Crafting words individually out of ordinary objects in order to construct a sentence may not be copyrighted, you’re right. But come on. The concept is strongly associated with the man that strongly exploited it and strongly made it his own by way of a strongly established aesthethic. It seems to me that the “not copy-righted” argument might as well had come off a lawyer’s mouth, cringing in technicisms when it’s obvious that the idea, from concept down to execution isn’t original.

It’s hard to tell where the coincidences stop and the plagiarism starts, for we are not familiar with the design process behind it, and we are all making assumptions. But really, come on.

I’m quoting type designer Nick Shinn here, just becuase he is so good with words:

“However, when a creative comes up with something that bears a strong resemblance to well-known currently fashionable/popular work, even if there is no plagiarism involved, it’s best to kill that baby, for the sake of reputation.”

Quoted from typophile: http://typophile.com/node/60721

Two thumbs down, also. Just my two cents.

I guess most of my negative feeling stem from the fact that there is something well known in the past (Sagmeister’s work) to compare this to and I don’t think it “respected” its predecessor in its attempt to improve. That statement might be a bit extreme or even silly, but let me explain.

After having stepped away for a bit and looked at it again, I do like what they are trying to do with the video, but I don’t think they went far enough to not step on the toes of Stefan. I think because (like you said) they added motion they should have REALLY added motion. The video shots on the finished words could work just as well as a print piece. I would have liked to see more kinetic versions or words rather than stills shot with a video camera mixed with the building process in between. Maybe doing something that borrows ideas from both Sameister and Honda’s famous commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2VCfOC69jc

I can’t really say much more that was’t already said better than I could by Cliff at Fast Company. I guess my only last statement would be that there is a lot more charm in the handmade nature of Sagmiester’s than Abslut’s polished, extremely detailed, and commercial quality. But that’s only my opinion.

I also wonder what Stefan Sagmeister would think?

P.S. I apologize for my second post. I realized that the first was waiting for approval right after I posted it.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/absolut-doh

I think it’s definitely within reason that they borrowed elements from Sagmeister, I was fully aware of Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far before posting this. What they did differently though was put motion to it all, showed the process, and all of those pieces made it something different.

I also have a hard time believing that Stefan Sagmeister was the first one to ever write words out of objects, this doesn’t seem like a revolutionary idea. But it definitely does seem more ironic that they titled it Doing Things Differently Leads To Something Exceptional, it’s kind of like shooting yourself in the foot.

That all being said, I think what they did was extremely detailed, well-crafted, and over all well done. I’m sure it took a ton of planning and brainstorming to come up with something of such quality. They didn’t just tie caution tape to a fence in New York. If anything they stole the idea and made it entirely better, in my opinion.

I wonder what Stefan Sagmeister would think?

I really don’t get how they had the balls to say “Doing Things Differently Leads To Something Exceptional” when they didn’t do ANYTHING differently… They just stole an idea for this video…

I give it a thumbs WAY down… Not an original concept, bad and not new or different music, poor video editing and the voice over sounds like they were REALLY trying for the Apple voice over. Lame all around… well i guess the bottles in the forest were kinda nice… but still lame…