The End of the Trademark Design

I can’t believe I missed half of the October nail art season already. Yikes! (Have I mentioned that I LOVE Halloween?) I have been so excited about getting back in the salon and whipping up some creep-tacular Halloween nails I almost forgot about Breast Cancer Awareness month!

Geesh. Why couldn’t they make September BCA month? That would be awesome. But instead, I have to figure out how to fit them both in together in the same month. I don’t want to miss out on BCA — not only is it something that has deep, personal significance to so many of us, but all that PINK! Not to diminish the seriousness behind the point of dedicating an entire month to promoting breast cancer awareness — but promoting it is fun. And filled with all sorts of nail art opportunities.

But having to squish both occasions into the same month is a challenge. And taking a vacation that leaves me with only two weeks to do it had my head spinning!

Then I came up with the great idea of PINK PUMPKINS. (Technically, jack-o-lanterns.) What a great, fun, cute way of incorporating both major events of October into one great nail art idea!

(Did I mention it was an eight-hour drive back home?) By the time I made it to my home county, I had it all worked out in my head: a future of Maggie’s Trademark Pink Pumpkins. Every year, that would be my signature nail art to honor October. People would look forward to seeing the pink pumpkins every year. It’d be a big tradition. My pink pumpkins would incite a movement. Like pumpkin spice latté.

But you know what? They won’t. Not because they aren’t that great an idea so much as because the first thing I’m gonna do is put a picture on the Internet. Where other nail artists will see them. And imitate them. And maybe the Pink Pumpkin Movement will still happen and, indeed, spread farther, faster. But they won’t be “Maggie’s Trademark Pink Pumpkins” because they won’t be associated exclusively with Maggie long enough for them to become my personal “trademark” design.

The proliferation of photo sharing on the Internet has really impacted individual artists and our “trademark” designs. The best you can hope for is to come up with a design or a technique that’s difficult to duplicate. But if you post it online, sooner or later, someone else will figure it out, and sooner or later, someone will post a tutorial on how to do it. And then everyone will be recreating it

Makes me sad a little bit. But mostly because I’m a notorious egomaniac and I want to maintain credit for my ideas in perpetuity. But [shrug] I guess there are worse things than a worldwide pink pumpkin promotion.