Hero has become a victim of design thievery. This time on an inconceivable level.
Local publication, Artvoice, stole original artwork that we created for the band Iron & Wine and altered it VERY slightly for a full page back cover ad, advertising their publication and their upcoming "Fall Arts" Issue. They even used our color scheme and textures. All of the major elements of the full page ad were stolen directly from our poster and used without our knowledge or permission!
This is a violation of the copyrights associated with our artwork and we are not going to deal with this lightly, we plan to take action and we are prepared to do whatever necessary to insure that this doesn't happen again. Not only to us, but to other artists that the Artvoice and it's designers could potentially steal from in the future. Another point to be made is when stealing artwork from a local artist, like us, whose work is known in the community, this causes causes confusion with respect to the source, sponsorship and/or our approval of their products and the services of their company. Within hours of the issue being on stands, and before we even saw it, we began getting phone calls, emails and texts asking if we started working with Artvoice and why did our artwork look like that, etc. This is embarrasing and potentially damaging to us and our company's name and reputation locally.
Whether its a young designer or a seasoned veteran this has got to STOP! Stealing original artwork from another working artist is disgusting, let alone another working artist in your own city. (Our offices are mere steps from each other.)
We also learned that one of the two elements that they added to our original design (beyond the type elements) was also stolen, from our good friend Julian Montague's book cover for Mark Goldman's book City on The Edge.
Also take a minute to read the post we put up a couple of months ago regarding copyrights.
Our original poster
A closeup detail of the skyline created by Julian Montague for, City on The Edge.
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2 comments:
damn, good luck and i hope all goes well. greedy inconsiderate people, even more so companies/organizations, need to be publicly shown that aint right.
I worked for a company that downloads websites, makes minor edits, then sells them to unsuspecting customers! Needless to say, I don't work there anymore. AHOLES!
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