The Sincerest Form of Flattery
and What I Did About It
A while ago, I found a site that was clearly my design with a few very minor changes. I was a little startled to be honest. This is obviously not a new problem as it has happened to a number of sites, some of them with a very high profile.
I considered contacting the owner of the site, but before I had the chance I received an email from him complimenting me on my design and asking if I was comfortable with him using a variation of my design. My first reaction was that I would have rather been asked before the design was cribbed. My second reaction was that I wasn’t prepared for this, as I hadn’t really placed a statement on the site describing how I felt about this, despite having received emails in the past asking if it was acceptable. I wrote personal responses to those requests, but somehow hadn’t thought to post anything on the site itself.
What I did about it
I don’t have a problem with people using parts of my design as I don’t believe I can do much about it. The header image toy is something I put out there for anyone to use and I license pretty much the whole site, design and all, under a creative commons license that says you can use what you want as long as you
- give the original author credit
(in theory a link back to the site) - share your alterations under the same license and
- are using it for non-commercial purposes.
I think (or at least hope) this gives people the freedom to use what they want while encouraging them to feed back to the community. I’ve had a handful of people ask to use various elements, usually parts of the typography, and it would be silly to tell them no as the nature of the web leaves the elements open for use and I’d rather let the power of that exchange take hold rather than try to suppress it.
I emailed the person and thanked the them for their interest and encouraged them to explore more and continue to alter the design to both their taste and needs. In the end, most users want a site that reflects who they are and will strive to make the design they borrowed one of their very own. If they succeed, then one day they will find someone using their site’s design. Hopefully they will be as kind.
Permanent Link
Hey Gloddy, you’re one the best web designers out there. Certainly the best one I know. Whenever you talk about switching to a new career I think “no no no”. You were born for the web. Why the fuck doesn’t somebody show you the money is beyond me.