I’ve been admiring Paul Gardner’s band posters this morning, great use of color and execution of ideas that aren’t too literal or same-y, you know like owls and hand drawn guitars, urgh I hope to see more posters like this around Brooklyn. I noticed one in there though that is a bit ISO50 Terrabyte-ish but i’ll pretend I didn’t see it.
Paul Gardner Band Posters
02.02.2011
Though some of Paul’s work is well done, he is notorious for stealing other artists’ work. That ISO50 Terrabyte rip is but one of many. Here’s an instance of Paul stealing an Aaron Draplin design for use in a Florafauna promotional piece: http://www.gigposters.com/forums/posters/150262-extreme-plagiarism-36.html
Eff Paul Gardner in the A with a rake that’s on fire!
Hackwannaberealartist.
^^Wow. That’s all I can say. It’s one thing to derive inspiration from anothers work, but a whole other to just basically steal someones work. I’m going through that forum thread, and several cases, I wouldn’t call it plagiarism; But a few of those are just so blatantly ripped off. ugggh
Wow, geez I didn’t know, hmmm, let me think here
Quote from Paul Gardner himself:
“Hello, It’s been awhile.
Now seems like an appropriate time to chime in. Here’s the scoop: I wrongfully used this bear, without permission from Mr. Aaron Draplin. How the fuck could anyone do that? I don’t have an answer for that. There was a point in time where I ignorantly pulled from various forbidden sources for imagery. Thinking it was OK to pass off as my own. Bad. Not cool. This bear comes form that behavior, form that period in time. I had no idea this was Draplin’s bear when I used it for my cards. As I was sifting through old illustrations (ones I thought I had drawn myself, I am capable of that), this bear popped up, I used it. Aaron Draplin and I have since had a phone conversation about the use of his bear. I admit I wrongfully used it, apologized profusely, and I truly am sorry. I have removed them from my site and have destroyed the printed copies. Before removing this item from my site, I had sold one set of cards with Draplin’s bear on them. I contacted the person who made that purchase, explained the situation and donated the $16 to a good cause.
Regarding this accused plagiaristic behavior, I have no real good explanation for you. It stems from some sort of self destructive mechanism. When things get too easy for me, I find a way to fuck it all up in the worst way possible. — I’m over it though, and moving on. I’m all better. (In the head)
The snowball effect has covered my life white. I’ve been accused of so many wrong doings. I know many of those accusations to be false, but who wants to believe the guy who has already fucked up in this department, a previous offender? very few. I believe I am a good and capable designer. I know where I went wrong, I’m working to correct things and make things right (It won’t be easy), but I have moved on.
-Paul”
Paul is the Milli Vanilli of the poster world.
Oh wait…didn’t one of those guys kill themselves?
In Paul’s defense and I usually don’t do this because I see soo many ISO50 rip offs that i want to punch them in the face I feel that the Islands one and the Caribou one have good potential in the “nice, he created that without stealing” category but I can’t fault him on the Moon either, a lot of moon stuff out there, no one owns it but hey I don’t think he thinks of himself as an artist if he’s ripping off people as much as he does, as long as he doesn’t think that then he’s just doing what he does and made a few pretty things that were appealing this morning.
total butt hole.
I remember seeing a thread about this iso50 print and someone bringing up Paul “Stinkhole” Gardner up in it and I can’t find it now.
Terrabyte (studio edition)
and Jakub, please know that people are just trying to set the record straight and to make sure he doesn’t keep cherry picking the good ideas because that’s the easy way to do things.
iso50 indeed rules the school.
man, to be a fly on the wall when draplin and paul chatted….
I posted about Paul and his work two years ago and people were just as vocal and adamant about his plagiarism:
http://thefoxisblack.com/2009/11/02/florafauna/
He even sent me an email threatening to sue me fore defamation because of the comments, that had been substantiated, that other people had left on the site. I politely told him to fuck off.
whoa, this dude is like the carlos mencia of design
Here are some interesting quotes:
Good artists borrow. Great artists steal. (Pablo Picasso)
If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I’d rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist! (Paul Gauguin)
They copied all they could follow, but they couldn’t copy my mind, so I left them sweating and stealing a year and a half behind. (Rudyard Kipling)
Of course, your ideas can be stolen… I used to think it was immoral; now I think of it as a compliment… Ultimately, an idea isn’t yours; it’s only your take on something. (Peter Wolf)
That Pablo Picasso line is the Godwin’s Law of art conversations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law). Who gives a damn about that trite out-of-context Picasso quote?
Paul Gardner is talentless AND an asshole. He’ll be working at an Arby’s within the year.
i’m gonna say i borrow shit all the time. i’m curious where other working designers are at with the line of what’s acceptable and what’s straight up biting. i try my ass off to make it ‘mine’, however i think it’s a little irritating when designers get all on their high horse about originality and the 1st chance to sacrifice somebody they are all over it. if paul’s work is the ‘at home goofing around’ variety,or he runs his own studio, then this is more on the horse shit tip than not since you have more play with getting things done and should not be short cutting the process of finding a solution. designers that work for corporations or for a business where they are not as fortunate to be able to fart around on a logo/poster whatever for hours on end…quite a different situation i would say. doesn’t make it right, but that’s the reality.