Being Economical with Creativity
Posted by Paul O'Flynn on March 15, 2010 in Branding, Creative, Graphic Design with 0 CommentsIn a recent competition to design a new Cadbury Milk Bar wrapper, the winner was shown to have copied a piece called “Waterfall Transforming Into White Hooded Monks”, and was subsequently disqualified! Here are the two pieces, the disqualified piece and the new winner.
It does look obvious when it’s brought to your attention, but, it does look such a blatant copy. However, you need to get your inspiration from somewhere!
Plagiarising works is nothing new. In fact, you would have to go back to Adam & Eve before you could be confident that what they produced was original! So what is originality today? Undetected plagiarism?
Plagiarism refers to the use of another's information, language or writing, when done without proper acknowledgment of the original source. A couple of famous examples are Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and his “I have a dream” speech. Apparently, it was dreamt up long before he uttered the famous words. Secondly, George Harrison, he of the fab four fame, apparently copied the melody of “My Sweet Lord” and was subsequently sued. So they didn’t work it out or let it be!
In an episode of Father Ted, centred around the Eurovision song contest, Ted tried to pass of a stolen song as his own, but he didn’t get away with it. However, this did actually happen in the 1973 Eurovision Song Contest, when Spain entered a plagiarised song from Slovenia! And they did get away with it!
Plagiarism could easily be called the sincerest form of imitation, and if so, what is the difference between imitating and counterfeiting?
Here are some recent examples, in my view, of imitation I love in logo design from Belfast, Barrow, Blackburn and Love Irish Food.
To be honest, in my opinion, the above are just examples of sloppy research. The Cadbury’s example shows that in the Google era, with advanced detection tools, web searches, etc, plagiarism may be easier to do, however, getting away with it, is almost impossible!
So I’ll leave you with this thought - is this a fine example of plagiarism or because of the examples used, is it a fine example of research? The most I can hope for is that I’ve plagiarised with good judgment!
On another point, it has been pointed out to me that over 250 people read my last blog post! Now in the great blog universe that is probably not worth a mention, however, it is 245 more than I though, even after reading it three times myself! Who are you people? But thank you for taking the time to read this, and if you got this far, who once said “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”?
Paul O'Flynn 's professional experience is in graphic design and covers a wide range of disciplines within the visual communication industry.Find out more at Paul's Profile. Don't forget to subscribe if you'd like to hear more!
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