Bit of a chicken and egg story here readers. As I surf the enormous internet coloured wave I tend to weave a web of creative wanderings visiting a numerous amount of blog sites showcasing the talents of some of the worlds inhabitants creative flare.
Although of late a couple of things have been popping up on my “hmmm that looks a heck of alot like something I’ve seen before’ radar.
The first of two such similar finds involves a saw and a ship. Both extremely similar in style and finish, it’s as though one has copied the other but then tweaked the design to their specification. In this case the top image by Christopher Monro DeLorenzo titled ‘Seasaw’ (great name, bit like ronsil, does exactly what is says on the tin/ship)
Above is the second saw and ship effort by a young whipper snapper many of you may or may not know Olly Moss. This piece is titled ‘personal2.jpg’ not particularly imaginative. No doubt because the ideal name and logical name ‘seasaw’ was taken by the original designer. It’s not like he could completely steal the idea and use the same name aswell, that’s just shameful. So instead he just flipped the saw around, cleaned up the lines of the saw and reduced the the amount of sails on the ship from a magnificent 9 down to a less impressive 5 (hang on a minute is that the Blue Peter Ship? No but looks a great deal like it) What’s also quite funny is the fact that before Olly had a redesign on his website he had a quote that read “Good designers copy, great designers steal”. Great quote. Fact. This is all well and good until he named himself as the one who offered such an insightful dollop of youth. Considering a certain Picasso of the Pablo variety once said “Good artists copy, great artists steal” it’s highly unlikely that Mr Moss at a tender age of 21 once spurted such a delightful line (and then quoted himself) let alone actually coming up with the ‘seasaw’ design. In many ways he’s living by that ethos, as I do actually prefer his depiction. He’s clearly stolen the idea from Christopher Monro DeLorenzo (a fellow designer) but made it work harder. Although it has to be said that he does have a great deal of truly ‘original’ work on his site . Hats off to the chap I say. While were on the subject of hats this is then challenged in Olly’s self initiated section titled ‘films in black and red’ with this effort for ‘the great dictator’.
I’m not knocking it in the slightest as it’s a superb piece of thinking but I will put every penny I own (which isn’t many in case you’re wondering) that he was heavily inspired by this truly eureka moment ad for Hut Weber.
Moving on to the second and final ‘Who dun it first’ moment. This minor case study isn’t necessarily a complete rip off but the two efforts are fairly similar in my opinion. So in this battle two very talented illustrators go head to head, nose to nose, pen to pen. In the red corner we have James ‘Quick draw’ Joyce. (showcasing a set of email headers for Faber&Faber the book publisher in 2008) And in the blue corner we have Robert Samuel Hanson aka ‘The Man who knows Illustrator like the back of his hand’ bringing to the fight header illustrations for FormFiftyFive. The header changed everyday as the ‘crab’ made its way across the desk top. Both are extremely talented illustrators, both are clearly Kings of clean simple design, but it does throw up the debate who created what first. And what makes it even more significant is that James Joyce was recently commissioned by Wallpaper* & Victorinox to create a limited edition ‘crab’, I mean Swiss Army knife (bottom image). Funny that and interesting all the same!
But as they say “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery”. And it’s extremely hard to be totally original these days which conveniently allows me to plug my own piece of ‘originality’ for my latest Don’t Panic poster competition entry which tackles funnily enough the theme original. See it here.
If you’ve read the entirety of this blog/rant/observation/bit more rant then you deserve a medal.