We receive an e-mail about our business cards every day. Potential clients who want ‘the same card’, designers who want to re-create them for themselves, or publishers and collectors who want to publicize the card. What is new to our collection of admirers is a company that seems to have build a business around our card. Utilizing a near-replica of the card I designed 6 years ago, they proclaim it is ‘the hottest thing on the market’ that will enable you to ’set yourself apart from the competition’. Maybe it is finally time for ourselves to re-design our cards so we can set ourselves apart from followers. Ah, the beauty of the media. Thanks to my former student Strahan for the great detective work. Hey, were you trying to print your own GD-cards?? ; )  

Barneys catalogue, Winter ‘08…

…meet BCBG catalogue, Spring ‘09:

I hope you two get along.

Looks like you might, since you share the same style.

At least on first glance…let’s see what happens when you actually get to know each other a little bit.

If I recognize this on a plain ‘consumer’ level, I just wonder if anyone else does as I won’t be the only household receiving both of these within months of each other. Peculiar.

The latest issue of Creativity Magazine features a replica of the ’sticky-flags-to-bookmark-certain-pages-idea’ that I wrote about in April, when I gave kudos to Domino Magazine for introducing this engaging and fun tool.

For a magazine like Creativity, which is all about fresh ideas, it is rather sad to be recycling someone else’s idea. It is another great example of the ‘Me-Me-Me’ attitude of a lot of advertising creatives, and creatives in general, burying the lack of concept under a great pile of Wow-factor, even if it is an idea that is ‘borrowed’ from someone else, and even if it does not make half the sense in its new, adopted, environment.

Looking through the magazine’s special Awards edition, it sheds light onto why so much advertising does not make any sense anymore, although original in all sorts and forms. The center of the magazine has a chart detailing how many awards which agency, which Ad, which CD, et cetera has scored ‘this season’. This is the target audience, this is the market, this is what’s on the mind of Creative Directors out there. You, the consumer, definitely come second. (I wrote about the decline in Advertisings’ messaging a while back as well.)

On a positive side note, and to give Creativity some Kudos as well, the ‘Peel ‘n Taste’ experience I wrote about yesterday, see below, was featured in the very same issue of the magazine.

…come in all shapes and forms. The turtle that comes to my mind is the one in a mark of a magical resort I tend to stay at a couple of times a year. Here is their very appropriate logo:

It was surprising to see the logo below in an article in the latest issue of Dynamic Graphics. The fat headline above reads ‘I DID IT MY WAY’. Ouch.

I assume and hope that the logo (which never was used by the designer’s client, luckily for more than one reason, as the article describes), nor its designer, have ever come in touch with El Capitan Canyon, so the likeliness of it being a straight copy, although very omminent on first sight, is quite unlikely.

Then again, you never know when it is plagiarism, and when it is not. To ask that question yourself, I found a blog post that went out for the hunt of these sad examples.

It might make you wonder, and it puts me into a constant fear of it ever happening at Geyrhalter Design.

Robeks Juice: Are you kidding us?

I had a student today who wore a bright orange (not yellow) rubber bracelet that featured the catchy line ‘LIVE HEALTHY’ (and not ‘LIVE STRONG’).

I don’t even want to think about what good cause this (very passé idea of a rubber band) is supporting, because it should read ‘Live Plagiarism’.

Jamba Juice, here I come.

Always liked your design savviness and smoothies better anyways.