12/06/2025
PSA for the Hawaii community. Ok, I’ve had enough. For years now, I have been silent about this problem. This morning, I was on the internet searching for photographs of (authentic) flowers (excited about drawing some flowers) and google decided to show me this “artist’s” work. The pattern is an exact replica of my puakenikeni lei strand in yellow. This strand was digitally hand drawn by me. There isn’t a real strand out there like it because it came from inside of my head. It was done purposefully in that curvy, S-shaped orientation because I was envisioning someone stringing a lei with the lei draping over a bowl of flowers. I purposefully chose a top down perspective of the flowers (because many strands only show it from a straight side view or they did at the time). The number of petals showing and the sequence are exactly the same. There is no mathematically likely way someone else came up with that on their own if you figure out the degree of curves, no. of petals, etc (yes, I had someone really smart do the math for me to figure out that number). This design has been stolen from me many times. This design IS legally copyrighted by me, Island Digital Imagers aka IDImedley with the US copyright office. I do register my designs after learning the hard way and having gone through this problem so many times. For all the business owners out there, please be careful what designs you use. Think twice when you hire from fiver or when you buy a cheap digital image/design online. Not always but many times when I’ve had this happen, it was a graphic artist who decided to copy, trace or modify the work. If you look at the strand, the end of the strand shows a flower going the opposite direction, which makes NO sense. When someone copies/steals there are often mistakes or cover ups that I can easily spot (original artists do because they spent the time to draw every detail!). Please share and get this word out. I would appreciate it immensely. I am very torn over finding this today.
