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YouTube rips off Pixelodeon
YouTube is certainly a company that has plenty of resources at their disposal: so why do they feel the need to so closely emulate Pixelodeon with both their site design and video elements for their new Project: Direct video competition? Take a look at the examples below:
Steve Woolf has a great writeup about the whole thing over on his blog. As a curator for this past year’s Pixelodeon, it irks me to see a company like YouTube stick it to the people who have gone to great lengths to support and promote online video talent. As Steve says:
…I find it hard to believe that the YouTube designers were not aware of Pixelodeon, since we had a number of prominent YouTubers attend, and in fact we had an entire screening dedicated to YouTube (embedded above).
We created a strong brand, and YouTube appears to be “borrowing” concepts that can potentially create confusion between the two events. The chances are very remote that this is a coincidence.
I don’t know, it seems pretty jerky. This kind of thing does happens on the web pretty often from a design and concept standpoint, but not usually in a situation where two entities aren’t competing in any way. Pixelodeon promoted YouTubers; they shouldn’t get ripped off because of it.
Maybe they’re spending so much of Google’s money on legal fees that they couldn’t afford a good design team.
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This looks like one of those things a designer has seen and ended up using without realising where he/she had seen it. Designers are like that – they store up ideas all the time, without intentionally copying.
But there’s no doubt *someone* at YouTube should have noticed the similarity and said something. Projects like that don’t just go live without going through multiple levels of management, so someone should have noticed somewhere along the line.
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ok so the title screens look kinda similar besides different titles and the fact that one is sponsored by hp the other one by apple and then in the youtube video there is a director guy with an obviously staged background telling people about some sort of movie competition and the pixelodeon video starts off with a very metro looking guy being beeped out, then a girl enters and they curse a little… and thats stealing for you? i dont get it.
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Thanks for blogging about this, Veronica. Like I wrote in the comments on my post, our only concern is possible confusion between the two events. People following Pixelodeon could conceivably see the YouTube contest and think that we partnered with them or in some other way have a relationship where there is none.
Two online video events with such similar visual approaches seems an unlikely coincidence.
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#18 written by Todd 4 years ago
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#19 written by Vance 4 years ago
At the risk of feeding conspiracy theorists, I think that the logo is SO similar, that it must have been intentional and that it might point to something more sinister. Is there a reason why YouTube would want to undermine them?
And, Veronica, you raise another point: why *don’t* you respond more to the comments to your blog? You obviously found the topic interesting enough to write about, so why not interesting enough to discuss further? Especially with those “like-minded” enough to have you on their list of blogs to read?
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#20 written by Mike P 4 years ago
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I generally agree with you on your (sometimes very off the wall) observations, but this time, I have to say I don’t see it. I see a similar style to the intro, but not enough to cause concern.
By the way, kick ass job on the PC Gamer article…. just got done reading it! Are you going to be a regular contributor? If so, I may renew my subscription after all.
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So Pixelodeon owns starburts and beige? I don’t see any other similarities. People flaunt the word “rip” too quickly these days.