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Archive for the 'retail' Category


the top image is by me, Verity Keniger, the bottom image is by Kelly Hyatt at Lagom for their Zootown range of cards. incidentally, this isn’t the first time they have made it onto YTWWN – http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/?s=kelly+hyatt. I have been in contact with Kelly and he has denied copying my image in any way. I’ll let you decide…

I have written a more detailed account of the situation and Kelly Hyatt’s / Lagom’s contemtible behaviour on my blog – http://uhohdeer.blogspot.com/2010/08/grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumble.html

This post is being made on behalf of Julia Pott.

An Illustration/Animation graduate from Kingston University 2007, she had great success with her film ‘My First Crush’ and has since gone on to develop a range of characters and designs with her unmistakable style.

However, just this week a girl called Maxine Carsboult was brought to our attention and it appears that she has not only used Julia’s work for her degree coursework but also many examples of students work from Kingston University. She has simply traced much of Julia’s work as you can see from the examples, only very small details are changed.

Maxine’s University has been contacted and efforts are now underway to ensure she pays the appropriate penalty for her outrageous plagiarism.

Examples below:

Some more, notice the cat design from Julia’s existing tattoo range currently on sale. Maxine has switched the angle, changed it a little and added a Santa hat. She’s also cut the arm off short where it normally held onto the original dog.

Next is Julia’s pillow print design featuring the big bear. Maxine has simply stolen, traced and re-coloured.

We found there was a Kingston University connection. This was a poster designed and drawn by a Kingston student for a local pub gig. Now look at the cat in the picture frame as part of the collection shown on Maxine’s website. You’ll also notice much of Julia’s work there too! (beach huts, animal party, the birds, bear etc.) We can only hope this wasn’t her degree show display, since it’s made up almost exclusively of other people’s work.

Copies of Irana Douer’s work, Irana’s are the first 2:

There are some subtle differences, they have been redrawn but the similarity is unmistakeable.

Here are some examples of Maxine stealing Amy Blackwell’s illustrations, again Amy’s are first:

Amy’s have been on sale on the internet for some time, Maxine has simply re-coloured the original.

Finally here is another one of Julia’s works, The Ocelot. Again Julia’s is first and the second picture shows Maxine holding the stolen image (claiming it as her own on her blog) this image was taken from the blog.

If you want to see more examples of Maxine’s theft, check out Julia’s site here : http://juliapott.blogspot.com/

Compare that to Maxine’s site here: http://cowgirlmax.blogspot.com/

Shameful…there’s no other word for it.

There are many more examples of theft on her various websites and we doubt that ANYTHING she has or is exhibiting is her own work. Has anyone actually seen her draw a picture?

…Friends of Julia…

It has also come to our attention that she has stolen the work of Gemma Corell, Amy Blackwell, Nan Lawson, Kate Wilson, Iran Douer and others who at the moment we cannot confirm as of writing.

STOP PRESS – as of the 13th July 2010 ALL examples of Maxine Carsboult’s stolen work has disappeared without trace from the internet.

The following accounts have been deleted:

Facebook,

Twitter,

Tumblr,

http://cowgirlmax.blogspot.com/

http://cowgirlmax.carbonmade.com,

http://flavours.me/cowgirlmax

Her references on the Yellow Jelly site have been removed.

Today I was made aware of a designer named Hiromi Kiriki who created a futuristic concept watch for Sony and blatantly stole my work to go along with this, never requesting permission. He even edited out the ADL logo that was in the original. The original work is the cover for the 2008 Anti-Defamation League Annual Report which I was commissioned to design by the agency The Brownstein Group. Kiriki uploaded the design, to much press & traffic, to http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/05/25/in-2020-we-can-wear-sony-computers-on-our-wrist

Hiromi Kiriki’s watch concepts:

Original art by Chuck Anderson from http://www.nopattern.com

Amazing how the internet and Ctrl+C = creativity nowadays…very unfortunate, because the concepts are very cool. What would have been so hard about emailing me and asking for permission?

Hammo + Bape = Jape

A few weeks ago a friend sent me this photo that he took of a “Jungle Ape” t-shirt he saw for sale in London, recognising a couple of my illustrations, but suspecting I had nothing to do with it. He was right. And I’m sure Bathing Ape, who they’re also blatantly biting, have nothing to do with it either.

Jape T-shirt on the left, my stuff on the right

So a quick search for “Jape” or “Jungle Ape” came up with an alarming catalogue of lazy theft. First of which was their logo (and t-shirt design) lifted from a stencil I did back in 2005, and coupled with the Bape “Baby Milo” face.

Followed by countless other t-shirt designs. So far I’ve counted over 70 which have used my artwork, which they’ve nicked from my Flickr, Fotolog and Stencil Revolution galleries. Here are a few examples…

Behold the sloppy thievery (click for large view)

A quick glance at some of their designs shows that they’re also ripping off Jamie Hewlett, Friends With You, FlyingFortress and Jean Julien to name but a few.

Here’s their European distributor’s page. Why not see how many more rips you can spot!

With Jungle Ape having originated in Thailand (with online stores cropping up in Europe), I’m not sure what the chances of getting any of this resolved are…

Sophomore Original Design

Sophomore Original Design

Kiss Chacey copy Sophomore Designs

Kiss Chacey copy Sophomore Designs
Kiss Chacey steal Sophomore Designs

Kiss Chacey steal Sophomore Designs

There’s a store I walk past every morning on Cuba St (Wellington, NZ). They call themselves “Kolektiv Design Studio” and they sell t-shirts. There’s always a couple of things I recognize in the window, but they’re usually just Banksy stuff and he’s used to being ripped off so I never bothered thinking about it too much.

However earlier this week I noticed a t-shirt in the window with a graphic I recognized from Esty, I don’t remember the seller’s handle but it’s this Gangster Snow White MacBook sticker.

I went to their website, that shirt isn’t there but a lot of stolen designs are, and no where does it mention any affiliation with any of the designers. They seem to claim credit for everything they sell in their about us;

“Thought provoked and inspired by so many pioneering individuals, we use the t-shirt to portray ideas and concepts relating to environmental, political, spiritual and humorous matters to help stimulate the mind and get you thinking outside the box. We hope you like what we have to offer and choose to support this movement and wear our designs, and by doing so you help spread the love, provoking others to use inertia and push against the gravity of life’s struggles, trials and tribulations.”


They do have a page for submitting ideas but it says they will “profile” 3rd party designers with their work and I don’t see any of that, so it doesn’t look like people are selling them the stolen ideas unless they’re not crediting them for that either.

Compare a few (Kolektiv on the left with the koru backgrounds)

From ObeyThePurebreed.com

Bansky

From a book of the same name

myntra.com

After some google fu I found a threadless thread from 2008 and apparently they’ve been doing this for a while, mostly stealing Threadless designs. Even when there was an actual Threadless retailer down the street.

I also found a news article about an unrelated protect on the store, they are based in Auckland and one of the owners is named Jade Lynn.

This really disappointments me since as a country we’re really proud of our artists and designers for defining us as a creative culture. It’s almost like they think this is ok since we’re a small country and it’s very unlikely anything they steal will ever make it back to the original artist.

yes. that NASA.

Urban Outfitters Solar System Wall Mural

…and the original art from the home page of NASA JPL’s Photojournal site

i know this because i made v1.0 of the home page graphic of the NASA Photojournal site. i made it completely not to scale (otherwise the planets would be too small to see) and with photoshop 3.0 in the darkness of JPL’s computer labs. yeah, i know that photoshop job won’t win any awards!

the images on the NASA site are as far as i know public domain, but come on….it’s still gross and lazy, and where’s the Caltech/JPL/NASA credit?

Hot Topic has apparently discovered street art. However, sadly for Hot Topic, one of the artists is Banksy and the designs don’t even appear to have been redone.

D*Face Original “Pop Tart”

http://www.dface.co.uk/vault_item.php?image_id=35&vault_id=1&itemNo=6

Hot Topic Tee “ZOMBIE PIN UP TEE”

http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/Apparel/TShirts/Zombie-Pin-Up-Tee-Plus-Size-227898.jsp

Banksy original “Gansta Rat”  2004:

http://www.originalprints.com/printview.php?dx=3&page=1&id=21655&sid=f6a191aafe400ff202d724cd44d70e21

Hot Topic RAT BOOM BOX T-SHIRT

http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/Apparel/TShirts/FashionTees/Rat-Boom-Box-TShirt-253566.jsp

Banksy “Bomb Hugger”

http://www.guyhepner.com/pieces/banksy-prints-bomb-hugger

Hot Topic BOMB HUG T-SHIRT

http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/Apparel/TShirts/FashionTees/Bomb-Hug-TShirt-263209.jsp

Vera Brosgol, an illustrator and story artist on such films as Coraline, has apparently been copied by Hot Topic or Pierce the Veil, or both. I suppose when they were going over this with their tracing paper and crayons, they thought that making it more homophobe-friendly and all-around way lamer might place it outside the realm of copyright infringement. Shameful on so many levels.

Vera’s original image:

[link to original]

The copy:


[link]

This news came from a post on Vera Brosgol’s own twitter feed at http://twitter.com/verabee.

Update: It seems this might go under speediest resolution ever. Vera contacted Hot Topic today and was already told that they will pull the shirt from their site and stores starting tomorrow (via twitter). This could possibly be the work of a dishonest designer, but who knows. I hope they will also stop all orders of the shirt that may have already been placed. Though perhaps they can send one to Vera as a souvenir?

Now, this is kind of a curious situation –

Today I stumbled upon a blog post about Pamela Love, a NY based jewelry designer. I saw a necklace she had on, and instantly recognized it; I owned one just like it, created by Moon Raven Designs.

Even her “signature eagle claw” jewelry looked similar to a design they had listed:

Thing is though, I’m not sure who copied whom — Moon Raven Designs has been on Etsy since November of ‘08, and Love started gaining popularity around ‘08 as well. MRD does have an ebay store which was around since ‘99, though because of expired ebay listings, I’m not sure if they have been selling the bird skull/claw pendants for that long. Here’s their seller page.

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