Comments
7 CommentsI definitely believe in implementing what other people are doing. While the finished product bares little resemblance to the material that inspired me, my current design is hugely reflective of this.
That said, there's obviously a line where things quit being "inspired by" or even directly imitated and start being stolen.
Before I point out the site for discussion, I want to mention that I don't know Daniel Cork, and I'm not accusing anyone of anything. His work, and the overall differences of the following two sites more than show that this isn't direct theft so much as perhaps closer to the line than most of us come.
Without furthur ado, take a look at 9rules own Jaredigital and then Corking Design.
jbarket
Written Mar. 26, 2007 / Report /
Wonderful. Corking has since gone down.
You can still get a decent idea from the screenshot in this article here. It's in the first section, towards the bottom.
Oli
Written Mar. 26, 2007 / Report /
Seems up from my neck of the woods... But yes there are definitely similarities.
I think it's impossible to keep track of all your influences for a design. Sometimes some things just come to me as a good idea and it's actually just a subconscious snapshot of something I saw a week ago.
I'm not sure how I would judge Corking Design on this one... Perhaps (a stretch, I know) they just got their own influences from the same place. Perhaps it's not... We just don't know.
jbarket
Written Mar. 26, 2007 / Report /
I don't believe that the similarities are a coincidence, but I also don't believe this is blatant theft. If the RSS chat bubbles weren't so amazingly similar to the Go bubbles on Jared's site, I'd call it a case of designer man love.
jackosh
Written Mar. 26, 2007 / Report /
i see the similarities, but i definitely see the differences!
Oli
Written Mar. 26, 2007 / Report /
TBH I'm not sure the RSS bubbles are a good idea. Its not like they match with anything else in the design and they're non-standard (as in not the official RSS logo) so people have read rather than know automatically.
There are several things I'd change in both designs to fix inconsistencies and things that just don't work. I imagine, I'd end up making them more alike than differentiating them though.
RightOn
Written Mar. 26, 2007 / Report /
Honestly, you can see where they are similar... but only because you pointed it out.
There are a TON of designs out there "similar" to both of those layouts... so unless you TOTALLY ripped it and made it really obvious, I'd say good job!
jensized
Written Mar. 26, 2007 / Report /
There are only so many ways you can arrange content. I personally think the similarities are negligible.