Grand Theft Logo
A custom logo for $79!
Too good to be true? Heck no.
You can get a logo designed by nationally known logo designers like Jeff Fisher or Von Glitschka for this low, low price.
Well, OK not exactly. Parts of your logo can be made by them. The rest you have to assemble using a spiffy “logo-generator”. LogoGarden.com is “the fastest growing logo site in the world” according to their wesbsite. They sell “DIY logos for Entreprenuers”. Yay. Just what a designer loves to see.
Sometime this weekend I started to see multiple Twitter and Facebook posts from designers commenting about www.LogoGarden.com. They were pissed. You see, these designers said they never allowed their work to be on this site. On Sunday Jeff Fisher posted this on his Facebook page: “Buyers beware – and designers may want to take a look for their work in the logo design archive of LogoGarden.com I’ve found at least 20 of my original logo designs being offered for sale on the site. These are logos for my retail, restaurant, service, nonprofit and event clients. Numerous internationally recognized logos are unethically being offered as potential logo designs for unsuspecting business owners.”
What unsuspecting clients may not know is that they take on the liability of using their “generated” logo. If they read the Terms of Use on the site they would know…
From their website/Terms of Use:
(2) Trademarks and Copyrights. User acknowledges that no trademark, copyright or service marks are being conveyed under this Agreement. User acknowledges that LogoGarden has no obligation or duty to perform copyright, trademark or service mark searches to validate the symbol database is not infringing on any trademark, copyright or service marks. Accordingly, LogoGarden encourages Users to perform their own independent searches. User acknowledges that LogoGarden shall have no responsibility to assist User in seeking state or federal intellectual property protection (i.e., trademark registration). LogoGarden shall not be responsible to assist User to perfect the Users rights.
What’s really perplexing is, that according to their website…”LogoGarden.com founder and president John Williams, a leading logo design expert, literally wrote the book on brand standards for companies like Hewlett-Packard and Mitsubishi. An entrepreneur and former owner of award-winning studio Logic Design, John served as Entrepreneur.com’s branding columnist for over 5 years…” I just don’t get it.
I am really hoping that designers will share this story with everyone. Not just each other. I think the only way to compete with these online DIY design sites is to make their pitfalls common knowledge. If someone knows they may be opening themselves up to a lawsuit, they may think twice. Sure we believe these sites are an inferior solution to hiring a professional designer, but how are budget-strapped business owners supposed to resist a $79 price tag? C’mon that’s a steal.
MORE INFO: Want to see the making of a logo that looks suspiciously like the WWF Panda logo? Check out the Logo Factory article: The perils of do-it-yourself logo makers
I am a designer and owner of Keyword Design, a company I started 10 years ago after moving from Chicago to NWI. I specialize in design for non-profits and brand design.
Sad article judith thanks for sharing, I never heard of this site before I read this article. Thank you.
Thanks for the article / news Judith – good scccchtuff.
I would also like to add, that this is not just a problem in graphic design. This is also a huge problem in website user interface design. Typically with theme based sites selling templates for E-Commerce, CMS, etc.
In either case, it’s one thing that our clients find sites like this, but, it’s a whole other scary feeling that people IN OUR INDUSTRY are purchasing and using services similar to this and just reselling another designer’s work to the client. A total flat out lie and total crime.
I feel sorry for both the client and industry professionals using things like this. I wish I could say / inspire them to understand why this is wrong on so many levels. Our industry IS fighting back, I suppose that’s all we can do too.
Judith, thanks so much for writing and sharing this article. The support of the design community has been incredible the past few frustrating days.
Thanks for sharing Judith, this site is bad news to anyone. It takes away the entire purpose of logo design from anybody. Sad indeed.
Thanks, Judith. These logo services are popping up everywhere and it’s just sad. Logos are supposed to be personal and mean something. I don’t know how those people can even sleep at night. They are just lowering the standards of something that a lot of us work hard at and find passion in. They frustrate me so much and I’ll be sure to share this article with everyone.
I’ll be damned. I found one of my logos on the site too.
Great article. I read this a week or two ago as well [designer Laurel Black sharing her correspondence with a client on a very similar topic] : http://laurelsdesigndeli.blogspot.com/2011/08/crowdsourcing-in-my-face.html
Not sure how the design profession can fight it, other than trying to educate the public about what we do, and how and why.
So far we’ve found 3 of our original logos on this site, looking for the best way to handle this and shut them down. Thanks for writing this article.
Hey Judith, I have posted an article on my blog (with a link to this article) here: http://iconify.it/design/more-logo-thievery/
thanks Scott. So sorry it has affected you directly.
Here is a simple fix to get your logos off his site ASAP.
http://www.rackspace.com/information/legal/copyrightnoticessl.php
He is hosted by RackSpace. Fill out the form and they will demand that he remove the logo under title II. If he doesn’t, they are obligated to remove the site.
He stole mine, I filled that out and sent it in. 4 hours later my logo was off his site.
Nice Chris! Awesome find!!! Hopefully others will see this and do the same, please pass the word around!
I also would like to let everyone know, that since this post went live yesterday – I have received over 30 messages from the firewall on my server stating that someone ( I think in California) was trying injections on the database. Fishy eh?
Here’s a thought, what if we set up a “watch-dog” website that specifically pertains to this LogoGarden deal? We can use social media to bring attention to it and get a round-about count of how many logos/designers have been ripped off. It can serve as a platform to share comparisons/comments all in the same place. Ultimately we can update it with the legal outcomes of the effected parties and share it with our clients and the online community. We need to scare like minded plunderers away from similar ideas, but more importantly we need businesses to understand the risk they take with using sites like this. After all, the only way to make these unethical morons go away is to educate and convince “the market” not to use them. I have never seen this many stolen identities in one place and I really hope this will be the flagship that helps brings down this awful plague . . . I know that’s some extreme optimism, but if we abandon that then they’ve already won and have stolen our profession away from us along with our logos.
Any volunteers / nominations to spearhead something like this? I am willing to help in whatever way I can.
I realized there is another soft-fleshy place to poke logogarden.com with a sharp stick. They use PayPal, hit their contact form and ask how you can file a complaint about them being used to resell your intellectual property without permission. Hopefully it will lead to them losing their ability to take payment. PayPal has a pretty dim view of that and tend to overreact.
Sweet. Nice catch!
Perhaps you have all been successful in having your good designs taken down. Because most of what I see now on their site is crap. I am disgusted with sites like these and recognize the threat they pose to our livelihoods. But at the end of the day, the type of cheap, ignorant prick who is going to value getting a logo “made his way” for $79 over paying a reasonable price to a professional who will help him develop a cohesive brand is EXACTLY the type of client I try to avoid like the plague. First off, they obviously have no respect for or understanding of the skills and knowledge it takes to craft a successful brand. Therefore they will push back on every invoice and ignore the designer’s suggestions at every turn. Second, since they have no concept of branding, their business is far more likely to flounder and fail, leaving even the few paltry invoices they have approved unpaid when they do. The real key is to continually educate the business community on what branding REALLY is and the value it adds to an enterprise.
Easy there Steve, some of my work is still on the site. Although you can’t gauge the artwork by what he has on the site. He/they do bastardize it after all. Won’t be long I suspect before my work is off there too. I found 21 various logos and pieces of logos of mine that is up. Disgusting! I want revenge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OK so here is the next step an artist can take.
https://cms.paypal.com/cms_content/US/en_US/files/ua/infringementreport.pdf
Fill this out, fax or email it to the address in the form and PayPal will start the process to kill his ability to collect money.