Romania’s logo design controversy
Posted by pixellogo on August 16, 2010 in Logo & Brand reviewUntil last week, when anyone thought about the issues of copyright, theft and intellectual property that have plagued the design industry for decades, I am sure that Romania would have been one of the last names to pop into anyone’s mind. Unfortunately, this may have all changed now as Romania, a country known for its beautiful countryside and its Carpathian mountains, has been trust into the international design spotlight and has now found itself caught in the middle of a very interesting logo design controversy.
The issue all began at this years Expo 2010 Shanghai China where Romania’s Ministry of Tourism revealed their new logo design. Initially met with much enthusiasm, it was soon uncovered that part of their new logo design may have been copied from the popular stock photo website, iStockphoto. Why is this such a shock? Aren’t a lot of designs purchased from stock photo websites just like this every day? Yes, however this situation is quite different in that the Ministry of Tourism of Romania had hired THR, an international tourism consulting company and TNS, a global market research company to create a unique brand identity for Romania that was free of any copyright infringement. Romania had agreed to a 900,000 EUR contract with THR-TNS for the creation of their unique new brand identity as well as for other materials and research involved in the creation of their new identity. Now, however seeing as the authenticity of their new logo design has been called into question, Romania is refusing to pay THR-TNS a cent until the issue is resolved.
Here is Romania’s new logo design created by THR-TNS:
Here is the leaf design taken from iStockPhoto that bares a striking resemblance to Romania’s new logo design:
Belgian designer Tom Nulens claims that he was the one that created the original leaf image that is available for purchase on iStockPhoto.com. THR-TNS insists that the similarities between these two designs are merely a coincidence. They have even offered to produce their initial sketches that document the evolution of their design. So….
Who do you believe?
Personally, I think that this is horrible. The leaves are almost exact replicas of one another and it seems to me that one must have been copied from the other. Shocking! Yes, there is a small chance that this truly is a coincidence however, these designs are just far too similar for me to believe that it is simply coincidental. If it was truly a coincidence, I think that there would be many marked differences in the two leaf designs. I just can’t help but question the authenticity of the THR-TNS logo design seeing as it appeared after Tom Nulens’ design.
Theft and copyrights are a huge issue in design. Of course, everyone uses references in their work. Even the most professional designers draw on other people’s work as a source of inspiration from time to time. This however, is much different that blatantly copying someone else’s work. I find this whole incident particularly embarrassing for THR-TNS and it will negatively affect their reputation regardless of the outcome. THR-TNS had promised Romania an original design and it just doesn’t seem like they honestly delivered what they promised. In doing so, they have undermined the entire design industry and devalued the whole process of creation.
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istock is not an exclusive website, the designs are free for all to come purchase and use as they please. this is ridiculous
either you should not have stock photo websites, or do not upload your precious unoriginal work on those websites or simply just live with the fact that it is out there and the possibility always remains.
one photo or vector on istock is for $18 – which is cheap as hell and even if not, it is nothing so complicated that cannot be redrawn. come ON!
The big problems here with this particular case is that Romania had agreed to a 900,000 EUR contract with THR-TNS for the creation of a UNIQUE brand identity (among a few other things). The logo they got isn’t unique and seems to be a copy of a logo that the THR-TNS designers found on istockphoto.com. This is wrong. I don’t have a problem with anyone buying images from istockphoto and using them. That’s what sites like that are there for. I do have a problem when someone does it and then adds an unreasonable mark up to “their work”. Where’s the ethics in that? And on top of that, if they actually stole it and didn’t even purchase it to begin with… that’s just messy.
thanks for the interesting comments about this logo dispute.
Interesting fact: In the meantime, the other logo (leaf with car wheels) cannot be found online anymore. Also, the link to the Istock leaf dissapeared.
My impression:
1) when it’s about 900.000€, there are solutions to pay people like Nulens and the Istock company, to “correct” the issue
2) the THR company seems to me a typical big company with no other competence but “good connections” to the tourist industry. If you look at their document (PDF) about the branding they did until now, you will see how horrible design they produced for other contries and companies too. http://www.thr.es/docweb/branding.pdf
My comment:
even governments should learn that relying on “big partners” does not assure quality today anymore. There are better solutions to create quality and unusual solutions by using small teams of really creative people, and avoiding by this to pay huge amounts of money for CEOs and other managers that do not do anything but producing a lot of paper waste and powerpoint garbage. The branding and consulting industry has grown to a greed-feeding monster, eating up money and producing just long meetings and palleative powerpoint presentations, without any value.
Once again, the THR had the guts to enter in a competition for a country brand – this time for Bulgaria. Wouldn’t somebody stop them? Half of their logos are generic, the other half – exactly the same as other companies/destinations logos, such of the one for Greece.
Amy, I rlaley like the accordian bookmark card. However, I’m stumped as to what it is for. What do you do with each bookmark, and the whole card?[] Reply:July 6th, 2009 at 11:10 pmYou can put sentiments on each bookmark and other gifts (money/gift cards) in the other pockets…[]
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