I used to enjoy browsing the websites of designers I admired, browsing their portfolios and learning what I could from others better than myself. I often draw inspiration from many different websites when starting my own design projects. Cameron Moll authored an article entitled, "Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal." Well, he didn't mean it like it sounds, but some people must have taken him literally – like this company.

I think we might be a little more flattered had they done something with the design. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We kept trying to feel flattered, but the more we looked, poked, and prodded, the more we wanted to vomit. If you are going to steal a design you should steal it well, or at least try to improve upon it. Yet these creativity starved people could not do a single thing to improve upon the design.

I always wondered how it would feel to have someone copy us. Too bad it had to be these jokers. It is still flattering, but not near as flattering as it could have been. I always envisioned a high-class interpretation of the site, well thought out, and tightly executed... Oh well, better luck next time.

In spite of the terrible execution and blatant rip off the worst part is that they were too stupid to take out our Google Analytics code! Can you believe that? That is the only way I was able to find them &ndash they showed up in my statistics. Otherwise I don’t think I would have found them so soon.

So, if you are in the mood for some fun you could always drop them a line and harass them. It would be much appreciated. Until next time.

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Showing comments 1 to 4 of 8 | Next | Last

Dan Winer
Posts: 8

creatively challenged
Reply #1 on : Thu September 25, 2008, 05:56:26

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Interesting post, as a freelance web designer I often find myself checking out other peoples websites, sometimes loading up their html and css locally and playing around with it but ultimately I find that everytime you want to add/change stuff it takes longer because you don´t know the code intimately, as you would if you had written it so you miss out on all the intricacies of why that container div needs to be that wide and have the overflow on auto and the margin at 25 etc etc
In the case of this company producing steel in china I think the saddest thing is that its quite likely they paid very good money to a lazy con-artist that couln´t be bothered to earn that money the hard way..... with a blank canvas in photoshop, scratching your head wondering where the hell to start! So instead they´ve got a site than no-one really knows how to make full use of (except you guys) and they are/were probably really proud of it thinking they had spent their money wisely.
Very sad.....but you should be flattered none the less. Even tho your imitator is a fool, he´s a fool with good taste!
ps. where does one stand legally? anyway to get these guys to take the site down?

Admin
Posts: 8

Re: Web Design Theft
Reply #2 on : Fri October 31, 2008, 08:17:43

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Dan, we really don't have a legal option as far as I know. We tried contacting the Chinese host and they told us that there was nothing they were going to do. Not that they COULDN'T do something, rather that they WOULDN'T do anything. I guess we just keep bugging them and hope that they eventually take our Analytics code out.

Andrew
Posts: 8

Flattery? I think not...
Reply #3 on : Wed November 12, 2008, 08:38:23

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Wow, I can't believe they didn't even bother taking out your code. Unbelievable!

Jordan Foutz
Posts: 8

Web design theft fail!
Reply #4 on : Tue May 12, 2009, 23:34:27

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I hear ya. Technically imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but the problem is this: here's the boat.........and here is them way over here. It wasn't even for a similar type of site, or executed well. And get your own GA code.

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