Edited June 3rd, 2009:
I just heard back from Ryan at Dream Labs and he was very nice and professional. They did not steal my design, it was a third party company that they were working with (and are not going to work with anymore). I am heading out the door right now, but when I get back I will write a little bit more.

And no, I am not singing the Kit-Kat song. In fact, I am far from singing at all. Don’t these people know I have enough to do than to spend my whole day sending out Cease & Desist orders? What the heck?! And why are there so many self-proclaimed “Designers” in the world that just STEAL other people’s designs?!?! UGH! These people make me SICK!

The culprit tonight looks like they are currently building my design into a Joomla website.

At least they changed the image in the background. But I am pretty sure that I’ve seen that somewhere as well.

And if you look closer at the testimonial, yep that’s mine! They changed my name and also the client’s name. Amazing. Simply amazing. And they even took the testimonial that Kim wrote me.

Argh! Why are people so rude?

So Geyer took down the site last night and responded to both myself and my programmer, pleading innocence – that they were using my graphics to “learn.” However, as you’ll see, they didn’t even mention the content, which they definitely weren’t using to “learn.”

The email to my programmer:

Actually, I didn’t steal the coding at all, I did that all in CSS myself, as you can tell if you look at the source coding. However, I did ‘borrow’ (sounds better than stealing? Heh) the images – Don’t worry, I took it down already and sent Sarah an e-mail as well.I kept wondering how someone could link my site to yours, but I think I left CCG somewhere in the text of mine I believe… whoops!I wanted to get something up fast, and needed a quick design, so I borrowed one I thought looked good for the time being. I was going to re-do my site after I got everything up, just now I’ll be doing it a little sooner, heh.Ttytt, I was more suprised someone linked our sites together, than receiving an e-mail from you or Sarah!

It is true, I looked at their source code after sending them the C&D and they had rebuilt the site using DreamWeaver. There was tons of useless comments and a couple of “MM_” classes that I know oh so well from the days when I used to use it. Maybe it’s just the inability to hear tone in an email, but it does sound like he’s being a little snippy about it, don’t you think?

Aaaand the email to me:

Wow!  I’m actually amazed that someone found my site, let alone could put 2 and 2 together and link it with your site… well, I’m more impressed that someone found my site, lol.

I took it down, and actually, I didn’t steal your coding at all, I developed the CSS based around the images of your site… all of the coding was done by myself, albeit the javascript of the slideshow that you also used from dynamicdrive.com

I really just used the images, it’s a beautiful site!  I’m pretty new to developing and designing, so I wanted to get a ‘head start’ by just using a design already made, and seeing how long it took to create something from that template.

I do apologize for using your designs!

That’s right, focus on the positive (I didn’t steal your coding at all). Notice that nowhere did he mention the content, which was probably the worst offense.

I sent him back this:

Thank you for your co-operation in this matter.

I suggest that next time you would like to learn with another design, you should use a design from a Free Template provider (make sure the terms of use allow commercial use). For example, you can go to http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com/ and find something.

If you would like to try to put together someone else’s copyrighted design as a learning experience, it is usually okay as long as you do not publish it.

Also, content is copyrighted as well. Make sure you are using original content on your site. Additionally, using someone else’s content is bad for Google because you can easily get yourself blacklisted by doing so. You can also be removed from your host for using someone else’s content / design.

Good luck in your endeavors!

Maybe I’m too nice, but even though I’m sure this wasn’t a completely innocent act (it was so blatant and shameless), I do like to help people see the error in their ways and steer them towards a better path.

This has been resolved.

Please do not take it upon yourselves to contact these people. If you are upset about this and would like to discuss it, please do so in the correct forum: here. I am a professional and I do not condone threats or harassment.

So, I knew that I had something great when I made the new Camp Creative Group design. I had FINALLY come up with something that I was happy with, after so much time coming up with designs that I was just NOT happy with. The best was just seeing it all come together with the gorgeous copy, which was written by the brilliant Nicole VanBuren.

When I submitted it to galleries, and when it got picked up by several galleries and design publications, the excitement of exposure overpowered my worries of anything else.

It wasn’t until yesterday, while having a discussion with a fellow designer, that I checked copyscape.com and found several websites using not only my content, but my design and programming as well.

After issuing a Cease&Desist (and a few of them just a friendly slap on the wrist), most of them took the offending content down. However, the worst offender has yet to respond to myself or my programmer. Apparently, a client of my programmer contacted them as well, and they responded to him telling him that they made the site first. I would like to see them try to prove it.

I guess they’ve never heard of Photoshop’s ability to embed a file creation date. I have a Photoshop file that was created on March 26th, and I’m sure they can’t beat that being that I KNOW who designed MY site and when. Not to mention all of the people who have emails from me sharing the progression of my design. Also, as you’ll see in the screenshots, it’s pretty shameless. They even have the Camp Creative Group flower mark still in the background of the site.

And, yes, they couldn’t even get the color correct for that background. It’s a shame. Don’t you love the clashing header colors? Ugh, you can just tell they have no clue what they are doing. It’s bad enough you STOLE our design, but did you really have to BUTCHER it as well?!

Every bit of the design, even down to the footer. They changed SOME of the copy, although not much. At least they were smart enough to take out our testimonials.

They even took our portfolio, which poor Josh hand coded to work exactly how I wanted it to work. Lovely. I wonder how many other of their “designs” are other designers’ work. Oh, and I just love that they refer to themselves as “GM.com” – they do realize that is a website for another company, don’t they? And as you can see in the above screen shot, they weren’t very consistent with their font for the top banner (I’m assuming they didn’t have Futura, which was the font that is used on the front page).

No, it definitely didn’t stop with the website content and design. They also downloaded our questionnaire and switched out the logo and info for themselves. It’s hilarious because I just had a guy the other day ask me if he could use my questionnaire and I said “of course!” because – why not – and also, I was so pleased that he had actually ASKED. So this, to me, is just amazing.

Shame? They obviously don’t know the meaning of the word. Next to a picture of he and his wife was a biography of myself.

Of course, I understand taking someone’s site and saving it to your computer to learn from it: How they did the programming for something or how they did the design, trying to rebuild it as a learning experience, etc. But this wasn’t the case here. This wasn’t just bits and pieces. This was the entire site, including my content and design. And it was pretty blatant.

I guess when we came up with “Fall in love with your design.” we didn’t think that people would fall that in love with everything about our design and make it their own.

An animation of a world completely comprised of typographic characters.

Radiohead held an online contest inviting DJs to remix their song, Nude, off of In Rainbows.  Apparently, this was a difficult task, being that the song is in 6/8 timing at 63bpm (most DJs mix in 4/4 time at 120bpm).  Most of the entries were only songs in 4/4 beat with sound bytes from the song arbitrarily thrown in.

The following was done by James Houston on outdated hardware.  Get through the first minute, which is just a “warmup”, and you will hear a beautiful symphony.  It reminds me of an art show I saw in Pittsburgh which consisted of a room full of dot matrix printers that were forced to play a concert (they eerily sounded like string instruments).

I think it is very much in the spirit of Radiohead.

Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

“Based on the lyric (and alternate title) “Big Ideas: Don’t get any” I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there. 

“It doesn’t sound great, as it’s not supposed to. ”