Extreme Graphic Design Plagiarism

Let’s talk about copying for a moment. Ripping off someone else’s hard work, and using it as one’s own. Let’s start by me saying that I basically have a hard time taking anyone seriously who says they’ve not been properly credited in these modern times. I don’t believe for a moment that any one person is qualified enough to explore a single idea to the fullest. I believe in the sharing and free distribution of ideas, and the idea that once an idea is freed into the world, it is free. For the betterment of the idea. The following set of images (and the one above) were found and set up by designer / artist / internet person / retired design professor Bob Caruthers.

Above: Nikolay Petrovich Prusakov (1929); Elizabeth Ackerman (1999)

Step back naw yall, things might be getting messy. What’s the great thing about this internet age? The open market, one where you can get your works made into wonderful creations like prints, computer cases, shoes, stickers, carvings, hamburger stamps, basically anything! What’s the bad thing? It’s a lot easier for your ideas to be released before you want them to be. And then you know what happens. Tumblr, ffffound, and dropular.

Einstein once said, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

The pairs of images in this set are similar in one way or another. Some are more similar than others and some are just SIMILAR without being influenced by the other.

They are presented for no other reason than to shed some light on the creative process.

-BCaruthers

Catuthers has also been so kind as to put all of these images up on flickr so that you might interact with them that way if you wish. I’m certain I’ll be throwing several of these up on the WFDJ tumblr too, spread the love!

IMPORTANT NOTE: this post and its contents are being discussed heavily over at GigPosters.com – I encourage everyone to join in.

And while you do it, think about how far away these similarities are from one another, then think about how far they are from the obvious go-tos like Andy Warhol and Shepard Fairey (who, incidentally, is on this list already,) then think about if the cave dude who first wrote on the wall with dung “HEY, that is MY idea, don’t you DARE write on the wall with dung.”

Bang. No modern world.

BONUS: if you look carefully, you’ll notice several works here from designer Paul Gardener of Flora Fauna, whom we covered in [March on Thru, Flora Fauna]

Movie Poster (1965); Concert Poster (2010)

Designer Unknown (c. 1940s); Music Promotion (2008)

Space Stamp (1961); Concert Poster (2010)

Chinese Propaganda Poster (ND); Concert Poster (2010)

Stamp (1960); Concert Poster (2010)

Concert Posters (2007); (2009)

Halftonedef.com (2007); Jonathan Harper (2008)

Frederick George Cooper (1918); Concert Poster (2009);

Pelican Ink Ad Art (ND); Biking Poster (2009)

Otto Treumann (1962); Political Poster (2008)

Yusaku Kamekura (c.1975); Concert Poster (2009)

Lanny Sommese (1987); Ignition Print (2009)

R. Deutch (nd); Felix Sockwell (2009)

Concert Poster (2009); Stefan Kanchev’s Operetta State Theater Logo (1969)

Ellen McFadden (1968); Designer Unknown (2007)

Jim Datz (nd); Concert Poster (2009)

Concert Poster (2009); Advertisement (1965)

Bob Gill (1962); Concert Poster (2009)

Robert Lachenmann (1937); Concert Poster (2009)

Solve Sundsbo (2008); Concert Poster (2009)

Josef Muller-Brockmann (1960); Shepard Fairey (2006)

Czechoslovakian Matchbox Label (1950s-60s); Concert Poster (2009)

Hatch Show Print (1944); Concert Poster (2008)

Abram Games Poster (1956); Concert Poster (2008)

Saul Bass Movie Poster (1965); A Concert Poster (2003)

Le Chat Noir Poster (1880s); A Concert Poster (1996)

Russian Anti-Drinking Poster (left); A Concert Poster (2008)

Idea Magazine (1955); Concert Poster (2008)

Maurin Quina Poster (1920); Concert Poster (2002)

Two Ben Shahn Illustrations (c. 1950s); A Hurricane Katrina Poster by Wink (2005)

Two Zwicky Cats by Donald Brun (1950); Concert Poster (2004)

Clockers (1995); Movie Poster by Saul Bass (1959)

Original Ward Schumaker Illustration (date unknown); Concert Poster (2005)

A Pearl Jam Concert Poster (2006); Two E. McKnight Kauffer Posters (c.1919)

Aldo Calabresi’s Original Ad (1960); A Polish Poster (ND)

Lanny Sommese Poster (1987); Two Variations on the Theme (N/A)

Mad Magazine Cover (1974); Concert Flyer (1996)

Robert Miles Runyon Illustration (1961); Concert Poster (2003)

Ikko Tanaka Poster (1958); Concert Poster (1998)

Concert Poster (2007); Goscie Poster (1973)

Japan Air (1924); Concert Poster (2001)

Jerry Smath Illustration (1961); Concert Poster (2008)

Waldemar Swierzy Poster (1973); Concert Poster (2001)

Funny Girl Playbill (c. 1964); Concert Poster (2008)

Tadashi Ohashi Exhibition Poster (1970s); Concert Poster (2001)

Faustino Perez Poster (1968); Arab League Poster (2007)

“Ruth the Acrobat Carnival” Poster (1941); and a Concert Poster (2008)

At the bottom here I’d like to once again mention that these matchups (most of them, all of them) were researched and connected by Bob Caruthers. This very cool man is a retired Professor of Graphic Design at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas. Born and raised in Greenwood, Mississippi.

Big props to him, and I hope this project is continued both for those people who consider it a crime AND those who consider it part of the building process.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies deconstruction category.

http://warddraw.com ward Schumaker

Certainly I never gave anyone the right to reproduce the image of Junior Brown (shown above) and I can bet that the New Yorker Magazine (for whom I made the image originally) gave no rights either.

Chris Burns

Ward Schumaker! What an honor to have you come by! I believe that example is one of those “that’s just not cool” situations where the designer basically lifted it and pretended it was theirs. Harshness.

http://www.kupiart.com Kupi

Sometimes, it’s just an accident (maybe???: Robert Miles Runyon Illustration (1961); Concert Poster (2003). Sometimes for gig/concert posters, it’s just a fun influence. Other times, it’s just a blatant rip-off.
http://www.neitherfishnorfowl.com jim datz

I made that piece in 2007. Someone in the Gigposters community emailed me about the cut-n-paste shenanigans. Already had words with the offender. He apologized. A lot. Case closed.

Chris Burns

Datz! Your works are fantastic! Brilliance! Glad to hear the case is closed.

http://www.empapersblog.com Eleanor

Some of these seem like a deliberate nod to the original iconic design (Clockers/Anatomy of a Murder, Funny Girl/concert poster.) Sometimes there are honest mistakes, we are exposed to so much imagery at such a rapid pace these days that stuff gets lodged in our subconscious and comes out in our work. Other examples just seem like blatant copying and are kinda shameful – especially if the designer thinks the source design is so obscure that no one will know…
http://www.behance.net/matheusdix Matheus Dix

Freak!
Steve Carsella

Some of these are blatant rip offs, (like ward’s and the one with the house on a cliff in the corner) A lot of these are nicely done homages… or clever re-appropriations.

As artist we should allow some room for creative reproduction. At the end of the day it’s better to be good then original.
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Mono

It’s not a coincidence the most of the copies are concert posters, and that’s just plain ’cause the poster art is stalled at these “copy-paste” era, wher anyone with photoshop is a “designer” and just consolidated artists (and labels) pays for their art.
http://luredesigninc.com Jeff Matz

The Against Me! poster is mine. It was a very deliberate homage to the original movie poster.

Chris Burns

gg i thought so

http://artchantry.com art chantry

ok, here’s the bigger question: where does post-modern appropriation stop and plagarism start?

in a simply B&W PC-stupid world, you begin to find that everything starts to turn grey. my position is that EVERYTHING is plagarism to a degree. we don’t learn to walk by invention, but by copying. hemingway didn’t INVENT the words he wrote with. he used the same words that his contemporaries and his his forebearers did.

further i take the extreme views of EVERYTHING being a copy of something (i can usually put the truth to that with a little research) and, conversely, i think that NOTHING is plagarism. the ‘von dutch’ school of thought was the simplest. he publicly stated that he held NO copyright to his work. when it got out there, he felt it was fair game. basically: eat all you want, i can make more.

as a capper, i want to point out that i wasn’t copying that MAD cover (with that Makers poster), i didn’t even remember it (by the way, your repro is in b&w. you lost 99% of the design by using that crappy b&w version. is that plagarism? or not? what if i used your repro of that cover. is is still ‘stealing”? but, it’s virtually not the cover. it’s so confusing.)

in reality i was stealing the image from a punk poster/telephone pole flyer whipped up by lonnie stacato, a manager/relative of the makers. he did a wonderful poster using that partiular finger image. they wanted to use it on their cover, so i xeroxed off their poster and used it straight across. it wasn’t until a couple of years later somebody pointed it out to me that it was MAD cover. it’s actually the legendary kelly freas’ hand. in my opinion, that makes it even BETTER.

so, at what point does it become plagarism. in a culture that reproduces so many generations that the original authorship is lost, does it become “unPC” and “non-original (what? original? i’m not there is such a thing.)

i think that if you are going to post s big self-righteous sight like this, you need to get REAL EXACTING with your definitions. otherwise, it’s a mess.

the only person i thought i was copying was lonnie stacatto. who knew?

i think this stuff is important, but your presentation is a little far sighted (aka myopic.).
art chantry

one last thing. this ain’t art. it’s graphic design. it’s a collaborative form. we make client’s look good. we take their products/ideas/input.visions and present it to the world through this medium of image and type. and advert. we don’t follow our muses to create original artworks,. we make cultural artifacts – advertisements that outlive their function and become these weird bits of archaeology. not art. artifacts.

Chris Burns

Thank you for stopping by AC! I DO love the things you do! I am glad you took the time to make a more exacting definition of this, too, as it’s such a hard subject.

http://ryanhageman.com Ryan Hageman

Put it all in the public domain and imagine the great things that could come out. If only there was a utility that brought it all together. http://search.creativecommons.org/ is convenient, but just think of all the amazing and amazingly horrendous things that a wiki-esque model could produce.
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Steve Burke

Great article, I was hoping to see the cbs logo and the story behind the creation of it.
Keep posting.
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Barbi

A stamp labeled “Russian Space Stamp (1961)” is actually a Hungarian stamp. There’s a difference. I wonder how many other works were mislabeled. Therefore the credibility level of the article is questionable.
Brandon

more than half of these are concert posters.

concert posters often use famous imagery or other people’s work because it grabs attention, and they often do it to be ironic.
http://bizmiss.wordpress.com L. Venell

Not to excuse plagiarism (because there is no excuse for it), but maybe if people stopped demanding so much design work for free, they would copy other people’s designs a lot less. I would imagine it’s much easier to justify phoning it in when you’re not getting compensating for your time and ideas anyway.

Chris Burns

Most important comment yet.

Marina Córdova Alvéstegui

- http://www.posterpage.ch/div/news09/n091128.htm

- http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5551512&id=179504196180

- http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5551513&id=179504196180

- http://www.grafitat.com/2010/03/16/prohibido-copiar/

It is a looooooong subject, isn’t it?
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http://warddraw.com ward Schumaker

Just a couple notes: in my view whether something is “art” or “commerce” depends more upon how I perceive it than the original intention. There are not many illustrations I consider art but someone like Gary Taxali comes along and does an illustration that meets my definition of art (purely subjective, something about how long I’d be willing to have it up on my wall, or if I’d allow it to be hung on my wall in the first place).
second: a few years back, a work by my wife, Vivienne Flesher, was stolen off the cover of CA magazine and used on tens of thousands of bottles of wine. We only found out about it through a friend who ‘congratulated’us. We sued and around our house the money she got became known as her “Petite Guggenheim grant”, allowing her to spend much of the next year doing personal work.
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JDRE

Another one!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shypsi/4441939487/

http://newgrass.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/bauhaus-1923.jpg
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Lil Tuffy

The Brun poster above is credited. It says “Brun” below the cat on the gig poster.
check this

http://aimeewilder.com/pattern/ < third pattern from right on bottom row (original)

and

http://www.leannekerwin.co.uk/ < click TFL Moquette link
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gerardo baston

everything is made of everything, that’s the time we are living…
Zsolt Sandor

Hi

excellent article, but there is a small error,

the russian space stamp is actually a Hungarian stamp

thanks
Zsolt Sandor
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http://creativeaces.com Joann Sondy

WOW! I suppose being aware of when/if we cross the line from emulation or admiration into blatant plagiarism is elemental to finding one own’s style. Throughout history, the apprentice copied the masters as lessons but this is inexcusable.
http://www.handmadetees.blogspot.com LukeBB

What this article shows, is the ease of digital theft. People that mede the above blantant copies lack their own ideas, so they have to steal, it’s as simple as that. I do make copies myslef – I hand-print t-shirts, and aside my own ideas, I do use other people art (sometimes without any changes), but I always stress that the original artwork and idea is not mine. I’d be very ashamed claiming somebodyelse’s art as mine – now, think about art school student’s that copy other artists’ works and make it their graduate works —-> see http://www.youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com
http://www.gigposters.com Jermaine Wilkinson

This is why I don’t take most gig poster designers very seriously. On gigposters we get so excited to see a great new poster, and people comment about how great it is. Like Lure (plagerism) designs out of Orlando. We all thought this Against me poster was fantastic and so cool. The artist sat by and said nothing, to clarify that he completely ripped off the idea and it was not his. http://www.gigposters.com/comments/125639_Against_Me!.html

This goes to show you that the only gig posters we can trust to not be complete rip offs are the ones where the illustration was completely hand drawn.

I realize that gigposters are low brow, but completely ripping off artists as a rampant constant process by many, and just sitting back and just taking all the compliments is pretty screwed up.

Chris Burns

agreed

Rob

Not all of these are exactly forms of stealing, if anything they feel like a different interpretation of the original design. I do think its fucked up when they literally steal images of it ofcourse. that just makes you look like a high level threat to design companies.
Rob

Not all of these are exactly forms of stealing, if anything they feel like a different interpretation of the original design. I do think its fucked up when they literally steal images of it ofcourse. that just makes you look like a high level threat to design companies.
Rob

Not all of these are exactly forms of stealing, if anything they feel like a different interpretation of the original design. I do think its fucked up when they literally steal images of it ofcourse. that just makes you look like a high level threat to design companies.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_WOOMZ52APILHCLE7YUC4RTR7PA spanky

A lot of these are intentional “homages” if you will.

Yougotsblounskched

My thoughts exactly. I’m not bothered by the concert posters at all. The copies are satirical, ironic, or in tribute to the original art or message. This is in contrast with plagiarism, in which the copyist hopes to claim credit for the work as their own creation.

kirockk

Some of these are intended as tribute or style influenced. But I’ve found one of my logos ( a panther) reused for everything from martial arts dojos, entertainment companies, travel companies and over a dozen different schools. Just lifted as is or just removing the border and changing the name. I have a huge file of all the different copies.
The person that I did the logo for holds the copyright and he has let it slip so its now public domain. Entertaining for me to watch how far it goes but thats all.