In an attempt to improve telephonic and data services, India’s telecom regulator on Monday launched the MySpeed app to allow users to check their internet speeds. This is potentially very handy in a country where many people complain that their internet speeds are much slower than those their network providers had promised. But some users immediately voiced their disquiet: the logo of the app, the claimed, looked a bit too familiar.
Late on Monday night, a user called mellowAlt on the reddit social media platform observed that the app – which allows users to forward speed test reports to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India directly – seemed to have merged the logo of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, 2015, and a design website user’s speed meter design.
This sparked outrage on reddit as users criticised the government for not paying enough attention to design elements.
“How do you know it isn’t some junior intern or accounting wale sharmaji ka ladka doing it for free?” wrote user abhiSamjhe. "You’ll be surprised how unprofessional government offices can be."
Previous complaints
This is not the first time that the government has been questioned for ripping off logos – it happened with the Make In India’s lion too, even though the government denied allegations that the logo was copied from ad campaign by a bank in Switzerland.
However, the similarity between the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India logo and the WWDC logo is more than what one would assume to be coincidental.
Users on the forum claimed that this is common problem.
“Emblems, stamps, branding, etc are supposed to be a big deal,” wrote user narayans “I’d have thought there’d be a graphic designer somewhere and they just need to be competent enough to liaison with that department and get some high quality vectors. Let’s discount all that. That banner in that app page though! No excuse for putting something like that even if it’s not plagiarism.”
Speaking on behalf of the secretary, an advisor to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, who asked to remain unidentified, told Scroll.in that the logo had been drawn from a template.
Stock design
"There is a software called Webflow where design is available for everyone to use it," he said. "We used this software and this was one of the stock designs available there. Apple also used the software and there's nothing wrong about it. And the speed meter is different in our logo from the one on Dribble. The indicator is pointing to different speeds in those two meters so it is not a case of plagiarism at all."The logo isn’t the only thing about the app that is likely to annoy users. A review on the MediaNama site said that the app is full of bugs and crashes often – a complaint that many people had on the app page in Google’s Play Store.
“What doesn’t help is that the application is full of bugs and hangs,” the reviewer wrote. "It’s worth noting that the spam complaint registration app which TRAI had launched last month was full of bugs too."
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