'Tenet' The Film Updates Logo After Tenet Components' Voices Concerns
The Tenet Components logo, which Tyler Deschaine was granted the trademark for in the bicycle world on October 9th, 2018.
Last December, we wrote an article about Tenet Components' comments on Instagram about the similarities between their logo and the logo for the upcoming Christopher Nolan film 'Tenet'. Our article prompted Warner Brothers and Christopher Nolan to reach out directly to Tenet Components' Tyler Deschaine with this letter.
 | Dear Tyler, Warners just showed me the logo for your company, so I wanted to reach out directly and reassure you that our logo was arrived at without reference to yours. I know this because I designed ours myself, evolving it over the last six years, driven by a fascination with the symmetries of a word which is central to my story and its themes. I thought I’d done something unique - but clearly you were driven by the same creative impulse. I guess lightning can strike twice, and obviously I understand that you would not want anyone thinking that you had been inspired by our movie’s title treatment - feel free to quote me in shooting such misunderstandings down. I love our logo so I hope you won’t feel this is necessary, but if you like, I can stop using it since it seems you went public with yours first. Yours respectfully. Chris Nolan |
Deschaine responded to Nolan with a request that he use a different font or stylization to make the movie logo more distinct from the Bellingham bike brand's logo.
| Dear Chris, I apologize for my delay in responding. It came at a very busy time as you can imagine with the holidays and all. This time gave me a moment to reflect on everything that has transpired. First of all, thank you for sending that kind letter. It truly means a lot that you would take the time to address my concerns personally, and I hope that we can reach a mutually agreeable solution. Since founding my company, I have invested significant time, financial resources, and creative energy in developing the Tenet brand to ensure my company’s growth and success. Due to the similarity of our logos, I am concerned that customers will mistakenly think that my products are related to the film or that I copied the logo even though I independently conceived it before the movie was announced. My biggest hurdle is that I cannot be present for every first impression with my brand, and I have already had experiences with people thinking that my brand is associated with the movie. It’s clear that you’re equally as passionate about your life’s work so I trust that you will understand my position. I have a couple proposed solutions that would hopefully allow both of us to use the logo while mitigating the risk of confusion. First, in your email, you mentioned that you would be willing to stop using the logo since my use went public first. Rather than stop using your logo altogether, for future uses, would you be willing to simply use a different font or stylization that would make your logo more distinct from mine? Second, a short press release from you and Warner Bros. stating that the film and my brand are unrelated and that my use of the Tenet logo is independent from and preceded the announcement for the movie would help minimize customer confusion. The press release could be posted on our respective websites, and I would also send it to publications in the biking industry. I would be happy to put together a first draft for your review. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your response. I am a longtime fan of your work and have a strong degree of respect for your creativity. I wish you the greatest success with this film, and hope our paths may cross one day. All the best, Tyler |
The logo that was launched with the first 'Tenet' trailer in December 2019 is on the top. The logo in the latest 'Tenet' trailer is below.
While Deschaine said that he can't discuss the specifics of what happened after that, you'll see that the logo in the latest trailer has been modified. The second 'E' is no longer flipped and the second 'T' is no longer upsidedown. Film websites such as Bleeding Cool, Slash Film, and Entertainment.ie shared the news of the logo being changed this week and if you peruse the new comments on Tenet Components' December Instagram post, not all fans were happy about the changes.
Deschaine has a statement that now lives on his website because he wanted to place all the information out there for everyone to see. "It’s not every day you receive a letter from arguably the world's most popular filmmaker and sharing that was important to show the validity of our pre-existence to the film," he said. "At first, this lived on the site without our reply, and when the new trailer dropped last week sporting a new logo we got bombarded by Nolan fans voicing how upset they were with this change. So I felt it was important to post our reply to Nolan as well as a statement enforcing our reasoning. This way people would hopefully understand our side and see that we were reasonable in our ask."
Deschaine said that he never expected Christopher Nolan to reach out to him after he posted his initial story on Instagram. "I thought this would have started and ended with our Instagram post. When the company phone rang and it read Warner Brothers, I had a major fight or flight reaction. I almost didn’t answer fearing for the worst. But I suppose one should never underestimate the power of social media."
We asked him whether he's happy with the outcome.
| More or less, yes. The change in their logo has brought on a whole mess of other issues that I could have probably predicted. But given the circumstances, it’s honestly the best outcome for our brand. We get a lot of people saying “Wow, missed cross-promotion opportunity” and things of that nature, but let's be honest, 99% of the people going to see Tenet are not in the market for high-end mountain bike components. I had to get in front of what could have been a decade of misconception. I know there are people out there that feel differently though. |
As you can see in our recent Pond Beaver coverage where we looked at Tenet Components' new Occult flat pedals, Dechaine's concerns that people will think he's ripped off the movie's name and logo are valid. He said it's very frustrating to constantly have people thinking that.
| I grew up riding BMX bikes and idolizing iconic brands like Terrible One and S&M. It is very important to me that our brand feels authentic and original. The last thing I want to do is constantly defend our brands design elements for the next who knows how many years. The first time we had a product drop since the film was announced, our fears were realized. People made comments that we had plagiarized the Tenet movie and there is no way in hell to know how far that can go. Sure, it's one thing to be able to see it out in the open and inform that person— but how many others out there form the same idea without the opportunity to correct it? |
That being said, Deschaine said he has no hard feelings towards Christopher Nolan and he is planning to watch Tenet when it comes out this July.
| I truly believe him when he said he arrived at his logo without reference to ours. It was an unfortunate coincidence, but he made an honest effort to make things right and I am very grateful for that. This could have gone a thousand different ways that may have ended poorly for us, but it didn’t and I thankful for that. |
When asked whether he believes the "any publicity is good publicity" proverb and if he thinks he did the right thing.
| Boy that’s a tough question. Everyone always says that right? Sure, this has definitely brought my brand attention and driven traffic to the site. But it’s also placed us dead center of the crosshairs for hatred from the die-hard Nolan fans, and wow are there a lot of them. This was a very “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation and I think I did what I had to do to protect my brand's integrity. I understand some people may think I caused more harm than good, but I honestly think that my peers in the bike community would side with me on this one. If you have ill feelings toward our brand, I would encourage you to try to put yourself in my shoes. Nobody wants to be hated by anyone, so hopefully, people can at least understand my side. |
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@landscapeben: I think I've seen snippets of Batman movies. It is with comic-style fight scenes, isn't it? And there is a freaky clown bad guy. But what I've seen is way too incoherent to say I've watched the trilogy
This is how you make an agreement, ask for the moon and settle for less.
Maturely handled by both parties.
Also, it indeed isn't like people would be searching for the bike company after watching the movie. But people come across the bike company, they may judge it for "stealing" a logo from a very popular blockbuster movie which clearly wasn't the case. So all he wants is that this is very clear to the audience. Hence he wants Nolan to pick a logo more different from his and he want this statement to be made clear by both parties. Different industries? See you have this company that makes both MX bikes and musical instruments. If the audience is confused, there is too much cross over. Tyler came across confused customers (as stated in the article) so it is good they did something about it.
Tyler: I'm cool if you're cool with my being cool dawg.
Christopher Noland: Aight homie, I guess we cool.
Pinkbike: WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF SHIT TO WRITE ABOUT! SOMEBODY POST SOMETHING!
Groundbreaking stuff though really.
Flipping T’s and E’s
I could see if Nolan would have been a jerk about it? But I still think it would have made better business sense to ride "any" notoriety that "might" have come out of this. I mean how big of an issue would it really have been? "if" the issue was discovered outside of the mountain bike industry at most there could have been a few legitimate articles, maybe a TMZ post? a few trolls making a twitter issue of it or something. But you had Nolan's statement that could easily be posted. Done! AND advertising you'd have never got otherwise...
AND... "if" he could have got a mention about the issue from Nolan in an interview or something that would have been HUGE!
I think it was a missed opportunity. Should have not forced them to change the logo.
"Second, a short press release from you and Warner Bros. stating that the film and my brand are unrelated and that my use of the Tenet logo is independent from and preceded the announcement for the movie would help minimize customer confusion."