art moves forward. But this is a direct copy. First of all, they made a key, the same object Goldberg used. They also used the same label maker tags as she did... it's just a disgrace really. Even if the designer had no idea about Carin's design, isn't there supposed to me someone who researches whether or not it's not plagarism???

Man, people can really suck sometimes.

Alexandra said...

And my grammar is atrocious today.

Paul said...

Total douche baggery