All hail, LogoThief
How many times have you seen a logo and thought, “that looks exactly like another company’s logo”? Probably plenty, and if you’re online enough, you’ll see designers lift exact logos and not even change them, absent a color here and there, or maybe altering the words. It is theft, and true designers offer only 100 percent original designs, while knockoffs steal. It’s an epidemic, really, especially given the rise of all of the logo creation sites where you can pay bottom dollar for a logo. What everyone should do when a designer offers a logo concept is to search Google Images for that design and see if clones pop up.
There are many places to go for logo inspiration (not theft), but one website is actually calling companies out by name, showing the original and noting who designed it, right next to the knockoff. LogoThief has launched to put a name and face on logo thieves, and all others who plagiarize the work of logo designers.
“We exist to name and shame” logo thieves
LogoThief says their goals is to name and shame these thieves, stating that they started the website after becoming sick of seeing their own work and work of their peers stolen by “unscrupulous designers in an effort to make a quick buck.”
The encourage people to submit any logo they know has been stolen to gotcha@logothief.com, so they can “name and shame them,” as they research the origins and verify the theft, then putting it out to the public for all to see.
It isn’t just ideas that are stolen today, some people’s core identities are knockoffs of existing corporate identities, and the shame of it all is that those brands have a bad name for stealing a logo, often just because their designer was a lazy thief.
Examples from LogoThief:
Tell us in the comments about logos you know have been stolen, or if your logo has ever been lifted!
