How I ripped off a Korean tampon maker

The story begins about a year and a half ago. D&AD student briefs came in. I saw there was one to re-imagine "women's san pro" items to make them actually bearable design-wise. Worked on the project with Liza Behles and Jeff Krichmar, in the process staying awake for about 82 hours.

The fruit of our collective creative loins was Tempo, a brand of feminine hygiene products designed to be elegantly feminine without the offensive pink and blue and dots and pearls and flowers of all other brands out there. The idea was that each package was a multi-pack, covering a woman's needs for a week. Different stengths were represented by different phases of the moon (the goddess Luna + an indicator of months). Moreover, every box—pads, tampons or bullets—was actually eight individual boxes. All a woman had to do was grab a pack for the day, throw it in her purse and go. They were contained and descrete, resembling cigarette boxes.

As usual, the British didn't see our genius. We didn't win an award or change the world of women's sanitary products. Whatever.

So, fastforward to a few weeks ago. Krichmar's work gets featured on the design blog TheDieline in this post. All the reviews are rave, people love Tempo, blah, blah, blah. Then, just yesterday, two weeks after the original post, a very random comment appears:


Weird. So, Krichmar scoured the internet for any mention of a tampon called Tempo. And this is the only thing he found: http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/tampon/tempo2.html. (Make sure to crank your speakers up.)

Here's what we obviously stole. (But please, check out that link. Seriously.)


I have no idea what this site means. We're thinking that with the name "Ge" and the site being hosted in Japan for a Korean tampon, there's got to be some connection. Either way, please enjoy the tunes, that troubling animation at the top of the page and stirring passages like the following:

Anyway, the goods mode carried out is the necessaries of the comfort bag to a battlefield, and is quietly borne to the corner of a kindergartener's lunch box, also wanting to make it that it is one article of suitable also for the gift to the direction of that which exists, then was indebted.

Sorry to anyone we've offended by being plagarizers. I hope you can forgive me. And thank you, Ge. I really hope that my creativity improves too.

(But seriously, there really is no way I could've ever come up with copy like that in a hundred million moons.)