I realize this is not strictly CI-related, but I thought it would be a little fun…

Here’s the original:  OnWired

Here’s the Shameless Rip-Off:  daynger.com

Less than 6 weeks, no less!  How flattering.  Of course, take-down notices have been sent… Personally, I’m of the Zeldman opinion on matters like this:

Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.

Zeldman

Haha!!! He could atleast have renamed some of the css…

Cause “steve” is a natural naming convention… I’d say so natural it rivals “wrapper” or “box” I mean I have nested “steves” in use all over the place.

Losers….

-Lee

CI Lee - 02 January 2008 03:53 PM

Haha!!! He could atleast have renamed some of the css…

Actually, that doesn’t surprise me as much as the body copy itself:  talentless hacks don’t usually know what’s going on under the hood, but the least they can do is re-write the text!  To wit:

Ever wonder how the folks at OnWired/Daynger do what they do? Curious to know how this elite team of web operatives creates its masterpieces of pixel and code? Are you wondering what to expect if you decide to hire us? We’ve decided to give the world a glimpse into our classified, for–our–eyes–only processes and methodologies. Without further adieu, this is how we roll:

Lifted word-for-word from our ‘Methodologies’ section…

hehe i think it’s funny…i’d laugh if that happened to me. Truth is, it’s just a no name site..these kinds of sites just die off…

we should try to hack it..as a community lol

Zaatar - 02 January 2008 04:51 PM

we should try to hack it..as a community lol

Yeah, we’re not overly worried about it—kind of a “no such thing as bad publicity” kind of deal.  We figure it’s an opportunity to have a good time of it:  we’ve sent him emails like, “Man, you’ve got mad design skillz!!1 Can we hire you to design our company’s site?” ...and then link back to our URL.

“Man, you’ve got mad design skillz!!1 Can we hire you to design our company’s site?”

hahaha good one

Joomla? Ewww

It reminds me a little bit of Panic’s gallery of ripoffs of their beautiful Transmit icon.

Gallery

BTW, my response would have been to email their sayhi@... with the following message:

To Whom It May Concern,

Way to go, assholes. http://onwired.com

——————————-
Nick Husher
Web Developer
onwired.com

Nick Husher - 03 January 2008 09:09 AM

To Whom It May Concern,

Way to go, assholes. http://onwired.com

Ha! We’ve been in touch with the talentless hac—, er, designer, and he’s agreed to revert to an older design by the end of the day.  I have a hard time figuring out how someone whose stated business is web dev/design could think to get away with something like this…

As a beginner, I remember downloading entire sites to study how they worked and can say that a lot of my early designs, let’s say, resembled other people’s work… and in this case, no harm no foul, really, but the guy replied in an email saying “Yeah, we’re big fans of your work and our site was definitely inspired by yours.”

“Inspired by?” At least own up to it, man. That’s just salt in the wound.

Incidentally, the way we found out is somebody wrote in to our contact page to let us know.  He went to Copyscape (which I’d never heard of) and plugged in our company’s name since, having seen it listed in a few galleries, figured it was ripe for the picking.

Ditto for me on reverse-engineering of web sites and the sorta-intentional resemblance that usually results from that.

What stuns me is that a competent web designer can take your design and jump off in so many different ways from it to create something new and original. I’ve been playing around with the idea of using a wood panel texture for my (eventual) web site, and were I to make your design my own, I would probably apply a wooden motif on top of it. I’d move some content around, change the proportions, rework the buttons to match a brown paneled theme—perhaps with brass for a 19th century or steampunk look—and I have something maybe inspired by yours, but consists of all my own work.

There’s interesting article by Cameron Moll that describes how to jump off from other people’s designs without ripping them off.

Nick Husher - 03 January 2008 11:27 AM

Ditto for me on reverse-engineering of web sites and the sorta-intentional resemblance that usually results from that.

What is art but private inspiration merged with public influence?  There’s only so many chords you can play on a guitar, for example, and so many possible combinations—most of them have already been done, over and over, yet we still have terrific original music.

There’s interesting article by Cameron Moll that describes how to jump off from other people’s designs without ripping them off.

Agreed, Mr Moll was really onto something there…

Incidentally, we tracked another one down:  *sigh*

Least he changed the design back!

Like most people starting design and development we all reverse engineer stuff. I did a facebook inspired design recently for my internal but its not going to be used for clients etc just me.

Why steal when theres plenty of free open source solutions too.

@maadmac: You’re obviously just too good

Craig Rodway - 04 January 2008 07:29 AM

@maadmac: You’re obviously just too good

Ha!  You flatter.  Go on…

UPDATE:  Did a little write-up here:  Aaarrggghh!

Incidentally, if anybody here wanted to help out, you could send Mr Mayfield a note through his contact form encouraging him to, ah, reconsider his position, since he’s not being terribly cooperative.  We’d be much obliged!  (Or email him directly:

Thanks!