Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 29, 2009. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
“Don’t Copy Other People” was the title of Adrian Koch’s winning video. With urgency and a wink, his elaborate live-action production implemented the message of Adobe’s Don’t Copy — Who Wants to Be Copied? competition with close attention to detail.
“If we do not stop the theft of intellectual property, eventually entire people will be copied,” he said, summarizing the project’s central idea. Timo Leßmöllmann won the print category with Don’t Copy — Keep Your Face and Don’t Imitate Others. Designed as an advertising campaign, it played sympathetically with the theme’s core message.
Its deliberately reduced visual encouraged viewers to engage with the issue themselves. From more than 150 submissions, a professional jury of professors and specialists selected the ten best works in each of the print and video categories. The projects were then published online for a final community vote. More than 8,000 people cast over 30,000 votes.
Creative ideas with humour
Timo Schewe took second place in the video category. His film ends by asking, “Do YOU wanna get robbed?” after a young person downloads files illegally and is then immediately robbed in his own home. Diana Andrychowicz placed third. “Students like to copy during exams. They should not try it in an art exam, especially if they copy the signature as well,” she said of her project. In print, Paul Lipodat placed second with the detailed Ideensauger, while Johannes Kompa’s Don’t Copy Baby took third. Its emotional image of a newborn suggested that ideas also need to be born and therefore protected. The winning projects were available at http://www.adobe.de/dontcopy.
Students and emerging creatives from all disciplines could enter the competition, which aimed to draw attention to intellectual-property protection. Each category winner received an Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection, second-place entrants received a MacBook Pro, and third-place entrants received Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium. “We were delighted by the quantity and quality of the submissions. The projects show that young creatives have a strong awareness of the value of intellectual property and can express it in an urgent, modern and entertaining way,” said Philippe Briere, anti-piracy manager at Adobe Systems.
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