Level Orange

OK, I admit it. I wasn’t exactly looking for an article in the latest issue of the German edition of Maxim when I spotted this cover, but that’s beside the point. What caught my eye, believe it or not, wasn’t new Bond girl Olga Kurylenko either, but rather how similar the design was to just about every cover that’s come from David Curcurito and gang over at Esquire for the last couple of years now.

A concept that originated with Esquire editor in chief David Granger, the “wall of text” treatment, featuring partially (or in some instances, almost entirely) obscured text on a stark background behind a single subject has ostensibly become a trademark for Esquire’s design aesthetic since first appearing back in September of 2006. In fact, it’s become so much of a touchstone in publication design that it’s just about played itself out, and yet, it just works. It works so well that another magazine in the genre is now taking the same approach to their own cover design.

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Tech news site Ars Technica ran an article yesterday about GameCyte, a relative newcomer to the gaming blog arena, charging it with not disclosing enough about its behind-the-scenes connections to TriplePoint, a PR firm that represents various game publishers.

While accusations of conflict of interest and unethical behavior can quickly escalate to distrust and defection amongst readers, the catalyst of Ars Technica’s piece–a positive review of a game published by Telltale Games, one of TriplePoint’s former clients–seems fairly innocuous on the surface. It’s a fair, adequately-written review of a highly-anticipated game that makes no bones about what there is to like and not like about the game itself. However, according to Ars Technica, the crucial missing element is that there is no statement about the thrice-removed connection between GameCyte and Telltale Games. If it were simply a matter of stating up front that GameCyte is a part of Pantheon Labs and let’s say Pantheon Labs was actually owned  by Telltale Games, then that wouldn’t be unheard of, but that’s not the case at all.

Yet, Ars Technica has drawn a hard line and demanded that any and all relationships between Pantheon Labs and TriplePoint must be disclosed at all times, which, along with being impractical, is simply unnecessary for the most part. From what I’ve seen, people who operate in the gaming press and industry have most likely come into contact with each other at some point or another and so painstakingly detailing and listing every single connection of everyone involved–as Ars Technica seems to suggest–is a task bordering on the ridiculous, especially with a PR firm. Is it really that surprising that these people that work or worked at a PR firm actually know other people in the gaming industry? Shock! Awe!

I’ve learned that you can only go so far to earn peoples’ trust before you’ve overextended yourself and/or possibly compromised your ability to actually produce quality content. While I think laying low is a reasonable reaction, given the speed and unchecked nature that news spreads across the net these days, I’d much rather see a statement or commentary from GameCyte directly to clear the air.

Now, for the sake of full disclosure, other than knowing a cool cat that works there, I don’t have any other affiliation (financial or otherwise) with GameCyte or Pantheon Labs, nor TriplePoint, Telltale Games nor your mom.

Sometime in the last week, the site for PiQ Magazine, piqmag.com, went missing. And not missing in the “we’ll be back soon” meaning, but missing in the way that so many sites go missing when there’s no one left to keep them alive—someone just decided to pull the plug.

I can’t say it saddens me a great deal because I had expected it to happen eventually. In fact, I’m more surprised that it happened so soon. Granted, it wasn’t a huge loss, but it was largely made up of content that didn’t make it’s way into the pages of the magazine itself, and since the magazine closed back in June, I’ve been watching the site in hopes that it would stick around and be a small, lasting tribute to what we tried to do with PiQ Magazine.

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One of the biggest concerns a graphic designer can ever be confronted with is cribbing from someone else’s work. Sometimes it happens unknowingly, sometimes it’s completely intentional, and whether or not a viewer makes that distinction usually doesn’t matter. It’s the responsibility of the designer to make sure he’s keeping his vision and work original and fresh.

Most people would say that technically nothing is original or new anymore, and in some ways, that’s absolutely true, but that doesn’t give a designer the freedom to knowingly copy another’s work. Aside from outright plagiarism, there’s nothing necessarily illegal about doing it, but it’s one of those unwritten moral codes that artists (or any creative person, for that matter) must live by.

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