The copyright infringer John Williams.
The Backstory
This past summer a plethora of creatives across our industry were infringed upon by John Williams. In a nutshell he ripped off hundreds of logo designs and began selling them through his site called LogoGarden.com. The full backstory and documentation can all be accessed via my original post here.
No Remorse
I thought after being publicly called out by the industries best, that John Williams would get a clue and change his ways. But instead he continued to show other peoples work on his website.
It’s been over four months now, plenty of time for John Williams to remove infringed content from LogoGarden.com. So lets take another look at his site, see what we can find, and see if our reasonable requests of all work being removed has been the case.
Local Design Culture
A local companies identity.
The majority of clients and agencies I work with are either out of state or out of country. That said I like helping small business owners locally improve their own branding and marketing efforts as well if and when the opportunity arises. When ever I see a new local business open up and it has a lousy logo I’ve wondered to myself at times “How do I get connected with them before they started building upon a bad graphic foundation?”
A local sign shop recently asked for my business card because they were familiar with my work and said they’d like to send people my way when ever they run into poorly designed work that comes their way. I’m all for increasing the quality of the local design culture so I gave them some of my business cards.
I was contacted by a local business called “Green Carpenter Antz” who asked if I could clean up their muscle bound construction worker, and change his face so he doesn’t look drunk. He wanted it to be more fun and happy. He also explained how some people thought he was an exterminator instead of a carpenter.
Holding back a laugh, my gut reaction was to just turn it down and say “Sorry but I really don’t re-furbish existing logos.” But right after this initial thought I had another one that made me think “Why don’t you try to help this guy out? You can create an identity for him that’ll work great.” in other words I should invest in my local design culture.
So I proceeded to explain to this small business owner the problem with his current identity by auditing it.
Logo Identity Audit
- This isn’t really a logo, it’s a bad layout using equally bad illustration.
- There is no clear hierarchy of information, it’s a cluttered mess.
- It reads “Carpenter Antz” and “Green” is lost.
- No one can tell you build using environmentally conscious “Green” methods.
- It looks amateurish which I’m assuming doesn’t reflect the quality of the work you do?
I explained to him how he needed a logo that would read quickly, a more graphic approach that would also reinforce the fact that he was an environmentally conscious carpenter. I also said part of the communication problem is that he was using “Antz” in his business name so I suggested changing it to “Green Carpenterz” instead. He seemed to be OK with that but insisted it had to have an ant in it still.
I informed him what I normally charge for an identity but said I would be willing to help him out and just charge for my time only. He was still hesitant even at this severely discounted rate. At which time I thought to myself again “Just wish him the best and tell him you’re not a good fit for what he’s looking for.” I again battled within thinking “I want to convince this guy that good design can improve his bottom line.” So I told him I’d be willing to design a logo and show it to him, if he liked it than it would be the price I stated and if he didn’t than he could walk away without any cost to him.
He agreed to this arrangement and I planned on working on this later that night.
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