Chinese fans spot a similar design from the game series.
[Image: Capcom]
In a case of life imitating art, Resident Evil fans have spotted a lookalike logo from the game being used by a real company. The catch? The fictional logo in question belongs to the Umbrella Corporation, a malicious pharmaceutical company that gets up to all sorts of shady activity in the Resident Evil series. Hardly a company you want to make a connection with.
As you can see from the image taken by a Chinese social media user with the handle SRXEABYSS (below), the logo uses the same shape and colour split. Unlike Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation logo (above), this real-life design uses a white and turquoise colour scheme, instead of white and red.
The uncanny similarities don't end there though. That's because the company using the doppelganger design, Shanghai Ruilan Bao Hu San Biotech Limited, is itself a pharmaceutical business. Maybe it should've read our how to design a logo guide and researched its idea before approving it.
Yeah, that's pretty similar [Image: SRXEABYSS]
We're not saying this company straight-up stole the logo from Resident Evil though. It's just one of those neat coincidences that attracts attention because so many similarities stack up. We certainly don't expect the branding agency for a pharmaceutical company to trawl the ridiculously in-depth Umbrella Corporation Resident Evil Wiki.
And if this story sounds too good to be true, a screenshot from the company's official site that's doing the rounds (below) reveals that the logo is in fact a real design that exists in the world.
Looks legit [Image: Shanghai Ruilan Bao Hu San Biotech Limited]
So let this serve as a cautionary tale. If you're launching a logo, maybe check to see that there isn't an evil, fictional version of your company that's already using an extremely similar design.
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Dom Carter is a freelance writer who specialises in art and design. Formerly a staff writer for Creative Bloq, his work has also appeared on Creative Boom and in the pages of ImagineFX, Computer Arts, 3D World, and .net. He has been a D&AD New Blood judge, and has a particular interest in picture books.
