Una reflexión sobre el plagio (en inglés)

I have been putting together some thoughts on this 'rush to claim plagiarism' by our community brought on by the viral nature of the web. As Tony Spaeth?s article asks ?Are We Running Out of Names?? ... we are also running out of truly original graphic marks.

With any new logo solution, look too hard for plagiarism... and you will find it. And the web makes it easy to look. New logos circle the world and are critiqued in minutes (2012 London).

The Quark logo was blasted so hard by the design community (for being a copy of the Scottish Arts Council logo), that Quark caved in and changed it and not for the better (see Tony?s review http://www.identityworks.com/reviews/2005/quark.htm).
So their first attempt was the best solution (the name "Quark" calls for a logotype), but I do not believe it was a deliberate copy. Many were just looking for a scandal.

Not only were the marks representing two very different markets in different countries, but no organization can truly 'own' such basic graphic shapes the combined circle/square form is a common geometrical element found in many symbols and patterns. The Scottish Arts Council was not the first with this shape (see Duffy's Bahamas identity)... and not the last. By this standard, Landor's H&R Block mark would be infringing on every square out there.

Recently a designer sent me a logo by colleague that was a small triangle within a large triangle... She was convinced that she had seen it somewhere before!? Of course there are thousands of existing triangle-based logos.

My point: We as community have to be careful about 'logo witch-hunting' being so pessimistic (sometimes out of jealousy), that every time we see a new logo we convince ourselves that it looks like something we have seen before or that we could have done better.

What matters is intent. If in two different markets and it was a case of two designers innocently generating the same idea, then it is not plagiarism.
Great and no-so-great minds can think alike.

Errol Saldanha
http://www.errolsaldanha.com

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