Back in August, I offered to help my brother-in-law by designing a logo for his new venture http://corprogram.co.za . Admittedly, I didn’t spend more than a few hours on it and followed his wishes to have a 3D globe instead of the letter “O” – but am still pleased with the result which I believe gives his business a professional online image.

Today, while browsing the web for pictures of “blue fire”, I came across a very similar logo for a Fire Protection Service I hadn’t heard of before:

My first reaction was to tell myself I’d been plagiarized – the colors, the treatment of the Helvetica letters being distorted by an imaginary white halo, the general feel… my copyrights have been infringed for the 5th time since launching Myows a year ago (that I know of) – lets take out the full arsenal of legal tools that Myows provides me with and make a point!

But then I got thinking about Chris’ article on Creative Zeitgeist – and I am now wondering about the possibility that different designers could come up with the same ideas I did when given the task of creating a logo for any company called “Core”.

Is my logo really that original?

A quick Google search for “core logo” might actually indicate a case of Creative Zeitgeist:

I do not know when these logos were created, all I know is that I created mine on the 9th August 2010 – I can prove it if asked to do so – and i also know that originality can be subjective and often lies in the eye of the beholder.

So what do you think? Is this a case of my original idea being copied 3 times since August (which I doubt) or just different designers coming up with similar concepts?

Have you had similar experiences? If so, please share…

In their own words, “The Logo Factory® is a web-centric graphic design company that creates logos & corporate identities for companies around the world, and has been doing so since 1996.”

I was first drawn to The Logo Factory’s Blog in April 2009 during the Jon Engle saga and I found Steve Douglas’ article about the case wise and well documented.

It’s therefore a great honor to be featured on the Logo Factor. For more, go read the article Protecting your online copyrights and discover an exclusive sketch of the Myows logo by Von Glitschka.

During infancy there was blue

Back in October 2008 the myows concept was in it’s infancy, and our mockup looked very different. We were then concentrating on defining what the app should do to help creatives with their copyrights, and slowly coming up with a corporate identity for our yet-to-be created start-up.

Chris, the branding expert of the team, submitted an early comp with this logo:

Albeit very different from the final result, I think it’s important to note that most branding elements from this early proposition have made it all the way to the current logo :

1. If you look around myows, you’ll notice a pronounced use of blue and white. This is directly related to the initial branding approach as seen on the early logo above. Blue expresses reliability, sociability, trust-worthiness and technology.
2. The blue bar under the letters OW, to symbolize the protection of Original Works.
3. Playful characters, because online apps should be fun to use
4. Lowercase typography

This was a very early mock-up, and as much as it looked professional, it doesn’t display properties that would allow it to be featured on logo design galleries, which I think is necessary to entrust logo designers into protecting their work with Myows.

So I took it one step further.

Childhood was about space exploration

One sunday afternoon I was sitting in my lounge and sketching furiously while my fiancée was watching reality TV.

I wanted to come up with a revised logo that would:

1. Make use of a mascot.
2. Incorporate the spirit of pioneering new territories, and of “being the first”.
3. Be both original and conceptual, as to maybe be featured in logo galleries.

For the mascot, I had a cat in mind, as phonetically the name “Myows” suggests cats. But I would need to give it some groove. And to get the spirit of pioneering I had 2 historical moments in mind: the Land Rush in the US, and the first moon landing.

I took inspiration from the Jamiroquai emblem I use to draw everywhere as a teen, and NASA pictures of Neil Armstrong (wether these were taken out in space or in a studio remains a debate):

And I came up with this sketch in November 2008:

Teenage years find their groove and deliver a promise

The partners agreed that the sketch represented a good direction to follow, so I started thinking about tracing it into a mascot.

At that time came out Smashing Magazine’s Showcase Of Clean And Minimalist Designs and I was immediately attracted to the graphic style on HUGE Inc.‘s header:

Following this boldly minimalist approach, we were able to display the Myows spacecat, our new mascot, on a very simple landing page in early December 2008:

This version did have a certain groove to it, but after a few months, as we were building on the core functions of the app, I realized that this first mascot lacked some boo-yah!, and I was too involved to come up with something fresh.

I firmly believe in hiring the best people for the job so I contacted one of the hottest illustrator and logo designer in the world to get outside help.

Our copyright app’s logo reaches design maturity

I’m a huge fan of Von Glitschka, and we were ecstatic when he agreed to take on this logo redesign project, while still keeping the initial branding elements.

The result was beyond my expectations, showcasing a custom typeface and a mascot with attitude that is both original and impressive.

We knew then that we had a winner, and the Myows logo is being featured on a growing list of leading logo galleries, including:

1. Creattica
2. Logomoose