A story where my design took off, traveled the world – and never wrote home.
On a very late night 18 years ago, I was feeling bored at my apartment in Vietnam. So I designed this poster. I’ve always liked propaganda posters – this flips its usual visual grammar of labour, productivity to a cheeky anti-work message (plus I love Vietnamese coffee).
No big deal, took me 2 hours to sketch and whip it up in Illustrator. I posted it on Facebook, had a laugh with my friends – and forgot about it.
After I left Vietnam many years later, my former students were telling me they were seeing it pop up everywhere. Postcards. Coasters. Cafes, signages, tote bags, t-shirts. Sightings in Saigon and Hanoi.
I did a Google search and sure enough – the design had been bootlegged, remixed, repurposed and sold/displayed in all kinds of forms, not just in Vietnam but globally.
Mimicry in design isn’t new. My own poster was a playful homage to propaganda posters. Designers have always referenced and remixed to designs that came before. Part of the creative process. But what happened to my poster wasn’t mimicry, it was theft. No credit, no consent, no royalties.
So this is where the conversation around AI + design theft gets murky – because AI doesn’t just mimic, it scrapes and extracts, riding off the backs of uncredited creative labour at massive scale and efficiency, pulled from the internet without transparency, ethics and any form of accountability. So yes, absolutely be critical of AI, not what it can do – but how it does it. We don’t have to accept it without critique.
But let’s also be clear though – design theft, remixing, mimicry – these aren’t new phenomenons. And they’re not going away, AI or not. Case in point.
As for my stolen design that’s now everywhere, I didn’t pursue it. By the time I realised, it’d already spiralled far beyond anything I could control. I chose to take comfort in the fact that at least it brings joy to people everywhere.
Though to be clear – it was still theft.
I would’ve liked to be credited and paid royalties. Could’ve gotten a bigger farm. Or retired by now.
Anyway, here are some the variations of the design around the world for your viewing pleasure:
