See what the designer has to say about seeing Drake's latest single cover, which looks similar to his design.
Collin Fletcher recalls his initial reaction when he got a text last weekend asking him if he had done the artwork for the cover of the new Drake single, “Scary Hours.”
“I was like, ‘I wish I did,’” he recalls, with a laugh, “expecting it to look like something I had made.”
It wasn’t until later, when the 23-year-old from Tempe, who recently graduated from Arizona State University’s graphic design program, decided to investigate that he discovered just how much it looked like something he had made – specifically a poster he’d done in 2015 for the Bjork producer Rabit.
“I was like, “Wait a minute,” Fletcher says.
A day after the single's release, Rabit posted about the uncanny resemblance on Instagram, calling Drake's team out while sharing the "Scary Hours" art and a poster from his own Communion Tour.
Fletcher and Rabit have worked together since 2014.
"We probably put that poster up around September or so of 2015, right around when his album came out," Fletcher says of the purloined design.
"To me, the most interesting similarity is the texture," he says, "not even the design itself. If you look at the background of the paper, it’s very, very close. But that’s me looking at the little details, I guess."
The response that was a non-response
Drake's label, OVO, told Paper, "It's common to be presented with a whole pile of work to choose from that is referenced off older art."
And Fletcher views that as a pretty lame reaction.
"Their response was essentially trying to put the blame off of Drake and put it on someone in the team," he says, "and also make it seem like it wasn’t necessarily a deliberate ripoff. It was more just a matter of carelessness and whether it’s something they would want to pay attention to."
It should be obvious, he says, that there was no attempt made on the part of Drake's team to determine if the art was an original design.
"Obviously, they didn’t do any research on it," he says. "You would think that having a large team with a lot of lawyers and creative directors and other people working on this, someone would have thought, 'Well, maybe we should double check.'"
The situation speaks to how Drake's label does things, Fletcher says. "And it’s kind of sad and not very beneficial for those who are doing this for a living and trying to be creative for a reason."
As to what the label could have done to prevent this sort of thing from happening, Fletcher says something as simple as a Google Reverse Image Search could have turned up his artwork.
"It is so close that there’s a chance that Google’s algorithms could’ve picked it up and pulled my poster up," he says. "So that would probably have been the first step. To be completely honest, I don’t think there’s any kind of software or some simple way of looking it up. I think it’s just maybe a matter of asking the designer, 'Hey, we like this. We just want to doublecheck with you that this is not a reference to something.'"
Hey Drake, did you even ask?
Fletcher hears that question all time as a designer.
'If something looks good," he says, "the first thing that somebody’s who’s putting it out is gonna think is 'Oh, well, this looks really good. Hopefully, they didn’t rip it off because I wouldn’t know.' So they ask the designer. And I don’t think that happened. I don’t think they checked."
Asked about the line in Rabit's post on Instagram that said, "Poor Collin's always having his style stolen," Fletcher answers with a self-effacing laugh. "I think my style is maybe - you could call it a sub-genre of designers. Even the background texture is something we’ve seen becoming more of a thing with other rappers. It’s an aesthetic. And something that I’ve been doing for a while. But you know, it’s arguable. Has my style been stolen by other people? No, it’s just that my style is becoming more popular and more mainstream. And I’m not the only one doing it, either. It’s a trend amongst a few people that are now getting a wider audience."
This controversy could, of course, expand the scope of Fletcher's wider audience.
"I’ve gotten a lot of Instagram followers, although I choose not to post work on Instagram," he says. "The funny thing is in the last year, I’ve done work for some pretty large-name artists, maybe not as big as Drake, but pretty close. So it doesn’t necessarily feel like this is a big jump. Maybe the next one I’ll get paid for. Maybe I won’t."
Then, with a laugh, he adds, "We’ll see."
Fletcher's previous clients include Danish pop singer MØ and the R&B singer 6lack.
"M0 is a pretty large mainstream pop person," he says. "I was commissioned by the art director and it was a super-nice collaborative project with a bunch of different photographers. It was released by Sony, so it was obviously well-paid and it got a lot of attention and was a super beneficial thing to do. Then, also, there’s an R&B guy, 6lack. He commissioned me and my friend Bryan Rivera to do his merch."
Awareness for the underground
As to what Fletcher would like to see come from all this controversy, he says, "Mainly, I want it to draw attention to other instances where this has happened. For instance, an artist called out Katy Perry in the past week for using his artwork. And there’s some stories that just never surface because the artist may not have enough of a following. So in a way, this incident is just an opportunity for a lot of people to see that there’s just really no way to deny it that underground or smaller artists are paid attention to by the mainstream. And my hope is that people who may not otherwise pay attention to something like that will acknowledge that this is a recurring issue."
Finding inspiration in another artists work is nothing new. Fletcher's own design at the heart of this whole controversy was, in fact, inspired by the logo for Akira – the most striking difference being that it doesn't really look a thing like that Akira logo.
"It’s basically script overlaid on top of text," he says. "I was just messing around, trying to make it look like that. And I did a bad job of it. Keep in mind, this was three years ago. At the time, I really liked 'The Matrix' and, you know, the falling numbers that are kind of in the background and the foreground in a different capacity. I really wanted to try and do that as well. So the rest of the poster is sort of a reference to that as well. Back then, I was just starting off and I would just move things around until it looked cool."
He laughs, then adds, "I’d have a starting point but it would rarely get to a point where it could really even be linked to its reference."
Drake, just acknowledge it
Fletcher's hope moving forward, he says, is that this controversy starts a conversation.
"I hope it puts a mile marker in popular culture," he says, "that possibly from here on out, this stuff is more scrutinized. And hopefully people like Drake’s team are a little more careful and God forbid, have to become creative all of the sudden."
As for the response from Drake's team, Fletcher finds it disappointing.
"They should acknowledge it," he says. "I went on his Instagram today and he was like, 'In the studio' with a shot a basketball hoop or something. And it’s like “At least acknowledge it.' It’s really symptomatic of the issue that they don’t even have to apologize. It’s just like, 'Oh you know, this happens all the time. We’ll just keep going.' Just acknowledge. Say something that would give all the people that feel like they’re being ripped off some degree of satisfaction. If it’s never acknowledged, how will the issue ever be addressed? How will the problem ever stop?"
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