Film poster prompts accusations of stolen artwork

One necessary aspect of working with a custom screen printing company is knowing that your ideas will be safeguarded and translated into signs that are unalterably linked to your business. 

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way in the world of promotional materials. Filmdrunk recently highlighted a story surrounding the artist Juan Luis Garcia and the production company of filmmaker Spike Lee regarding the poster for Lee's Oldboy, a remake of a popular 2003 Korean film. 

According to the source, Garcia claims his designs were accepted by the agency managing Oldboy's ad campaign, but that he turned it down. However, the end result that the company went with looks very similar to Garcia's alleged designs, with many of the same elements and a near-identical placement of the star, Josh Brolin.

While Garcia is suing, Spike Lee himself has claimed on Twitter that the accusation has no merit and that he "never heard of this guy." 

Following ethical guidelines when it comes to rendering images and creating your own custom made signs is important no matter what your business does. A post in Business 2 Community authored by Renee Shupee recently examined some of the issues that surround the respect of intellectual property, especially in regards to Fair Use principles. 

"One thing to remember is that words can be plagiarized but images cannot be," she writes. "However, you can infringe on someone's copyright when you use images without permission or outside the parameters of legal use described in the fine print of purchased images."

Respect this guideline and work with companies that do as well to ethically produce graphic ideas that increase your company's profile.