New design terminology

I'm working on a couple t-shirt designs to add to my portfolio and decided to create designs inspired by my love of words and dictionaries. I'm feeling like I need a third, but haven't come up with the word yet.

Make it Sparkle

After my twelve hour day on campus yesterday, and heading home at 9pm, I stopped at Whole Foods Market. As I was walking through, I was enamored (as usual) by all the great packaging. I came upon Steaz Zero Calorie Sparkling Green Tea. The packaging appealed to my inner minimalist. White and clean with a lovely patterned flower. I wanted it. I wanted it bad. One problem. I hate sparkling water. There, I said it. I do, however, love green tea. So, there I stood, at a crossroads.

You might be able to resist it, but I? Cannot. Lovely packaging coupled with promises of zero calorie goodness is more than this girl can handle. Sustainably sourced, fair trade organic green tea? Sweetened with the leaves from the stevia plant? What choice did I have?

As if that's not enough, when you pop the top on the little gem you realize it comes with a side of wisdom on every cap. Today, apparently, "I am energy" (or so the cap says). I felt a little spunkier just having been told so. Why, yes, I am the girl that buys things just because they come in pretty packaging. I am a design(erd).

Infringed?

Quite a few years ago I started playing around on Cafepress. I made a few simple shirts and oddly, they've been selling. They were mostly typographic in nature and I didn't do anything particularly special to them, but people liked them nonetheless. Now that I have some education under my belt I was going to go back in and fix those that are there and make some new ones. Funny thing happened today, though.

Today someone was talking to me about getting a Bondiband to hold my hair back when working out. They showed me a picture of theirs knowing I'd been using a particular phrase as a title for my writing for years now.

I did not make this version. Oddly familiar, though, isn't it? At what point does copyright infringement happen? I can't stake claim on the saying. Maybe I said it first, maybe I didn't. Regardless, it's not some trademarked phrase. The font is ever so slightly different, but layout is the same. Is using the same style of font, layout and saying some odd coincidence? Based on the other designs I've seen on Bondibands website, it looks like they use all sorts of different artwork that I doubt they have any rights to use so, my guess would be they, too, peruse Cafepress and were quite fond of my very simple design. I just hope they were at least kind enough to buy one of my shirts before copying it.