ISO50

How dare they… how dare these assholes contact his clients and compromise his reputation. That’s basically espionage. It’s one thing to sue him and it’s another to try an sabotage his business completely.

Technically, at the end of all this, they should have to pay exponentially more back to Jon for the damages they’ve done.

This is where the law fails though, man, I’ve had a logo stolen from me and like Jon, had the necessary evidence with time stamps to back up my case.

I just don’t have the extra cash to fight back with. So what do you do? Pick your battles, unfortunately for Jon, he doesn’t have the choice.

I almost threw up just reading this…I hope he beats the pants off those guys. I’d countersue on multiple stances…what a sick world we live in.

What is most disturbing is that these weasels contacted his clients. Irreparable harm is done to Jon’s good name, and now he has no choice but to sue this company and recoup some of the losses he will face from losing regular clients. His reputation might even possibly be too damaged from all of this to continue on in his design career, even after he is cleared in the case. Sadly he may have no choice but to try and get a substantial sum from the company in order to survive while he regroups and tries to rebuild a solid reputation.

Oops, maybe not: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8ac0q/designer_gets_accused_of_stealing_his_own_work/c08p5i7

Messy. Very Messy.

Whatever the outcome of this story, it is a good reminder to make sure that you’ve protected your property. I’ll be spending some time this week to make sure that I’ve got my art, design, etc. protected.

What a mess… It’s hard to know who to trust in this case, while Jon’s story is suspect, stockart isn’t exactly conducting themselves in an honorable manner. Plus it looks like they are on an aggressive copyright infringement hunt.
http://whatdoiknow.org/archives/000097.shtml

It’s becoming to the point where we all now need a law degree just to work in the creative field.

Bad early/late April joke? Hopefully.

This sums it up pretty good: http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/stock-logos-copyright-twitter/

(Found on the reddit thread)

Me too, Danny.

What if the whole thing is a farce, and Engle is just creating a false fund for people to donate to?

Cheers to Jo for the link, very worthwhile reading a balanced version of events. Seems things aren’t looking good for old Jonny boy. Some 20 different illustrators ripping off his work? Some of the logos being present on stockart for more than 10 years? Doesn’t quite add up.

If it is the case that he’s in the wrong, I feel for the people who donated, believing they were assisting an individual / fellow designer in trouble. I guess a positive to take is that complete strangers can show real kindness and generosity when they think someone’s in need. If it is the case he’d been ripping off these logos for a while now, got found out and hit with a big bill ($275 per illustration he’d unlawfully licensed) then cried wolf, maybe he hoped if he got in first he could raise enough through donations to cover it?

I’ll reserve judgement until someone sheds light on the whole saga, but as has been mentioned, it’s a real ugly episode.

It’s not just logos.

Television advertising I personally designed is on his site. He stole my ads and used them to sell his services. This speaks volumes as far as this other incident is concerned. If the guy is arrogant enough to post high profile television ads on his site and say they’re his why not rip off some stock art?

This exploded in his face and rightfully so. I have never seen such a brazen design thievery and his constant attempts at playing victim are not convincing. At all. And then to cast himself as the poster boy of persecution knowing the whole time that it was all a lie.

Game over.

Check out the discussion at MetaFilter. Jon doesn’t look so good with aggrieved parties joining in the discussion — http://www.metafilter.com/80654/A-logos-worth .

This document may help esplain some things.

http://relevantstudio.com/files/jon_engle_resume.pdf

Be sure to browse the entire folder.

I don’t mean to get off subject, but this is a great time to talk about how to protect yourself for these situations.

First, you should always keep a record of when you are starting a project, and the time line that follows. Also, you should keep track of any sketches / ideation process and file them away in a project folder. Something my company does when doing any sketching or printing off renderings, computer models, etc, is use a sheet of paper that has our company logo in the bottom right corner with a blank box next to it for signing and dating. This way you have physical evidence of the day you had the idea or thought. You should even do this if you just have a simple idea for something and only have a word description of the project.

Even though it may not be cheap, it also wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some sort of a relationship with a patent / copyright attorney. (on a side note, if you do decide to contact an attorney, keep a written log of every minute you spend with them on the phone, and every email sent. it is a guarantee they will try to over bill you)

I HAVEN’T BEEN THIS OUTRAGED SINCE THE FAIREY CASE

Have you read all of the comments here? Just look at the work and it’s as obvious as can be.

Side by side several marks beside “Jon’s” logos

http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/stock.html

A good retelling of the story on logofactory’s blog:
http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/stock-logos-copyright-twitter/

At the bottom of the blog post there are several comments. Read to get the bltomato story. Guy is a fraud. Why he brought this on himself is perplexing. My guess is that he got something out of the online comraderie and respect his “virtual” portfolio of works brought him from other members of online design communities like logopond and many others he belonged to.

This has totally made my week. It’s like the Watergate of the design community.

“I have no opinion because it is impossible to determine who is right and wrong.”

Are you serious? I hate to be a dick about this but have you been paying attention at all?

To believe that Jon is not a thief you would have to believe that right out of college he started getting high profile freelance work from major clients like the WB, despite the fact that he lives in New Mexico and his only previous client was his church. And you would have to believe that after designing these high profile campaigns for shows like Smallville and Lost, some large, well established, key art award-winning studios like BLT decided to claim his work as their own. Then I suppose he got tired of doing this prestigious entertainment work and decided to focus on doing logos for small no-name companies. But once again, his work was ripped off by multiple established illustrators who modified his logos, sometimes adding extra details. These illustrators all conspired to sell his work on a stock art website and cunningly created additional illustrations mimicing the style of the ones they stole in order to throw us off the trail. Of course Jon’s illustration style is so varied and wide ranging that several artists had to rip off his work so it wouldn’t look too suspicious. And instead of trying to sell stuff on a site like istockphoto, they decided to submit it all to a single, invitation only stock agency who could then turn around and try to collect licensing fees from Jon for his own work.

Sounds plausible.

It is every design professionals right and duty to stand up to plagarism, intellectual property theft, and incompetent practice. If this was Law, he’d be disbarred. If it were Medicine, he’d have his license pulled. Just because the practice of design center on art and creativity, doesn’t mean you can treat it cavalierly. Jon’s action were reprehensible not only to design professionals who work hard to create original artwork, but to his clients who hired him based on lies and deceit.

Anyone not convinced of his guilt in this manner is one of two things a.) guilty of their own acts of plagarism therefore unable to condemn someone of like mind for fear of condemning themselves or b.) ignorant.

We all use images as inspiration. Sometimes that inspiration is very close to the source. But when it literally is the source with slight tweaks, that is not design, that is sad and Jon should feel ashamed. And by all the tracks of his work being pulled up on the internet…it would appear that he is.

Nicholas, it’s funny how you tell me to worry about my own life and then you talk about “protecting one’s own work.” I don’t know who designed those Lost and Smallville posters but I do have friends that work at BLT so this hits somewhat close to home. The only way I can see for designers to protect their work in this situation is to call out this Engle character for the thieving fraud that he is.

This isn’t a matter of opinion and it has nothing to do with reading a few blogs. His thievery is a fact that is very clear to see for anyone with two eyes. I would say it’s pretty much a matter of public record that he did not design the iconic Smallville poster of Clark in the cornfield with an S drawn on his chest. And I can assure you that the illustrators and poster companies that he ripped off didn’t put their work on any “gallery” sites. But you seem to be saying that the only way for designers (and indeed, large design firms and stock art companies) to protect their work is to avoid showing it online at all?