I found out about this miserable website thanks to a tweet by my friend @hemeon. They sell “Do-it-Yourself Logos for Entrepeneurs” on the cheap by letting any schmo off the street composite their own using a flash application.

It’s bad enough that the concept of this site completely trivializes the design industry, but they make it even worse by ripping off the work of real designers. I realize every business can’t afford to hire a professional designer, so there probably is room for this type of service – although I despise the concept. However, the old addage “you get what you pay for” is not playing out here. In this case, they’re getting a helluva lot more. Surprisingly, the site includes “variations” of some pretty well-known designs…yeah, WWF and Time Warner won’t notice…

Image source: RockPaperInk

Marc’s tweet prompted me to go through the LogoGarden site for about 20 minutes and I witnessed a bunch of attrocities while looking for anything that I might recognize. After wading through a ton of pages of badly hacked-together logos, I began to think I wouldn’t find anything of mine. However, once I realized I could see a lot more by trying out their “free” sample build, it didn’t take me long to come across this:

I designed the logo circled in red probably 18-some-odd years ago. It was a concept for a pet insurance company named PetNet, and although it didn’t get bought, it's been on my porfolio site for maybe 10 years or so (yes, the site is that old, thus the crappy design, UI, and ugly URL). Here’s a closer look:

I’m a little late to the game, since apparently there are a lot of other posts about this topic. Here’s a few for your reading pleasure:

• More Logo Thievery (Iconify.it/Scott Lewis)
• Thoughts on the LogoGarden Controversy (Dani Nordin)
• How Low Can They Go? (LogoLounge.com)
• Perils of DIY Logo Makers (Logofactory.com)
• LogoGarden’s Bitter Harvest (Logofactory.com)
• Grand Theft Logo (Judity Mayer/NWICreative.com)
• LogoGarden.com harvests logos from pros (LogoMotives/Jeff Fisher)
• LogoGarden Should be Plowed Under (Prejean Creative)
• Love Thy Logo (Rock Paper Ink)
• Facebook page
• Twitter trend #LogoGarden

If any of you fellow designers find your logos being ripped off by LogoGarden, report it to their webhost, Rackspace and let’s hope that this shady operation can get shut down.

(hat tip to Brent Pelloquin for his post: How To Get Your Logo Removed from LogoGarden)