Mr Chicken: the genius who paints London's fried-chicken signs

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Remember, if the London police preface a stop with “What’s all this then?”, they can legally search your belongings. And anyone running around taking pictures of chicken restaurants – well, that’s just not normal; it’s best to err on the side of public safety.

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The only vaguely KFCish logo I see is the one that happens to have red and white stripes.

“…and KFC-ish logos, all carefully titrated to be just far enough from the KFC version to keep the Colonel’s savage attack-lawyers at bay.”

I think that’s a bit of a stretch. Except for the “Tennessee Fried Chicken” one, which is an exact duplicate of the KFC font (and almost the name!), the only things any of the other logos shown have in common with any KFC logo past or present are that they use the color red, and the product they are advertising is fried chicken. And I guess one has red and white stripes, but if that’s the case, Waldo, candy canes and circus tents are all ripping off the Colonel.

He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere!

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I dont get the lower left corner one. Red with a white circle and 2 marks? Whats that supposed to represent?

That rooster seems very excited about visiting ‘hen cottage’.

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It’s the same as the other chicken heads around it, only smaller. All you can make out is the comb and wattle.

There’s a broad, ill-defined spectrum between plagiarism and homage, between being x-ish and “ripping off”. Nobody’s fooled by these logos, but we’re not meant to be: the logos are saying that the shop sells fried chicken of a vaguely KFC-ish nature, which is what we’re looking for on a Friday night, and the logos do that by being vaguely KFC-ish themselves.

It’s not a question of ‘ripping off’, except perhaps in the sullen way those who employ an attack-lawyer resent anyone doing anything that resembles what they do, just because they’ve decided that they ‘own’ the idea of fried chicken on the High Street, say.

These logos are KFC-ish more than they are Nando-ish, more than they would be, say, Forest-of-Dean Traditional Microwaved Chicken-ish, and much more than they are Father Christmas-ish. That’s all that’s meant by being KFC-ish; nobody except attack-lawyers cares about the degree of resemblance.

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Here is a fine video celebrating the Chicken Shops of London set to Duelling Banjos… Classy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1wK7eIM0sI

That one is pure genius.

Why do most of his chicken turn to the right?

Once the Queen pops her clogs, all new chicken shop signs will face the other way.

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Meanwhile in Thailand:

Props for using the word “titrated.” Another perfectly good word one rarely gets to use the word “sinter.”

Like in “Sinter me timbers”

When I glanced at the assembled logos, I could tell that it’s a collection of mascots for baseball teams from some alternate universe.

There’s a Karachi Fried Chicken in Birmingham.

“… there’s a difference between imitation and emulation. Let me tell you the difference. OK? If you imitate someone, you owe them a royalty check. If you emulate them, you don’t. There’s a big difference. Check your lawyer.”

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Coriolis force.

In the southern hemisphere they turn to the left.