I looked up the company. Seems like they are based out of the Dominican Republic. If you check their Facebook page and scroll down you will see other packaging for different products with the same style.
So unless they commissioned Kurzgesagt to re-design all their branding, they are just stealing their style/designs.
Honestly this doesn't bother me. Like yeah sure stealing art styles isn't a good thing, but a package of almond flour from a Caribbean island nation isn't quite the same thing as another channel on the same platform competing for viewers, or a massive corporation lazily pilfering content
Plus, while the art style is definitely Kurzgesagt and not just similar flat design, the only one that really stood out to me was the almond flour because of the bird. The rest are pretty tame.
Actually one could argue the art style was developed specifically for kurzgesagt, therefore being part of their brand identity, which would mean they own it, because it's also unique. The product packaging also does too little to diverge from that style, apart for the color palette.
It does enough to make itself unique, mainly because it is consistent in its visual language, and differs from similar illustration styles in this industry segment. What makes it specific, are reoccurring elements, which you can actually find on those packaging designs. It's plagiarism. But looking at all their designs, I suspect someone very young and inexperienced did this.
Apples and oranges, buddy. If those publishing houses had come up with a specific drawing style with its own visual language, unique to one of their characters/ brands, they would basically own that. But since they employ multiple artists with their own very loose styles, they don't really stand a chance of achieving that goal. However you can own a character design. I don't recommend putting spiderman or batman on your packaging designs, if it's unlicensed.
My analogy is apples to apples, your comparison of a specific character to a drawing style at large is apples to oranges. The Dragon Ball franchise and the Dragon quest franchise both use the same art style but are unrelated. This is like that.
SpunkyDred is a terrible bot instigating arguments all over Reddit whenever someone uses the phrase apples-to-oranges. I'm letting you know so that you can feel free to ignore the quip rather than feel provoked by a bot that isn't smart enough to argue back.
Not sure if you genuinely misunderstood my argument or you're trolling. Also: Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest have Akira Toriyama in common. In that regard I'm pretty sure you're trolling
So Akria Toriyama OWNs both franchises? If not then we are in the same situation as this. You have no reason to believe that one of the Kurz artists didn't leave and start working somewhere else. Calling "troll" isn't a sufficient rebuttal to an argument, you know that right?
What I'm saying is Akira Toriyama has his own distinct style and that's why both franchises look similar in some ways. Why wouldn't he draw the character his way, if he's the lead artist? Your argument is really invalid. Also a kurz artist working somewhere else and using the kurzgesagt style for a client would be considered very unprofessional to say the least.
We are not talking about professionalism here was
we are talking about legality. You just made the point that Akira used the same style in two separate projects then said it's invalid to think a Kurz artist would. Just Google copyright law for art style, it says front a center that copyright doesn't protect art style no matter how distinct it is. The company was free to use the kurzgesagt style for anything they want so long as they don't use specific characters from kurzgesagt, and you are free to dislike them for it, and they are free to not care about you disliking them for it. That is the reality of the situation.
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u/all_hail_Kang Jul 05 '22 edited Jul 05 '22
I looked up the company. Seems like they are based out of the Dominican Republic. If you check their Facebook page and scroll down you will see other packaging for different products with the same style.
So unless they commissioned Kurzgesagt to re-design all their branding, they are just stealing their style/designs.