How to Handle a Copycat

nicely handled, I told someone I wanted to punch them :) jj

HA HA. That also might work.

“But its on the internet…isn’t everything free?”

j/k

Here - here.

Now… I may want to “get inspiration” from your standard letter, that is without copying it of course.

I dread the day I’d have to actually use it, as I think I’d take it very personal.

Nice job calling this guy out, but I read the Flickr comments and he obviously learned his lesson.

What do you think constitutes copying?

Hypothetical scenario: If I love the way you guys did your footer but recreated it using my own XHTML/CSS but in the end it still resembled nclud’s (albeit not pixel-perfect), with the same Address, Links, Made By in the same locations, is that copying?

Don’t get my wrong, I’m totally against any form of copying and it should never be blatantly done. But I guess there is a very thin line from inspiration and copying. Where does everyone stand on this?

My personal feelings are that if the designer in question of copying, obviously went through the work to 1. Acknowledge his inspiration 2. Did everything he could to replicate the design w/out directly copying the XHTML/CSS 3. Use a little common sense and at least ask your inspiration (before posting your site live) if they are uncomfortable with your design.

Inspiration and copying walk a very fine line. But good job getting this discussion started and I liked the way you handled it.

The use of our footer style and over-all four-column grid can be over-looked, but the blatant copying of our text is what we were most concerned with. I think that particular example, Chris did change enough that we couldn’t really be upset with him. We will be writing up a post next week on the difference of inspiration from stealing and how those apply to design and mark-up.

You’re right. Lesson has been learned but it’s still no excuse. The content was a mistake on my part not to update it with the content from my local copy, but really I can’t make any excuses. It was a beginners mistake and it won’t be made again.

Though, after the fact, I received *many* reassuring emails and messages stating that there are many others out there that have done similar things, but have been “unlucky” enough to get away with it. To those people, you know who you are, I appreciate your support and inspirational replies.

@Ryan—I personally think that copying markup is of the least concern. Markup is based on a standard (hopefully) and therefore there shouldn’t be too much personal expression [read: Intellectual Property] involved. CSS, I might feel differently about, but in its essence, CSS is nothing more than a machine-readable representation of the design, which is the actual IP.

I am all for gathering inspiration from around the web; I’m of the opinion that great ideas don’t happen out of thin air—without others’ work to build on, there would be no progress, in any industry. However, when your inspiration comes almost entirely from one source, you’ve likely missed out on the creative spark that makes the work your own, and created a derivative—diluting progress instead of furthering it.

@Chris—Enjoyed the personal touches on what you had, looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

I honestly wouldn’t have noticed if I came across his site on my own. I think the footer section with the little apple, wordpress and (mt) is a bit too much but other than that, I don’t think he has to completely do away with his design. That’s just me, I could be wrong.  I’ve seen much worse in my time. But I understand the sensitivity. I’m sure there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears put into your site to stand out and be different.

But you would have lost any deals over this?

Michael,

It isn’t really about losing deals and this post isn’t really about Chris’ particular take on our recent redesign. It is about copycat designs in general and how to handle the situation. This site went up and came down rather fast (thank you Chris for that)—so no harm no foul.

It is more about professional respect than it is about “deals”. It is about our stance of creating “unique” designs and ensuring that our designs are as such and not very close mirrors to other sites (as would be the case with Chris’ modification).

There are much worse scenarios (such as this). This post was not to pick on Chris too much, just to let people know how we handle this situation and how we believe it should be handled.

IMO, something can be too good to copy; and in fact, the recent nclud copycat is a perfect example. If you notice, he didn’t copy the colors and graphics, just the positioning of elements.

Ripping something that is “too” good is “too” blatant (or too hard for that matter).

Martin,

I think you guys handled it well from the letter standpoint. But putting the guy on blast like that might have been a little much. It’s obvious a beginner mistake from Chris’ response and he seems like a decent guy. I think when we (as designers) initially see a copycat, we visualize someone in a dark room with a smirk and devilish grin ripping off the design – but in actuality, it’s a part of our web culture to take inspiration from other sites and applications.

For instance, Facebook and LinkedIn blatantly ripped off Twitter’s popular “What are you doing?” feature. It’s the nature of the web business. I think you guys handled it well though, but it’s funny to read comments from other people as though they’ve never been inspired by other designs. In my 15 years of design, every team that I’ve worked on has brought up competitor sites and designs so that we might see what we like and what’s working, etc. Yes, as we become more mature as a designer, the end result tends to look completely unique.

But we designers must keep it real, we’re all inspired by someone or something in creative field. And we’ve all started off copying someone or something.

Much respect. Keep up the good work.

;)

I have relaunched my site with changes that I have made since Saturday morning. Other than sticking with the 4 column layout for the homepage, I redesigned it from the ground up without viewing any sites for inspiration. If it does look similar to any, I truly apologize but these are all ideas that have come from the back of my brain.

I would love to hear all of your comments and critiques as I have made a blog post on the new website in which people may leave comments or send me tweets to @chrismartens.

Thanks again for the kick in the ass.

Chris,

I’ve said it on the flickr post comments, but I will say it again ... very well handled and the new site is coming along nicely. Really digging the new content.

The intention of this post was to share how to handle a situation like this but on the flip side, as the target of one of our messages, I think you equally showed how to handle and react to receiving such a message.

A perfect compliment, thank you.

That is quite clearly only taking inspiration, with regards to the design at least.  Two things that really let the web design down, firstly the insistence on always charging ridiculous prices for websites (which I have no doubt you do) and secondly is the snobbery over unique design.  This isn’t about making art it’s about populating the internet with well designed content.  There’s enough work out there for all designers to be a little less protective over their work.  Lets move away from this notion that only large companies with big budgets get nice looking sites from overpriced ego-driven design companies and lets speed the internet forward sharing our understanding of good design to those who need educating.

We’re stuck in a dichotomy with ever emerging web design “showcase” sites which are there purely to inspire people in the industry and the continuing stuck up attitudes of high quality designers who think that copying so much as a concept or a colour palette or even a grid layout is damnable plagiarism.

Go to the hairdressers with a photo of what cut and colour you want and they’re not going to turn their nose up at you.  You wont get thrown out of B&Q for asking to recreate a colour you like.  If all they can do is copy and paste, they’re going to get stuck pretty soon and the clients will come to those that can paint from scratch. So stop acting like the internet is still untouchable and for the elite designers and start realising you’re no different to any other creative commercial field.

Duncan,

First, lets all calm down a bit! It is going to be okay, we promise.

You do make some very interesting points—ones that we’ve been aiming to address in a follow-up post on the difference between inspiration and theft (and the debate to whether there is a difference and where the line might be drawn).

As for your statements regarding “plagiarism”—the example above clearly stole our content word-for-word; that is “plagiarism” is simplest sense—no doubt about that. As for the design, we were very clear about Christopher’s specific site not being close enough to our design to ask him to take it down; he did out of respect and we appreciate that. Our biggest concerns were with the copy and the footer (whose unique elements, graphics and verbiage were directly taken from our site).

One thing to keep in mind is that this post (as I’ve said many times) is not about Christopher’s previous design; it is about how to handle this type of situation.

Do you care to elaborate on your comment, “always charging ridiculous prices for websites (which I have no doubt you do)”? Our prices are actually ridiculously competitive. No one here is driving around in a Porsche or living in a Penthouse. It cost a lot of money to keep an agency running every month, we try and make enough to cover our expenses and to save a little for a rainy day (we don’t want to be firing someone because of a slow month).

I don’t think it is fair to really compare what we do here at our agency to what your stylist does at Hair Cuttery for $12. The better example would be to compare that hair stylist to a freelancer on Craig’s List—and showing them a site and asking to design one just like it is often the request (this from first hand experience). We don’t sell hair cuts (or web designs)—the thing that we sell that “our” clients want is unique web designs; those which don’t look like others on the web. Those unique to the client and their brand—part of their brand experience. We put a lot of time and effort into being unique and by copying that work you destroy that effort and you devalue what we did for our client.

Again, I do think you bring up great and valid points—ones that need to be addressed. Where is the line between theft and inspiration? Can you steal mark-up or JavaScript or a grid?

I’ve recently had some serious copying going on with my site and if nothing else, it’s caused me a lot of anguish and frustration. When you get emails from people saying ‘surely your design is a template, I’ve seen it all over the place’ it really makes the blood boil.

I’m curious about your next stage after you’ve sent the letter and they ignore you. I’m currently there with a few copiers.

I should also say, you’ve done a lovely job with the redesign guys. Congrats.

Rob,

You’ve got a few options. One you can spread the word of the theft and hope that bad press makes them take it down (this worked well for Clearleft recently)—you’d be surprised at how many people will bombard the offender with “hate mail”.

The other option is getting legal—we’ll be honest, we’ll never take someone to court over design theft (our clients might). Our attorney fees alone would put a minimum charge of at least $8,000.00—and it just isn’t worth it. And anyone that is stealing your designs over-seas, well forget about it, the headache alone of trying to deal with that legally makes it not worth it.

If you are being ignored, try to find the top dog. If the designer is ignoring, try and track down the client, if the client is ignoring you try and track down the CEO, if the CEO is ignoring you try and track down the parent company or a potential investor. If it is some highschool kid’s portfolio site, call mom and dad.

One thing that works is to hire an attorney to prepare a template letter (that you can use several times over)—people respond when there is a fear of a lawsuit, especially when the treat is coming from a real attorney and not some hot headed designer.