Strange combination I guess. First of all, let me say how sad I am to hear of Heath Legder’s passing. It’s always tragic when someone so young, and so full of promise has an untimely end. Not that he had anything to prove, already having been nominated for an Oscar, but Ledger was poised to really break through with his showcase performance as The Joker in this summers The Dark Knight, reportedly (and evidenced in the few bootleg clips I’ve managed to see) a completely different take on the iconic Batman nemesis. Condolences and best wishes to his family (I see the media have already started their crap regarding cause of death) during this dreadful time.
Okay, how does this fit together with Copycats, our ongoing look at logos and design stuff that gets, ahm, borrowed from us and ends up in other places? 
Well, when my daughter Amy called to tell me about the death of one her heartthrobs (Heath ran a close second to the dude from Harry Potter) I did what millions of others did – went to the CNN website and clicked on the ‘Developing Story’ link.
I read the tragic details (and a whole lot of speculation as to the cause of the star’s death) but couldn’t help noticing the Flash advertisement blinking away above the Most Popular link (see above and left). Steady on. That design looks a lot like our Big Island Printing Company logo featured in our Logo Examples – Gallery 9. The works shown are concept designs and final logo for a Hawaiian printing company, and have sat on that particular page since early 2006 (see right). 
When I say it looks a lot like, I mean it really, really looks similar, right down to the leaves being identical (you can transpose them perfectly).
Unfortunately, the link on the CNN website didn’t work (nice use of ad budget) but through a few trips to the great Gazoogle, I was able to track down the material to a Canadian web portal, where the logo is being used in a full-tilt travel promotion.
When I managed to find the promo, you can imagine my surprise. Well, maybe not. So please indulge me while I tell you. The logo is not part of the promo – it is the promo. Used as a splash page, home page and banners throughout. Never been one to take this kind of stuff lying down, I’ve sent a nice e-mail to all pertinent addresses to kindly ask the good folks that host the site just what the hell is going on. I’ll keep you posted. And if there is one lesson to be found here, it is this – it’s never a good idea to copy anyone. It doesn’t matter how far removed you are, or how distant you are from the original source. In this day of the intertoobz, it only takes one click for the rightful owner to find out. In this case, learning about the tragic death of one of my daughter’s Hollywood idols.
UPDATE: After tracking down the campaign to the responsible advertising agency, seems that a contract designer had decided to lift the image from our web site (copyright issues aside – it is a pretty decent fit ) but unfortunately, without without the required permish (copyright notices on our website are there for a reason). The ad agency – who sound like decent folks – had no idea. Far more importantly, their client didn’t know – they just dug the fancy visual bling that made up their promotion. This led to some pretty anxious negotiations to obtain the rights after the campaign was already running, in order to stave off the potentially nasty complications of such stuff. People’s reputations were on the line, client relationships were in jeopardy and the artwork was about to appear in television commercials – all of which combined to up the price tag significantly. The ad agency ended up aquiring the non-exclusive rights for the design, for the duration of the campaign, for appreciably more than what it would have cost if they had have hired us in the first place. And that only happened cause – being understanding kind of folks at The Factory – we agreed to the hastily proposed deal. Our client, who might have had a case as well, was equally agreeable. So, in the end, all worked out well. But if this isn’t a cautionary tale of making sure you know were your artwork is coming from, I don’t know what is.
Related posts:
