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Apple's WWDC 2017 art borrows design concept from 2010 Spanish film festival [u]

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The colorful artwork Apple is using for its 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference comes from an artist with a known style, who is sometimes imitated (updated x2).

Update: Apple's WWDC art features top-down depictions of people flocking around a single point created by Geoff McFetridge. It's similar to a poster used to promote the 2010 13th Festival de Cine Málaga, but that art was not actually created by McFetridge.

In June, nearly 4 months after this story was originally published, a representative for McFetridge reached out to AppleInsider to clarify that the artist was not involved in the promotion of the 2010 film festival.

Geoff did not work on 'Festival de Cine Málaga' nor has he worked with the agency Barfutura who appears to have developed the work with this person... We had never seen the Festival de Cine Málaga work before another reporter... brought it to our attention," they wrote. "We hope you can correct your article to prevent further confusion. The work on the Spanish film festival appropriated this style which Geoff McFetridge has developed over the course of more than 20 years and it is to Apple's credit that they reached out to Geoff himself as opposed to others 'inspired' by his work."

The similarity was first highlighted by Cristian Rus, a writer for the Spanish site Applesfera, while TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino later claimed, incorrectly, that both were created by McFettridge.

This year's WWDC is being relocated from San Francisco back to San Jose for the first time in over 13 years. The event is scheduled to run the week of June 5 at the McEnery Convention Center, and should begin with a keynote announcing OS updates like iOS 11, macOS 10.13 and watchOS 4, plus possible surprises.

Text in Apple's artwork refers to the company's philosophy about interesecting technology with liberal arts and the humanities, and emphasizes the social aspect of WWDC, which brings together "thousands of brilliant minds representing many diverse perspectives, passions, and talents to help us change the world."



27 Comments

battlescarred1 14 Years · 74 comments

Has Apple gotten to the point that not even their conference poster are original ideas?

JinTech 9 Years · 1061 comments

Has Apple gotten to the point that not even their conference poster are original ideas?

It was created by the same artist, not a rip off. Had you seen this film poster prior to today?

[Deleted User] 11 Years · 0 comments

My first thought was lazy work by the design team if it was same team on both campaigns, but...
its a stock image, could be a happy coincidence.

battlescarred1 14 Years · 74 comments

JinTech said:
Has Apple gotten to the point that not even their conference poster are original ideas?
It was created by the same artist, not a rip off. Had you seen this film poster prior to today?

I wasn't suggesting that it was ripped off, just not original.

anantksundaram 18 Years · 20391 comments


sog35 said:
Has Apple gotten to the point that not even their conference poster are original ideas?
Have you gotten to the point where even your trollish comments are not original ideas?

Give it a rest homey. Apple stock is at an all time high. Last quarter was the biggest quarter EVER for iPhone, Watch, Mac, and Services.

Apple has the #1 smartphone, tablet, laptop, all-in-once, and smartwatch. Plus #1 in music (streaming + download sales), the biggest digital store (App store), and the highest customer satisfaction.

Your time to post trollish remarks have passed. You should have done this when the stock was $90

Um... care to tell us what has changed about iPhone, Watch, Mac, Services and all the "#1s" and "customer satisfaction" since the stock was in the $90s, except that you've now stopped your whining bout why/how Tim Cook should be fired?

Apple was as great a company when its stock was in the $90s as it is today.