Publisher ‘addressing complaints’ and promises to withdraw designs from sale
Central 23 has taken action following the copying issues raised by Thortful’s recent social media post and the PG Buzz article.
“We have taken the article at PG Buzz seriously,” Central 23 co-founder Marcus Ereira said, “and have actively reviewed and addressed complaints made by fellow designers. In a number of cases, we have withdrawn the design from sale.
“We have also created a design guidelines document for use by our team of designers, outlining best practices for our future design briefing and creation process. We have worked with over 100 freelance designers in the past and will ensure that our collaboration with future designers is based on these updated guidelines.”
The company, which bills itself as a “design studio based in Soho, London”, said it supplies approximately 10,000 stores globally, predominately in the United States.
It has also been in contact with a number of publishers who were among those featured in the 7 July PG Buzz article saying they had found copies of their designs on the Central 23 website as well as online marketplace Thortful and other selling platforms under the publisher’s name.
In an email to Jack Thorpe and Laura Harvey, owners of Paper Plane, Marcus sent them Central 23’s updated guidelines and said: “We have taken your complaint seriously and have made the decision to discontinue our design. While there may still be some remaining stock available online for a short period of time, I can confirm that the design has been immediately removed from our website, catalogue and Etsy.
“Although we do not have complete insight into your creative process and the origins of your design, we acknowledge that our card bears more similarity to yours than it should, and for that, I am sorry.
“We have never encouraged designers to explicitly copy the work of others. That said, we have taken this criticism seriously and conducted a comprehensive review of our entire creative process. Having done so, we recognise the need for change.”
Marcus added the Designed By Dog card “has been immediately discontinued” and said: “We are actively reviewing and addressing other complaints made by fellow designers. In some of those other cases, although not all of them, we have also withdrawn the design from sale.”
Jack told PG Buzz: “We’re still waiting for them to remove the card from Amazon and are considering what our next steps should be – whether or not we are entitled to the money they made by selling their version, etc.”
