Oh boy. This is definitely not something to be proud of at all.
According to TheHive.Asia, a 21-year old European design student named Tom Anders Watkins accused Malaysian ad agency Dentsu Utama of plagiarising his work for a WWF ad campaign titled “Cross River Gorilla”. The campaign in question recently won a Silver Award for Outdoor Advertising at Malaysia’s Kancil Awards.
Tom asked for assistance at Imgur before taking the matter into his own hands by posting it up Twitter and Reddit. He was hoping to get a reply from the local ad agency but received no response from them on the situation. His post went on to gather more than 200 comments on Reddit, 400 comments on Imgur and retweeted almost 900 times.
Social media users asked the design student to hire a lawyer and sue the company, but some users said that the similarities between both design were merely a coincidence.
https://twitter.com/TomAnders_/status/681759845020753920/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Tom began using circles technique for his “Animal Logos” portfolio in April 2014 while Densu Utama’s campaign was released this year. The 2 designs aren’t exactly the same, but if the designs are being put side-to-side, the positions of the circles and shapes are strikingly similar.
This isn’t the first time that the local ad agency was accused of stealing someone else’s work. Earlier this month, they won a few awards for an outstanding skateboard design, only to be accused of plagiarising a series of Chinese medicine-themed designs by Challenge Skateboard.
So, what do you think? Can you see the similarities between the 2 designs? Or is it just a coincidence? Leave your thoughts in the comment box below.
Source: TheHive.Asia.
