“I believe I can copy” by Britney Spears

Latest in the news about the paparazzi’s favorite celebrity Britney Spears is her soon to be debuted fragrance “Believe”. Renowned cosmetics company, Elizabeth Arden, will soon launch “Believe” which is Britney’s latest and third in line fragrance (the first two being “Curious” and “Fantasy”), branded by the cosmetics giant. Sadly, the starlet’s already sinking career is stricken with allegations of logo copyrights violation in the “I believe” / “Believe” frenzy.

After much speculation, it has been noted that the perfume’s brand is a total rip-off of a Canadian charity organization “Mondonation”. Monodonation came up with a distinct, simple and heartfelt scheme through which people are given a chance to tailor a personal principle onto a t-shirt, a slogan of something they believe in.

The best aspect of ‘mondonation’ is that it donates a portion of the profit earned from the sale of it’s “I believe” t-shirts to various charities worldwide. With the “believe” t-shirts, the company has managed to touch and inspire a great number of people, proof of which can be seen after viewing their YouTube videos (some of those videos have been viewed almost 700,000 times!).

It is sad to see that the charitable opportunities created by the mondonation brand may be damaged by the infringement of their identity. Thousands of people have bought the “I believe” t-shirts and support the many charities working with ‘mondonation’. It will be a pity to see the t-shirts become an advertisement for Britney Spears’ new perfume. Elizabeth Arden, the company launching the “believe” perfume has shown some really shocking and inconsiderate business values for harming a brilliant and positive brand image. They have deliberately and unashamedly copied another organization’s logo. Therefore, they should make things right by penalizing the design team that imitated mondonation’s original “I believe” insignia, and must also compensate by giving a donation to mondonation as a compensation for the damage caused to the charity and its cause.

On other note, some people state that the rip by Elizabeth Arden may have been an unintentional mistake, considering that the typeface used in the fragrance logo is not the same as the original mondonation “I believe”. Certain designers have also tried supporting the attempt. They say that the similar use of colors could have been a mistake since the colors pink and green are parallel to each other on the color wheel, and designers tend to pick colors that are next to each other on the wheel.

Nevertheless, mistake or no mistake, it is a little difficult to believe that the design team of such an influential company could actually make such a big blunder. For most of us with common sense, it is very clear to see that the perfume carrying the pop princess’s name has ripped off the charity’s identity. No wonder so many indignant supporters of the charity have lodged official complaints against Elizabeth Arden to stop the launch of the fragrance and change the logo.

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• Logo Theft Part 2 – Copy, Alter and Replicate…Intelligently Though!
• Logo Theft – Copy, Alter and Replicate…Shamefully Though!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 2:34 am and is filed under Logo Design News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.