Gol Blimey!

ugh.

Geez. Even one of the word bubbles is nearly identical.

Yeah, that even makes me feel a little icky.

Not only is that as blatant as they get, but it's not like the Daily Mail can say, "Well, we just didn't see yesterday's Guardian!" I was willing to give that poor designer in Indiana a bit of a break, for possibility's sake, but there's just no way that two major national newspapers don't look at each other's pages.

The Guardian and the Daily Mail compete with each other and sit next to each other at newsstands throughout Britain. But they can get away with such a blatant, obvious rip-off, because the Guardian reader isn't likely to even deign to look at the Daily Mail, much less read it (and vice versa).

Is there any possibility it was a "pre-packaged" package from a news graphics service like Reuters, KRT or whatever else there is out there in Europe? Just asking. I don't know that much about how those services work.

Palatino: I've never seen a KRT package, at least, that looked like that. The ones I've seen are very quietly officient and visually inoffensive, because they have to fit in anyone's newspaper. That doesn't look like a package that fits in. (Actually, it looks a bit out of place in the Guardian, if you ask me, but they ran it first...)

It's nice to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it seems like a stretch.

The original actually ran in G2 - which is the daily A4-sized magazine that runs inside the Guardian.

I have heard Guardian execs state that G2 does rely on freelancers do produce their graphics but I don't know about cartoon-ish page spreads like this.

The irony I see is that the type of down-market concoction that you see copied here by the Mail is actually the style of spread seen every day in the popular red tops.

Yeah, that one's pretty obvious.

I find the word bubbles icky the first time around. So no, they don't have to worry about me stealing a thing.

Speaking as a UK national newspaper production journalist... ladies, gentlemen .. relax!
Over here we tend not to get too hot and steamed up because a competitor has nicked one of your ideas.. it's seen as a form of flattery. And every single paper on Fleet Street (the single most competitive newspaper market in the English speaking world) has done it. The Daily Mail is especially culpable - but they are probably more admired for not letting pride come before product. See a great idea, use it. I know the guys on the Guardian's G2 section had a good laugh about it the next morning and just saw it as confirmation that it was a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed. In the United Kingdom, these examples of borrowing raise nothing but a chuckle .. certainly not angst-ridden handwringing and cries of woe about what the world has come to.
We try not to get our heads stuck that far up our arses. Or asses...