ISO50

I called this as soon as the Maroon 5 album came into my college radio station. Blatant and disgraceful.

I was just going to make the point that they didn’t even do a good job stealing the design. Even if giving them the benefit of the doubt and never even seeing The Rapture cover, it’s still a horrible design. It’s so dated to early 2000 (to me at least when i found the TV filter in the EyeCandy filter set). I hope they get some major backlash from it and learn their lesson.

That Rapture’s cover really kills. The album title message “Echoes” is simply delivered by its design.

While Maroon5, I don’t want to be harsh, despite of the (stolen) idea that we don’t need to go through, 8-year-old kid can do Photoshop execution better than that. Seriously. You should see by 8-yo babysister’s design, haha

I wonder, does Maroon5 ever notice The Rapture’s Echoes cover?

oh, and just to drive my point home a little more, i do cover design, and although i’ve never come up with something like these, i’ve also never heard of either of these bands, nor have i ever seen their covers. using a bands faces and tweaking them out isn’t too original for a cover..and i’d say it’s almost a no brainer depending on the brief and/or if you’re feeling lazy.

Good point Tardlovski. Why even care?

The way of the world, people. We’ve got failblogs for this kinda stuff. Now let’s talk about James White or other talented designers.

I agree with luke. I think the connection is tenuous at best. The colors used on the Maroon 5 cover are pretty basic, the composition is completely different also. Big copy at the top of the cover versus tiny copy on the “original,” for a start. The head shots are very informally balanced on the Rapture album and play with the depth of the design a lot more. All that before I mention that the concept of the Rapture album is obviously the echo treatment on the images which makes the whole cover look like it was struck like a tuning fork. It’s really just the colors that are similar and the fact that both designers used shoulders-up head shots.

Similarity is sometimes no more or less than it appears. It looks to me far more likely that someone sat down in front of Photoshop with a bunch of band head shots and a logo and was asked to execute something roughly like the result. I think the Maroon 5 cover is pretty poorly executed, but I’m just not seeing anything but coincidence here.

funny how everyone immediately jumps all over the designer and doesnt consider the client…I could easily see a situation where the designer came in with some concept/sketches and the label came back and said make it look like this, cuz some marketing genius came across it in one of his “cool” friend’s music collection.

not saying thats what happened here, and the designer probably could have pushed back or made the #1,2,or3 changes that could have pushed this further, but without being established i could easily see a suit railroading a young designer and art directing this forgery, rather than someone trying to pull a fast one on the band with a quick knock-off (it isnt like they are making a cover for their cousins band and are just gonna do whatever…maroon 5 might not be all that great to listen to, but chicks like them and they are a well known band, i would think any designer would be bringing their best for that kind of opportunity).

Right on Grant, not to mention it’s maroon 5 so who the fuck cares anyway. Rapture art is seriously sick, especially with the whole echoes concept. Being so visually literal never looked sexier.

We should turn this into a competition and make the cover they should’ve made, while ALSO biting the original.

btw, that’s not really an argument to make excuses, it just is what it is. if you look around in anytown usa, you’ll see design work that is so bad it’s beyond comprehension.

Tardlovski: good point about the integrity
Scott: good point about the good, the bad and to add the ugly: http://failblog.org/2008/12/20/postcard-fail/

Hey Scott,
I know you dabble with Visuals (in a VJing sense), this post reminds me of the way I felt in relation to this recent fiasco:
http://vjforums.com/showthread.php?t=26397
I feel it’s incredibly similar to this issue you’ve raised here.. artists being ripped off..

Both of these designs came after the 2001 release of the self-titled CD ‘Outlander.’ The different colors assigned to differtent band members’ shadowed faces appeared on the panel opposing the cover, which also featured the luminous and colored band members. Links below.

http://www.myspace.com/officialoutlander

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://cdbaby.name/o/u/outlander.jpg&imgrefurl=http://cdbaby.com/cd/outlander&usg=__LyhQm0ycb3jQRisQBX19muudPw0=&h=200&w=200&sz=18&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=lg0mlTjdfEf1AM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3Doutlander%2Bwalczak%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

a post to restore some balance:

i wish i had the kind of time to dig for designs that ‘look’ similar and then rant about it and drag the designer through the dirt via blog posts. that in itself is should be taken into account – jakub either has an incredible memory, a coincidental moment that linked the two covers, or way too much time on his hands. my assumption, since so many people posting on this thread are so good at that, is the latter.

here is the deal – i do think that this is a sad coincidence – chances are that the maroon 5 designs eyes had at one time seen the rapture cover. i do think there are a lot of factors that need to be considered including the aforementioned client control.

bottom line is that every designer at some point in their careers will encounter this issue on some level. michael beirut has openly spoke of this subject and [gasp!] has had solutions that looked similar to another designer … oh the horror! –

http://www.designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=14444

furthermore – anybody could look at any famous designers work and find some similarity with another designers work and fight jakub’s battle. when i first came across scott hansen’s work, some of his stuff reminded me of something before … specifically his russian workers party designs. did i dig deep to expose it? fuck no! i don’t know the whole story, i don’t know the facts. some people in this world are just pathetic enough to do this kind of thing and jakub is no better … myself? i think logically and give a good designer the benefit of the doubt.

http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/?p=1288

link courtesy of Sans. and his/hers above post [i had never seen this site before today]

on a parting note – i just want to say that this type of situation is a huge waste of time and energy because for every instance of suspected unoriginality, there are several more impressive, original, and thought provoking solutions out there, lets celebrate those works.

fortunately maroon 5 are terrible, and no one will buy this CD anyway.

There is nothing like being forced to do bad design. I have had to for work, and as easy it is to say that you would never fall into that, sometimes you really have no choice (unless you are willing to outright quit).

The album cover is still much better than the album.

I agree its a shame when people lift others ideas without much thought – however, the rather prosaic irony is, Mr Tycho, that this discussion is taking place on a page where, to the right, is a small version of your Soviet style poster with the arc of the man swinging his hammer echoing the curve of the Russian sickle. This, I’ve always felt is a very, very close approximation (dare I say almost exact copy) of an icon that ZTT used on Frankie Goes To Hollywood sleeves in the 80s.

There are only so many ideas, and whilst I think you’re a seriously talented chap, and would gladly stand behind you if things kicked off with Maroon 5, perhaps you just need to accept that there are only so many ideas… and imitation, as they say, is the highest form of flattery.

thanks for sharing,Fahad