Plagiarism?
I received this email today, alleging that I'd borrowed a design from a site I'd never heard from. Let me know what you think.
DATE: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 09:58:31 -0400
TO:
SUBJECT: you want to give our designer a little bit of credit?
hi there.
due to random surfing i found your site.
logo looks a little familiar- just like this
http://goldbergs.com/bm/2k
which has been around since, well, 2k.
i'm not going to get pissy or anything, but it would be really nice if you could possibly put up a link to caroline eastman's (the designer of that logo's) website- it's currently at this location
http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/~ce328/
again, don't get worried. no lawyers or anything. and you can ignore this if you want. but i see you've got a big ole creative commons logo at the bottom of your blog, and it would be good karma on your part to give a little bit of credit where credit is due.
much obliged
j
--
And my reply:
I must say I was a bit confused by your email.
I've been using the name "Ishbadiddle" since 2000 as well. It's based on a nonsense phrase that my grandparents taught me: Ish-ba-did-a-lee-oaten-doat-bo-bo-ske-dee-ten-dot. Say it a bunch of times. Kind of sticks in your head, don't it? As far as I know, the name "Ishbadiddle" is original. Google it, and you only come up with references to me and my blog. "Ishkabibble," on the other hand, is all over the map. In addition to your Burning Man group, it's also a restaurant in Philadelphia, a candle store in New Jersey, a designer in Illinois, a fudge shop at Penn State, and a one-off comic book (which I own, gift from a friend). Not sure if you've gotten any similar letters from any of them demanding karmic balance.
As for the logo, I assume you mean the AI Fragment one in black and white. It's one of 17 that I developed myself for my blog, which you can see here. I'm not a designer, but I do have a passion for fonts (I've got waaaay too many of them). The font in your friend's design is certainly related (lowercase sans-serif white characters on a black background that run together) but it's not the same. Hers are uniform, and relatively thin; AI Fragment's letters are each skewed differently (note, for instance, that the "s" disappears into the upper right-hand corner, while the "e" goes down and to the left), and is much heavier. Nor was your logo in any way an "inspiration" for my own logo, since I wasn't one of the 517 people who visited your site, before you pointed it out to me.
So no, I'm not going to give any credit to Ms. Eastman, who is in no sense "our" designer. I've already given proper credit to Manfred Klein, the font's designer. However I will post up your letter, so Ishbadiddle's readers can decide for themselves if I've given credit where credit is really due.
Comments, anyone?
M E-L posted this on June 24, 2004
It is filed under Site News
It is also indexed with the following tags: Plagiarism
| Fonts |
John wrote:
"Let's take a sans-serif font and smoosh all the letters together" is not what I'd call an novel concept, frankly. If you had similar characters, or had duplicated, say, the AT&T Death-Star logo, there might be a case. But overly-agressive kearning? Not so much.
John wrote:
Ahem. "Kerning."
Andrew wrote:
Sounds like someone has a massive ego.
Them, not you, of course.
Haven't heard of a more ridiculous accusation of plagarism since Poe accused Alfred Lord Tennyson of stealing his poetry.
liz wrote:
My favorite part of your reply is when you say "its one of 17". You took the time and energy to design 17 logos. More than I've done... and I'm equally type obsessed and a graphic designer (or at least I think I am.)
Anyway... no harm no foul on your end -- especially with regards to Mr. J's site. I mean, come on, that design's as 2000 as they come.
:)
BC wrote:
Maybe it was all a clever move on the complaintant's part to drive traffic to his site. His counter's up to 542 now, which indicates that since you've written about the exchange, he's had about twenty five visitors. Pretty sneaky, sis!
mac wrote:
I'm constantly amazed by the silliness of people. And I'm relieved that he wasn't referring to the entire site design, because wow!
joshua goldberg wrote:
i wrote that letter, and what can i say, i regret it. it wasn't meant to be a public thing, i didn't mean to be a dick, i didn't mean to drive traffic to the site. the similarity was pointed out to me by the artist, not meant to be a big deal, don't worry about it, let it die.
trust me when i tell you that i'm really not an asshole in real life. i hadn't seen all of the other designs. i'll buy you a beer when we meet in RL.
M E-L wrote:
Apology accepted.
Jimpy wrote:
The Wrath of Ish unleashed, eh?
Don't know a darn thing about j or his site (didn't bother to click on the various links).
But in less than 24 hours we managed to collectively call him "sneaky," "silly," "ridiculous" and possessing a "massive ego" over his utterly non-threatening request (my God, he even wrote "you can ignore this if you want").
Oh, and we mocked his site design and font too, just for fun.
I'm not saying he was right (he wasn't). I'm just saying I'm not sure the fairly amiable tone of his note was deserving of a public display and rapid excoriation.
Maybe a few people here owe *him* a beer.
Or do we all just miss raging against our long-absent trolls? I can put on the political moderate hat again if everyone needs to work out some aggression . . .
joshua goldberg wrote:
yeah, it was a little overwhelming to get slammed like that. but i'm not a stubborn bastard.
what happened was this: the woman who designed that logo all the way back in 2000 wrote me and pointed out the similarity. as luck would have it, the first two times i went to the site the similar logo was showing, and it wasn't clear to me that it's part of a multiple rotation. so i wrote the letter.
visiting it later i said to myself 'wow, he changed the logo!' but then i saw the multiple logo trick and i realized my error.
so- my bad. and i suppose the flak was probably deserved.
btw- my site counters got accidentally reset a couple of weeks ago. i actually get around ~75 unique visitors a day to my webspace... but this is some petty quabbling shit.
i mailed ishbadiddle information about a party we hold that's happening on saturday. ask him(her?) about it if you want details; you can come and throw poop at me in person.
j
joshua goldberg wrote:
oh and i went to kindergarden AND grad school with andrea moed, which might just mark me as someone who actually means well in your eyes. ask her. she'll vouch for me.
M E-L wrote:
No poop throwing! Step away from the woodchipper!
Hey, apology accepted, it's all over, no big deal. Like I said, I take accusations of plagiarism pretty seriously. But I also realize that mistakes get made.
So, yo, crew, you can step down. But thanks, you got my back.
andrea wrote:
Wow, I love it when my friends from two different words meet--with hackles engaged!--in a third. I hereby vouch for Josh as a well-meaning and honorable sort whom I bet you'd find interesting besides. Which is to say, this beer-buying plan sounds fun--can I come?
Frank wrote:
Are you able to close comment threads?
