By now there’s a good chance you’ve heard about the exceedingly silly ripoff of Dan Cederholm’s new SimpleBits logo. Basically, this graphics clearinghouse called LogoMaid made the mistake of acquiring, and proceeding to offer for sale, a logo that has an undeniable resemblance to Dan’s original art. A forgiveable mistake, maybe – but the problem is LogoMaid refuses to admit any wrongdoing.

The discussion thread on the Flickr page is worth at least skimming through. I got sort of wrapped up in the drama and read most of it. It was mostly back-and-forth between “everybody reasonable” and the LogoMaid representative, who makes himself look like an idiot repeatedly.

But I was inspired by parts where Dan explained that the original design of the logo was inspired by rotating a simple curly brace four times to build an enlosing shape. I’m attracted by these simple “creativity starters,” and while I’m not a designer, I do rank “design skills” among those that I would absolutely love being able to snap my fingers and acquire.

So every once in a while I try to spend a little time working towards developing them. Usually this just means trying to figure out Illustrator’s Pathfinder. Again. And then saving off the doodlings and going on about my work. But this time, in honor of Dan’s “rotated glyph technique,” and as an excuse to help spread the word about this appalling case of theft, I decided to share my creations.

Two “logos” inspired by Dan Cederholm and the SimpleBits logo.

Beanflakes, Inc.

Popcorn Luau, LLC

In each logo, the border is a collection of asterisk characters, arranged to form a sort of container. Inside is a “hand-drawn” shape – a tribute to the Cederholm cube.

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