Penza, 28 September 2015. PenzaNews. Artemy Lebedev, a renowned Russian designer, plans to prove the fact the elements of New Year visual brand developed by his design studio were used illegally in the Penza city New Year design scheme through court. He announced the decision through his LiveJournal account.

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In his new post dedicated to Penza, Artemy Lebedev published the official reply to his letter that was signed by the first vice-mayor Victor Gvozdev.

“Below is the reply to your address dated August 6, 2015, on use of the logo ‘The Best Winter City’ and elements of visual brand. To decorate the city for the New Year, the Penza city administration provided for a series of billboards dedicated to celebration of the New Year. The organization responsible for design and distribution of socially vital information and social advertising in Penza city is the Penza City Advertising Service, a municipal public establishment. Moreover, the Penza City Advertising Service did not use the logo and the brand by a different party in its New Year layout. The layout was designed to congratulate the citizens with the New Year and without the intention to make profit,” reads the reply sent from the Penza city administration.

Artemy Lebedev expressed particular outrage over the second-to-last sentence of the reply quoted above.

“Did not use the logo and the brand by a different party, yeah, right,” the blogger noted.

He added that “the court case ahead” would sort the situation out.

“No city, even Penza, has the right to punish the small and humble studio that earns its keep via the difficult craft of design,” Artemy Lebedev stressed.

As PenzaNews agency reported earlier, on December 27, 2014, Artemy Lebedev rudely accused the Penza authorities of stealing a part of the brand design for a New year festival “The Best Winter City” developed by his studio for the Moscow Mass Event Directorate. The outburst of critique was caused by a photo depicting a billboard installed in Penza on the crossroads of Pushkina and Stavskovo streets, featuring a photo of a child, the words “Dreams come true!” the logo of “The Best Winter City”, as well as the number of the oncoming year (2015) and a signature: “Penza city administration.”

On December 29, the press service of the Penza city administration has publicly released a report from the director of “Penza city advertising service” Inna Revina. According to it, “the institution had no aim to copy someone else’s brand.” It also says the template has been developed to promote socially oriented content and was not used for profit.

Afterwards, the billboard that caused public outcry and the debate in the blogosphere was removed. However, another billboard on Lunacharskovo street with the same logo in question was left intact.

Shortly after, however, Artemy Lebedev pointed out that the Penza authorities had broken the copyright law twice in the New Year billboard, as, according to him, they illegally used a photo by Tatyana Cherkashina from Irkutsk. Because of that, the designer came to a conclusion that “the New Year billboard signed by ‘the Penza city administration’ is a theft of two art projects, and neither of them is related to Penza in any way.”