MAN BITES LOGO. 10.14.06
In my blog, I always try to steer clear of any current events, as I'd like to think that CuttingWithWater is as timeless as it is worthless. However, I'm willing to make an exception in this case.
The proverbial teet that CuttingWithWater suckles from- 9rules- recently had its famous, all-encompassing logo (see bottom left of this page) ganked by one of Toyota's ad firms, Meridian Communications. The 9ruler responsible for creating the logo is documenting the situation here at BusinessLogs.com, and if you want to check out the scene of the crime, take a lookee over here.
Now before I go a'bashing the guilty parties, I want to point out for those of you who aren't in the Ad/PR realm that no one at Toyota Corporate should be blamed for this. This is because the process of outsourcing creative usually goes as follows:
- Toyota hires shitty ad firm (keeping in line with their historically shitty ad campaigns)
- Art Director of shitty ad firm pawns uninspiring job off on low-level creative
- Creative gets nervous after first sketches are rejected, then remembers that the Internet is full of kewl logos that nobody will ever miss, because who the hell even uses the Internet anymore
- Creative brings sketch to Art Director of shitty ad firm, who is totally out of the new media loop and says, "Ok, but add another leaf or two in there... great, now I can take credit for it."
- Art Director presents ganked logo to head-in-the-clouds client
- Client says, "Ok, but can it be purple and yellow? I like those colors."
- Art Director throws papers in the air and storms out of room. Everyone agrees to use the color scheme the Art Director wanted
- Ganked logo hits the streets
Now I'm usually quite skeptical about logo theft; I feel it's inevitable that two companies will harbor similar designs, as logos are meant to be simple, recognizable, and communicative of broad ideas like "nurturing tech-iness". But this 9rules v. Toyota Manufacturing thing is about as close to an open-and-shut case as you can get, especially when you read Mike's BusinessLogs article showing the eerie similarities. Note that I commented in that article that Meridian Communications should change their slogan from "Brand New Thinking" to simply, "Yoink!". Catchy, don't you agree? And a much more effective communicator of their business strategy at that.
Now we all know the 9rules crew will eventually be victorious in this fun little legal battle- especially since I'm sure Mike and the other 9rulers are simply looking for acknowledgement, and not a big chunk of copyright infringement money to stick in their respective mattressi (Yes, that's plural for mattress. Look it up. Hah, you idiot, I can't believe you looked that up!). But I do hope that this will be a case of one small step for man... one giant leap for mankind, in that people will start to wake up and realize that the Internet is where things happen now. There's no more "well, that's the web... this is the REAL world"; the web is the real world. To turn a blind eye to the web in any industry anymore is fast becoming a death knell, and those who do it will soon find that their attempt to trivialize cyberspace only makes them look foolish and out of touch... people like the woman representing Meridian Communications, who wrote in reply:
Please be assured that Meridian did not "misappropriate" the 9rules.com logo, as no one on the Meridian design team had ever even seen it before you brought it to (name removed)'s attention.
Ah yes. Surely, that cutting-edge multimedia Ad/PR firm doesn't read any award-winning blogs that discuss the current events and theory of design, marketing, and technology. Sounds like an ad firm you'd love to hire, right?