Copy of Royal Opera House Muscat – Logo Crime Analysis

Clip art, in the graphic arts, refers to pre-made images used to illustrate any medium.

Today, clip art is used extensively in both personal and commercial projects, ranging from home-printed greeting cards to commercial candles.

Clip art comes in many forms, both electronic and printed. However, most clip art today is created, distributed, and used in an electronic form.

Since its inception, clip art has evolved to include a wide variety of content, file formats, illustration styles, and licensing restrictions.

Clip art is generally composed exclusively of illustrations (created by hand or by computer software), and does not include stock photography.

source: wikipedia.

The following is the simple three steps process which anyone can do for free at home

The following are three examples (of many) on where you can obtain the free clip art which the Royal Opera House Muscat logo and entire visual identity was based upon. just copy and paste it into your browser and see for yourself.

Please notice that the “Royal Opera House Muscat” logo clip art was uploaded on Vecteezy website on October 23rd, 2007 and since then it has been downloaded more than 257,031  times from this site alone.

http://www.vecteezy.com/ornaments/144-ornaments-and-flourishes

http://www.easyvectors.com/browse/ornaments-decorations/ornaments-and-flourishes

http://vector.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/250-free-vintage-graphics-flourish-vector-ornaments/

The following example illustrates the original clip art with followed then with a progression to the current official logo of the Royal Opera House Muscat logo.

The lessons to be learned here are that:

1. The logo is based entirely on clip art.

2. You can not protect something that you don’t own or have Intellectual Property rights for.

3. The wide number of downloads of the same vector clip art used for the logo means that it is most certainly used somewhere in the world for something other than the Royal Opera House Muscat

4. Most important of all…do NOT ever use a clip art or an element of a clip art in ANY logo design, specially when it involves national pride.

NB. In case you were wondering…the logo of the Royal Opera House Muscat was designed by Landor in Dubai there was another incident  where Landor got inspired by the (new at that time) logo of Quark Xpress and used it for a chain of supermarkets in Dubai.

Copy of Rumors confirmed, Safir Hotel Chit Chat logo is a 10 year old copycat

What a coincidence, same country (Kuwait), same industry (Restaurant), Similar name, same logo (you can clearly tell that it is traced from Rumors), one more thing, the Marketing Guru Mustafa Mansour who works for Safir Hotel (chit chat logo) used to work for Paragon and he is very familiar with the Rumors logo, so please do not even dare to mention conicedence or telepathy.

In the ideas business,how could the industry evolve if IP is not protected, how could a logo function as a tool for differentiation if anyone can copy and use it.

Original:

Client: Rumores Restaurant and Coffee shop (Mr. Maher Shofi)

Agency: Paragon Marketing Communications

Designer: Hami Alasfahani

Account executive: Mustafa Mansour

Year: 2002

Here is a link to some additional work we have done for Rumors: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=278923078797377&set=a.266607503362268.64165.198126966876989&type=3&permPage=1

Less original:

Client: Safir Hotels & Residences (Mustafa Mansour)

Agency: In-house

Country: Kuwait

Year: 2012

Copy of What do the Royal Bank of Scotland and Qatar National Bank have in common?

Original: RBS – The Royal Bank of Scotland

Country: Scotland.

Less Original: QNB – Qatar National Bank.

Country: Qatar.

Both examples were contributed by Mr. Montaser Al Abasi.

A logo (Greek λογότυπος = logotypos) is a graphical element, (ideogram, symbol, emblem, icon, sign) that, together with its logotype (a uniquely set and arranged typeface) form a trademark or commercial brand. Typically, a logo’s design is for immediate recognition, inspiring trust, admiration, loyalty and an implied superiority. [1] The logo is one aspect of a company’s commercial brand, or economic entity, and its shapes, colors, fonts, and images usually are different from others in a similar market. Logos are also used to identify organizations and other non-commercial entities.

Lateral Thinking: When a low probability line of thought leads to an effective idea, there is a “Eureka” moment and at once the low-probability approach acquires the highest probability. – Edward De Bono. Excerpt from a book by John Townsend & Jacques Favier titled The Creative Manager’s Pocketbook. Page: 2. ISBN: 1-870471-69-5.

A copycat is a person that mimics or repeats the behavior of another. The term is often derogatory, suggesting a lack of originality. The expression may derive from kittens that learned by imitating the behaviors of their mothers. – Wikipedia.

Plagiarism: The abuse of another’s original work by copying it and passing it off as one’s own. As defined in Alastair Campbell book titled The Designer’s Lexicon. Page: 293 ISBN: 0-304-35505-4.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of thievery” excerpt from a book by Capsule titled Design Matters. Page: 84. ISBN -13:978-1-59253-341-1.