Life as a designer
I was having a conversation with my daughter the other day about people stealing my logo work. I decided to do a search for this Little Shop of Horrors, a logo I designed with Andrew Murray for Lyric Theatre back in 2008. My initial search inspired me to do some more investigating.
Little Shop LOGO by Bret Ivory?
This was the first one I found. My daughter's mouth hung open. Her eyes were wide. Little Shop logo by Bret Ivory? Who the hell is Bret Ivory and why does he only have one 't' in his name? It looks as though this guy stole my logo and pawned it off as his own. Here's his website: http://www.bretivory.com. I contacted the site I found it on and they removed it so I won't post a link to their page. They were probably unaware that Bret had just plucked it off the interwebs.
A friend found this one.
A day later my friend, Tom Powers, found this person in the UK at mattrossray.co.uk.
Mattrossray.co.uk says,
“A few weeks ago I went to see the Little Shop of Horrors play at Manchester Royal Exchange theatre. I had only watched the film previously and knowing the interior of the stage at the theatre holds a 360 view, I was really thinking; ‘How can they pull this off?’. The answer is very well! The biggest spectacle was Audrey II. Impressively built and the voice was spot on. This inspired me to draw up my own Audrey II and try out some good old fashioned tessellation.”
I posted a response to the site saying that I loved the work that that had ripped off from me. Mattrossray claimed to have drawn this from scratch and that he had all the original files to prove it. I sent him an image demonstrating the similarities between our two "original" works. Mattrossray stopped returning my emails and has not taken down the post.
New Mattrossray.co.uk Update
06/21/2016
I noticed this morning that Mattrossray had not only not removed the illustration for the website, but had now claimed that I copied his/her illustration.
Mattrossray says,
“EDIT: Appears my illustration has been copied by another illustrator, trying to pawn it off as his own. Tried to speak over email but they just stopped responding. Just received spam on the comment section since. He hasn’t tried to resolve this in anyway. Imitation is the best form of flattery?”
Since Mattrossray's own site says that he/she saw Little Shop of Horrors a few weeks before this February 15, 2015 post, it would be impossible or me to have stolen it from Mattrossray. I designed/illustrated this 8 years ago and the web is littered with other unauthorized uses of my logo from years before Mattrossray's post. I posted this in the comments on Mattrossray's site. They were removed a short time later.
Like it to save to your profile?
I found this at Polyvore.com. What the hell does "LIKE IT TO SAVE TO YOUR PROFILE" mean? I'll have to investigate further.
Some editing...
I found this at lgrahame201516.iics-k12.com for a March 2016 Show. They flipped the plant, put him in a circle and dissected my typography.
I found this at Goldstar.com. Someone replaced the word "HORRORS" with their own font. They removed the blood dripping off his lip. Maybe they thought it wasn't theft if they made that change. Freed Theater at The Christ Cathedral? That's not very Christlike.
Nice twitter page assholes.
They made a poster and decorated their twitter page with it.
It made it to video!
And here's the Playbill
You can buy a fucking t-shirt?
This has gone too far. Screen printers know that even royalty-free stock photos and illustrations cannot be used to resale. This is the worst piracy of all because you are directly selling the pirated imagery. I will pursue this one.
