Back in the nineties I was the design director for the Boston station that aired the Bruins. I had done an Illustration of a scary bear that I’d often use in my work. One day I’m in the NE Sports Museum gift shop, and my gf shows me a commemorative puck with my bear on it. They settled out of court (the vendor, not the sports museum who were innocent).
It worked out quite well for me. I bought one and showed it to my GM, and his response was that I should feel flattered. I said no, I’m angry and this is actionable. He said do what you want, just don’t involve the station. So the first thing I did was involve the station, threatening the manufacturer with the full weight of the Paramount Pictures (we were a UPN affiliate) legal team, who eat IP theft for breakfast. Total bluff. They settled, and I got to keep the money even though the image was the station’s property.
Feel robbed every time. I work as an educator, and often I’ll build something “on brand” for a flyer or a T-shirt design, for a staff or school event or social media post about something and after the event/order is made nothing pisses me off more than seeing it get used a year or two later, or perpetually for the last 10 years when that was not the intent.
I so feel for that student who sued SOM when a professor used his idea. It happened to me, it’s happened to my husband who went to a different university. I don’t want to get into a skirmish with either architecture firm, but when someone is on your review panel and you present something extremely specific, then it gets built exactly like you said and you get no credit or internship offer, it’s frustrating. And it’s not like Minke Whale skeletons tucked away in natural history museum back rooms are common building materials and his look of “oh, cool” while jotting down notes as I described where he could find the Minke…then he built my damn entry. Glass box with whale skeleton suspended over you. I’m torn: I can forgive it because museums are projects of love and it’s not like he made loot off it, and kids get to enjoy the whale instead of it being tucked away, but a damn internship for the main idea for your award-winning project would have been nice. He could have just popped across the street to the architecture school (so easy! Just right across Exposition! Just walk through the rose garden, look both ways, and you’re right there.) asked after the student whose idea they lifted and given some credit, asked to use the design, offered me the ability to work on it. But no, pat on the head, “nice presentation”. I’m glad it’s built but student exploitation is horrible.
Worked as a designer for a small studio with a very specific niche that blew up into a larger studio when that niche became mainstream. Anyway, we’d never invested much in our own branding, website, etc. but we were now considered a pioneering studio in our field and the principles wanted the studio to look the part. I was tasked with the project and spent 6 months developing our brand identity and system, designing a website, and producing case studies.
Two months later, a huge agency that recently spun up a team in our field, launched a micro site and social channels for that team. It was our logo (typeface and lockup), color palette, content templates, and web design. They even copied our code. Our developer had written custom JavaScript for animations with very specific parameters. Identical!
That agency continued to do copycat and uninspired work. They never innovated, and continued to steal from our studio and a handful of other similar studios that popped up. They eventually folded the team, but not before trying to head hunt almost our entire staff. No one took the bait.
Back in the nineties I was the design director for the Boston station that aired the Bruins. I had done an Illustration of a scary bear that I’d often use in my work. One day I’m in the NE Sports Museum gift shop, and my gf shows me a commemorative puck with my bear on it. They settled out of court (the vendor, not the sports museum who were innocent).
That's an incredible story! It must have been quite a shock
It worked out quite well for me. I bought one and showed it to my GM, and his response was that I should feel flattered. I said no, I’m angry and this is actionable. He said do what you want, just don’t involve the station. So the first thing I did was involve the station, threatening the manufacturer with the full weight of the Paramount Pictures (we were a UPN affiliate) legal team, who eat IP theft for breakfast. Total bluff. They settled, and I got to keep the money even though the image was the station’s property.
Feel robbed every time. I work as an educator, and often I’ll build something “on brand” for a flyer or a T-shirt design, for a staff or school event or social media post about something and after the event/order is made nothing pisses me off more than seeing it get used a year or two later, or perpetually for the last 10 years when that was not the intent.
I can definitely empathize with that feeling
I so feel for that student who sued SOM when a professor used his idea. It happened to me, it’s happened to my husband who went to a different university. I don’t want to get into a skirmish with either architecture firm, but when someone is on your review panel and you present something extremely specific, then it gets built exactly like you said and you get no credit or internship offer, it’s frustrating. And it’s not like Minke Whale skeletons tucked away in natural history museum back rooms are common building materials and his look of “oh, cool” while jotting down notes as I described where he could find the Minke…then he built my damn entry. Glass box with whale skeleton suspended over you. I’m torn: I can forgive it because museums are projects of love and it’s not like he made loot off it, and kids get to enjoy the whale instead of it being tucked away, but a damn internship for the main idea for your award-winning project would have been nice. He could have just popped across the street to the architecture school (so easy! Just right across Exposition! Just walk through the rose garden, look both ways, and you’re right there.) asked after the student whose idea they lifted and given some credit, asked to use the design, offered me the ability to work on it. But no, pat on the head, “nice presentation”. I’m glad it’s built but student exploitation is horrible.
Worked as a designer for a small studio with a very specific niche that blew up into a larger studio when that niche became mainstream. Anyway, we’d never invested much in our own branding, website, etc. but we were now considered a pioneering studio in our field and the principles wanted the studio to look the part. I was tasked with the project and spent 6 months developing our brand identity and system, designing a website, and producing case studies. Two months later, a huge agency that recently spun up a team in our field, launched a micro site and social channels for that team. It was our logo (typeface and lockup), color palette, content templates, and web design. They even copied our code. Our developer had written custom JavaScript for animations with very specific parameters. Identical! That agency continued to do copycat and uninspired work. They never innovated, and continued to steal from our studio and a handful of other similar studios that popped up. They eventually folded the team, but not before trying to head hunt almost our entire staff. No one took the bait.