Chinese ‘Instagram Copycat’ Gets Taken Off App Stores Over Logo Plagiarism
Old logo
Instagram is banned in China. The country’s supposed alternative is ‘Oasis’, which was temporarily withdrawn by its developer after being accused of plagiarism—not of Instagram, but of an artwork.
The app, created by Chinese social media giant Weibo, was launched last morning but was promptly taken down after a Weibo user noticed that ‘Oasis’s logo design was a dead-ringer to an artwork by South Korean design firm Studio Fnt.
Weibo’s New Social App Oasis Involved in Plagiarism of Logo Design – Pandaily https://t.co/S6gsbdHC5F
— Michael Standaert (@mstandaert) September 5, 2019
Studio Fnt created the art back in 2015 for South Korea’s Ulju Mountain Film Festival. Both logos see mountains that are lined with green ink, with a sun placed at the right corner of the landscapes.
Since time of publishing, the app is now back on Apple’s App Store with a redesigned logo that entails pointed hills between the offending mountain imagery.
New logo
Accused of Plagiarizing Logo, Weibo’s New Social App Disappears
Left: logo designs for Weibo’s Instagram-like social app, Lüzhou/Oasis
Right: renderings by a South Korean graphic design studio in 2015 https://t.co/nQKml4OF5R pic.twitter.com/rySG0qSnP4
— David Paulk 波大卫 (@davidpaulk) September 5, 2019
[via Shanghaiist, opening image via App Store]
