Veen, meet Fatty

Comments and faves

1. 

   jachi (89 months ago | reply)

   Gosh, so many court cases.

2. ★

   Kathryn Yu added this photo to her favorites. (89 months ago)

3. 

   bici (89 months ago | reply)

   hey art can be like a virus.... hits in many places at the same time. (ps fatty reminds me of laurel. did he "borrow" that look.

4. 

   scottymac (89 months ago | reply)

   Looks more like Fatty Arbuckle to me.

5. 

   whoisdan (89 months ago | reply)

   The difference being Veen's is crappy and Fatty's is pretty good (and makes sense).

6. 

   patricio00 (89 months ago | reply)

   They both look like mid-90s giant half head movie posters.

7. 

   jmholloway (89 months ago | reply)

   they are both ugly to me

8. 

   cpultz (89 months ago | reply)

   A infinite number of chimps with infinite copies of InDesign...

9. 

   Tom Dolan (89 months ago | reply)

   They share the time-honored graphic design device of cropping a headshot down the middle (done about 1,000,000 times) and using yellow prominently. Call the lawyers not.

10. 

    Ryan Powers (89 months ago | reply)

    the concept i'd say is simple enough to have the resemblence be purely coincidental.

11. 

    letterneversent (89 months ago | reply)

    The fatty one actually looks better.

12. 

    jgclarke (89 months ago | reply)

    With all due respect, I disagree with your comment that it's a "striking resemblance". Only the orangeish background and halved face are the same- otherwise, the type, colors, author name placement, title placement, and book size are different enough to make the two items stand more than far enough apart.

13. 

    aka.me (89 months ago | reply)

    The fatty one does actually look way better...

14. 

    mattj (89 months ago | reply)

    Totally agree with Tom and Ryan. There are only two similarities: the half headshot and the yellowness. A full headshot wouldn't leave room for the title and putting it to the right doesn't really make sense either, (as presumably the image spills over onto the spine).

    I believe the book designers have a taken similar path in their design decisions, and that this is a coincidence.

15. 

    klunkytherobot (89 months ago | reply)

    This is a ridiculous assertation.

16. 

    xiffix (89 months ago | reply)

    Yes, sticking the "look|search inside" graphic on the corner does make them look similar. I wonder how similar they'd look if you were holding them both in your hands or did a google image search to see higher resolution versions of the respective covers? Anyway, I hope you're kidding and that you are just poking fun at the goatee guy.

17. 

    dummytext (89 months ago | reply)

    Striking resemblance? I don't agree. They're both strikingly uninspired, derivative, lacking in imagination.

    And another thing. On page 121, where Veen "brags" about jumping the curb and hitting Jesse James Garrett with the side mirror -- the whole thing has the whiff of fabrication.

18. 

    nex (89 months ago | reply)

    i see as many differences as i see similarities. you might find in the two covers exhibited here the same kind of striking resemblance as in two homophones, but this juxtaposition of the former is exactly as interesting and significant as the lame pun you could make with the latter: not at all.

19. 

    Bill Keller (89 months ago | reply)

    Neither one is very original.

20. 

    Mike Doan (89 months ago | reply)

    Like my junior high social studies teach use to say to drummers in his class disrupting his lectures, "Hey, drummerboy, all the beats in the world have been invented, so stop." You can apply the same rule to design.

21. 

    Aegir (89 months ago | reply)

    Like, big deal. OMG! Your book cover has *words* on it! It's one of the three primary colours! It's got a croped head shot! It's totally, like, plagiarism.

    If the length of the title was similar and the typographical treatment was the same, then maybe you'd have a point, but they're not, so you don't.

22. 

    chrismear (89 months ago | reply)

    Calm down, folks. I don't think anyone's seriously accusing Jerry Stahl's publishers of copyright violation. It's just a funny coincidence.

    Or, in other words, Jeffrey Veen is a fatty.

23. 

    chuckmagnum (89 months ago | reply)

    pick better stuff to copy

24. 

    smackfu (89 months ago | reply)

    Someone should overlay Nick Hornby's Songbook cover:
    www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573223565

25. 

    richard winchell (89 months ago | reply)

    i'm sure if someone had time they could find all sorts of prior art in this vein. i mean, "jerry" almost looks like "jeffrey", right? so that must be some sort of infringement, too.

    and xavier mcdaniel shoulda clocked jordan as soon as the latter showed up shaved.

26. ★

    kowitz added this photo to his favorites. (82 months ago)

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