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McDonald's Lifting From Nine Inch Nails

Here’s a wacky one for you. Some blogger over at Echoing the Sound was in touch enough with the graphics on The Fragile album by NIN to notice a very peculiar resemblance between them and the graphics at a McDonald’s near his home at Warren Street station in the UK, where the burger retailer is testing a new “upmarket” look.

The font, the photos, the cropping and look of the mark are nearly identical to the album. Check out the post. Then check out the photo where he compares the album art against the perpetrator’s art. Pretty damning if you ask us.

565 days ago / / Link

Comment

  1. wow.

    — ian t. nordeck · Dec 17, 09:01 AM · #

  2. Heck.. we’ve all been inspired by other art.. but this is a 100% direct rip-off. And my guess.. the designer’s boss has no idea because they don’t listen to NIN. Yikes..
    R

    — Randall · Dec 17, 09:04 AM · #

  3. It seems we have entered a cultural phase where artist (both fine and graphic) feel it is alright to blatantly rip off existing work while justifying it as “borrowing”. Is this what our industry has become?

    We are not rappers “sampling” someone else’s song, and we shouldn’t be. They are not artist, they are simply putting stuff out there to make money. We need to hold ourselves and our peers to a higher standards.

    We need to be thinkers. We need to be originators. We need to rise above the laziness which has permeated our society.

    Thank you Eogtist for shedding light on these frauds. Keep up the great job.

    — hack boy · Dec 17, 09:41 AM · #

  4. I’ve heard McDonalds hired Shepard to do these…

    — Jonas · Dec 17, 05:13 PM · #

  5. oh, burn!

    — ian t. nordeck · Dec 17, 09:28 PM · #

  6. Damn you Jonas, and I had a great Shepard burn all ready! In addition to being unoriginal, it looks in no way, shape, or form appetizing. As a matter of fact that McDonald’s poster kind of makes me want to commit suicide…if it was original it would be bad advertising…but now it’s bad advertising that’s also plagiaristic. Huh, maybe it was Donny Deutsch.

    — Artistic Mercenary™ · Dec 17, 11:03 PM · #

  7. yeah I’m still on the fence on whether I find it dreary and depressing because of my original association with nin, or because it’s just freaking dreary.

    This is so bizarre. I want to see Iron Maiden meets Dairy Queen now.

    — Adam Singer · Dec 18, 12:13 AM · #

  8. This is a blatant rip-off and the designer should be sued. Of course, it’s probably a case of a non-designer with a computer who thinks that anything they find on the internet or can scan is OK to use. As a professional designer, I run into these people every day. They think because they have a computer that they can design. They can’t.

    — Laura · Dec 18, 07:31 AM · #

  9. ok laura, you professional designer you!
    and the next time i see ol ronald hes gettin punched in the stomach.

    — E · Dec 18, 11:16 AM · #

  10. I think i need to look at both in context.. Its so obviously ripped it can’t actually be anything more than a sort of spoof.. OR something..

    — Lifter Baron · Dec 18, 01:00 PM · #

  11. Is it me, or is the advertisement telling the customers of McDonald’s that the broken ketchup dispenser on the right is Natural? Have they gone so low that not only have they lost their great passion for advertising, but that they have also lost any sort of self respect to the point where brokenness and shotty food are the best that they can hope for, as if to say that the current “natural” state of fast food is to be of the lowest quality at the highest prices in order to simply maintain the status quo. It is embarrassing to think that a manager can appreciate a broken ketchup dispenser, as long as it is still showing a clear white on the outside. O the comic cynicism that lies with the enduring fact that McDonald’s is nothing but a relic of its former glory, as the dominating empire in a Modern world, lying now on its deathbed in a series of cultures living in a postmodern society mocking its selfish ways. Poetical justice prevails so that the few internet nerds can point and laugh at the foolishness of the corporate juggernauts who do not think that cultural intertextuality is visible to the remaining public.

    This makes me want to shit.

    :P

    — Ken · Dec 19, 03:35 PM · #