Category: panic

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Playdate by Panic

Panic is a Mac and iOS software company whose software I’ve used myself or many years. Having followed them online through social media and their blog over the years they’ve always had a keen interest in gaming (one of my favourite posts was when they made 1980’s-esque fake packaging for some of their apps!).

In recent years they’ve moved into games publishing, “Firewatch” being the first title they supported and more recent the massively popular “Untitled Goose Game“.

Last year they announced an even bigger step into gaming with the announcement of their “Playdate” handheld gaming console. It might seem a bit crazy to try and launch an all-new hardware platform (never mind one with a hand crank as part of its UI!) but as in many things Panic does it seems there’s a method to their madness.

It’s due to launch sometime in (hopefully early) 2020, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on one of these. I’m a huge fan of Game Boy and retro tech so the aesthetics and design for the Playdate look pretty awesome to me!

Go read the full Playdate FAQ to get all the details about it. Also Edge magazine issue #333 has a great interview / sneak preview of it.

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LogoMaid: This kind of flattery will get you nowhere…

There’s been a bit of a storm going on recently on the net due to the disregard for intellectual property shown by various companies. First there was the ripping off of both the Joyent website and Corkd (see Dan Benjamin’s Flickr picture for the resulting hybrid ripoff!), now there is a big stir about LogoMaid and their use of several well known logos amongst some of their logos for sale.

The main stir at the moment relates to Dan Cederholm’s SimpleBits logo and this one by LogoMaid:

Simplebits logo and logomaid ripoff side by side

In an ongoing Flickr discussion thread LogoMaid insist that they’ve done nothing wrong (they even hinted that they’d consider suing Dan Cederholm for his use of his logo!), overall it’s pretty crazy.

Here’s a few other dubious examples from LogoMaid’s catalogue:

I agree with the sentiment of the article I just mentioned, so I’ve written this post to help raise some attention to this kind of abuse of ideas and images. If you’re planning on purchasing logos from somewhere like LogoMaid then it’s worth being wary. LogoMaid claim “Over 3600 unique and non-unique logos to choose from”, the problem is some of those logos truly are “non-unique” and were created by someone else. You may find that you get an unexpected surprise when the rightful creator of your new logo takes action to protect their creation from being abused.

Caveat emptor

~Rick