Here's a doozy...

[.:FMD]

ok I have a question to all the fellow designers...

Is it considered stealing if someone created a specific design element for a logo such as a ligature...and then someone else uses it but changes it very slightly to make it thier own...

I just ran into a problem at a design contest...The winning design was based almost exactly off of my original entry...Same typeface...ligature was same... the only difference was he changed the descender of the ligature and made it a "chrome" gradient. but everything else was pretty much identical. Now what pissed me off is the CH told other designers she wanted the feel of his design and elements from my design...but yet she did not give me ANY feedback.

I felt as if my idea was stolen...

what are your thoughts?

Oh to add...the changes I could have made in a revision thats how minute it was.

[resurepus]

ligatures per se are widely used in typography and will continue to be used even if they are in millions designs already. The question is if it is the main (or at least an important) element of a logo and the composition is based around this ligature, here on DC we would most probably call it plagiarism. However we look at specific designs in question and there is no absolutely clear rule of distinguishing a case of plagiarism from fair use of standard design elements.
This obviously happened outside of DC, because our contest holders are asked not to give comments which might encourage plagiarism.