So, if you spend any time in the design/illustration profession, you’re likely to get ripped off. It’s an unfortunate fact of life. However, it’s pretty rare that it happens almost immediately and completely unashamedly, yet that’s what just happened to us.

Back on November 24, we posted about the launch of our newly-designed site for Airsoft Atlanta. We took a great deal of pride in that design, not only because it was so flipping badass, but because the client LOVED it.  Well, by a freaky coincidence, the designer who created that site happened to be searching “Volusion web design” when he came across the site for The Crimson Hill.  Now we’re no plagiarism scientists, so let’s look at this together and see if we all come to the same conclusion:

Let’s see… nonsensical mechanical header and footer connected by some sort of fictional belt drive?  Check.  Bullet-hole-ridden cement background?  Check.  (Though it must be noted that ours is seamless, whereas theirs is not.)  Nearly identical hero image?  Check.  Nearly identical left nav exhaust fan?  Check.  Central, featured product area presented as on-screen images (complete with horizontal “monitor” lines)?  Check.  Extremely similar display fonts?  Check.

Now we know who the designer is and we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was following direct orders from the client.  After all, we’ve all had clients who point to a site and say, “I want that.”  On the other hand, an ethical designer will do everything in their power to steer the client in a more original direction; trying to glean the elements that they truly respond to and then including those elements in the final design in a new way.  It’s a constant battle, but it’s one that’s worth fighting, so please don’t ever come to us with someone else’s site and say, “I want that.”  That’s not how we roll.

UPDATE: It turns out that we quoted the job for Crimson Hill and they were shown Airsoft Atlanta as an example of our work in a similar product category (a fact we were unaware of at the time of the original post).  He was looking for a dirt cheap solution as opposed to a unique brand identity, so he hired a copycat.  Which raises a question: why is there no schoolyard rhyme for taunting copycats?  For cheaters we have, “cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater.”  For liars, there’s, “liar, liar, pants on fire.”  Where’s the lyrical shaming device for people who copy?  I vote for, “copycat, copycat, too cheap to hire a proper design firm, so you’re perfectly willing to simply reproduce the creation of an honest, hard-working designer.”  I hope it catches on.

UPDATED UPDATE:  So, we’ve now been in touch with the owner of The Crimson Hill, and the fact is that he seems like a pretty nice guy.  True, he came to us for a bid.  True, he showed Airsoft Atlanta to the designer he eventually chose.  True, it shares some obvious similarities with his final site design… however, he’s made it clear to us that his intentions were not evil and he’s currently taking steps to alter the more obviously similar elements.  This may now be the closest thing to justice that a designer can hope for in such a case and we’d certainly rather make friends than enemies, so thank you Josh.  We hope to cross paths again under more pleasant circumstances.