Don’t rip off famous web designers

March 23rd, 2007 · Filed under Archives

I was stunned to see a digg pop up in my feed reader that linked to Dan Cederholm’s Flikr entry where he pointed out that LogoMaid, some mass logo producing company, has ripped his logo.

Within no time the web design community came to Dan’s defense in torpedoing LogoMaid and their representatives, who also comment.

This is outrageous! Dan is one of my idols, people I learned a lot from. “Bulletproof Web Design” is always on my desk, as a bible. Don’t go ripping off people’s work, especially not a respected example in the community.

The funny thing is that the designers claim that, even though their design was made after Dan’s, they are the legal owners of the copyright, because the copyright for their design was filed and paid for. Quoting copyright laws, which show that you don’t need to file a copyright to make it yours, you just need to publish it, a lot of Simplebits fans try to convince the designers that they are wrong, without any reasonable outcome. So instead of taking the logo down and apologizing to Dan and the web design community, they threaten to sue Dan on 2 counts: one for having the logo on the SimpleBits blog and two for “harming their goodwill”. I want to see them try!

I join the web design community in taking a stand next to Dan in the fight against rip offs. Do you?

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Rafiek

If you look at the "design" from logomaid http://www.logomaid.com/tmp/simplebitsfraud/sim... it looks like a logo for a house/home restyling company.
if you google R.H. Restyling you only find a car restyling company

ben bibikov

There is nothing stunning here, only bunch of hystirical designers.
If I create a logo and I copyrighted it. Its my logo even if the logo looks like someone elses. I had that happen to me before. I designed a logo one time for a Smarthomes company. I didnt know there was another smarthomes company that had almost identical logo design, only minor differences. Well, so what? I didnt retract from my design, because it's my design. There are only so many shapes, fonts, and colors you can work with. So I'm not stunned when I see two logos looking similar.

Jeff

Actually Ben, if a company already exists with that name and a logo that your design resembles, they own the likeness and you don't. If you were a professional designer, you would not only understand the impact that has on you as a professional, but you would understand the implications of the ethical issues. If you find yourself limited to a set number of shapes or what-have-you, perhaps you should get out of design and find a new career path. It's the responsibility of a designer to create a unique identifier for their client and do their homework to ensure that as much as possible. Logomaid is ridiculous and should be ashamed of their actions. Would you appreciate it if your designs were stolen and sold to someone else, causing you a loss of revenue? How would you feel if your client found that someone else stole the logo or maybe mistook you as the thief? I don't think you would like it

RehuÃ«l

A friend of mine wrote: Don't steal my idea. Ask me, then I'll come up with a unique idea for you.

It's more the ethical part of it rather than the financial part. Any designer can tell you how much it sucks to work hours on a design to have it copied. And even though the actual creation of a design may take a couple of minutes sometimes, it takes a lot of brain work to come up with certain ideas.

No designer can be respected when his designs look familiar. And if for some reason you came up with the same idea as someone else, you should be big enough to admit that you were too late, and redesign. If not, be prepared to feel the wrath of "a bunch of hysterical designers".