If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then you can consider me quite flattered. Imagine my surprise recently when I saw a couple of ideas clearly lifted straight from the 989 Design portfolio.

This is, of course, the 989 Design logo:

Then as I was browing one day, I see this:

Ad Index guys, you’re embarassing me with your clear imitation of my logo. I did, after all, invent the red circle with reversed out characters.

And then to further the flattery, I refer you to the Great Lakes Loons Man of Steal poster:

Four or five weeks later, I was sitting in Brewtopia when I spotted the cover of the new Tri-City Magazine:

Stop it, you guys, you’re making me blush! I really appreciate that so many people have taken the time to mimic my work but you’re embarrassing me with all of this imitation.

Okay, to be clear, I’m being very tongue-in-cheek about this. Neither Ad Index nor Tri-City Magazine copied my work. There are trends in design and there are good ideas that happen simultaneously. Each of these is a case of  coincidence. It’s just dumb luck that I spotted the Ad Index logo (haven’t been able to find it since), but when I saw it the 989 logo was the first thing I thought of. As far as the TCM cover, that’s just a funny coincidence that we each had a Superman idea at the same time. I’ll take my Superman over theirs, though, because while Mike (on the magazine cover) is a great guy and a great golfer, Dee is going to be playing for the Dodgers one day.

After last week’s entry about Spencer Fairey taking a little too little artistic license with another person’s image, let’s start this week off with a great example of taking someone else’s idea and doing something with it.

We’re going to start with an album that some consider to be the very first true rock-n-roll record, Elvis Presley’s self-titled debut on RCA Records. When RCA purchased the 21-year-old singer’s contract from Sun Records’ owner Sam Phillips (for $35,000) Presley had only a few singles to his hame. This 1956 album was the album that introduced him to world and launched him to the stratosphere.

Twenty-some years later, in 1979 (1980 in America), The Clash released their masterpiece, London Calling. The cover of London Calling featured a very clear tribute (or was it a thumbing of the nose?) at Presley’s cover.

And now, thirty years after the Clash’s homage to the King, New York City design studio The Chopping Block has breathed new life into the image with their robotRock t-shirt.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love this shirt. I’d like to recommend that everyone go out and buy one—and I really think you should—let’s just coordinate what days we’re going to wear them, cool?

I’m a big Clash fan, so the London Calling image has been a part of my consciousness for many, many years. I never realized until a while after that it was a nod back to the Elvis album. There have been many other covers, images, parodies, etc. that have borrowed from that original Elvis album, but these are a couple of the best examples around.

So what will I design that will be toyed with for the next 50 years? Hmmmm…good question.

Man, did I make a bad choice in starting a design business. I should have gone the route that Nick Swinmurn did and start an online shoe store instead.

Zappos.com was acquired by Amazon.com today for a deal worth around $850 million (actually, with the bump in Amazon stock, the deal is now worth closer to $900M).

Zappos is a great example of creating a brand and redefining an industry. According to their website, Swinmurn started the company after a frustrating search for shoes. One store would have the style, but not in his size. Another would have the right size, but in a different color. And searching online was not much better.

The idea was simple…sell lots of shoes. How do you get people to start buying shoes online? You carry lots of styles and product lines and you carry them in all sizes and colors. And to get over the hurdle of shipping costs, you ship the shoes for free. And from there an internet giant was born.

Congratulations, Zappos.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the Detroit Lions have finally released their new logo and it is exactly what early sources said it would be. With this larger picture, you can see the logo better. I do like the changes to the Lion itself, but I am still not thrilled with the wordmark. In fact, I don’t really care for the wordmark at all.

In my original post, somebody commented that the wordmark looks very World League and he’s dead right. Ever since he wrote that, all I can think of is USFL or something like that. 

In truth, though, I won’t mind the wordmark too much if they just field a better team. You can have the greatest logo in the world, but if the product on the field is garbage, your brand is garbage. Plus, I’d like to see the Lions return to anthing-close-to-respectability just because I am tired of ESPN jackasses and their constant smirky comments.

Anybody who grew up in Michigan or who follows the NFL is familiar with the logo above and all of the baggage attached to it. It’s the logo of the Detroit Lions, a once-proud franchise whose 2008–2009 season was the worst in NFL history. From the Ford family’s disastrous ownership to bad management decisions to bad luck, the Lions are in the midst of putting together the worst decade in the history of any NFL franchise.

You can’t fire the owners (unfortunately), but you can make a lot of other changes. Along with management changes (several of which weren’t really much of a change) and a lot of personnel changes, the Lions have decided to scrap the old-style Detroit Lions logo (above) and replace it with this:

Sorry for the small size, but it’s the best I could find. As you can see, the basic shape of the Lion is still the same, but they’ve added in some nice broad strokes to give the logo a little more motion. They’ve also sharpened up the Lion’s face, adding an eye and making the snarl more pronounced. It certainly looks a lot tougher and more menacing—now let’s wait to see if the team matches up to the logo.

Overall, I like the logo change. I’m pleased that even though this is a big change for them, the didn’t go too far. I’m glad they kept the Honolulu blue, as well. I know that some fans don’t like the blue very much and don’t think it’s a very tough-looking color, but it is one of the classic NFL logos. Keeping your traditions intact while giving your franchise a contemporary look is a good way to go about rebranding.

In addition to the logo, they have replaced the old, western-style “LIONS” logotype with this:

I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it. The old type was really, really dated and always looked out of place to me. This fits in with the new logo and it has a little more motion to it. It’s fine.

My only regret in this is that I didn’t write about it last week when I first saw a leaked version of the logo. It wasn’t the exact logo, but it was pretty close. Had I written about this then, it would be a little more timely. This is still pretty fresh news, but next time I won’t sit on the news for a week.