It’s a dog eat dog world out here in the web design world and lots of time is spent checking out the competition, especially sites that outrank you in the SERP’s. Yesterday I was checking my ranking on a search term and came across Aetomic. When I landed on the site I immediately thought, “Self, I’ve seen this site before but not this site.” So then I looked at my backlinks for my blog and came across Inspiration Bit and the lightbulb went off.
Why I’m Picking on Aetomic
Can you call yourself a web designer if you aren’t even designing your own website? Can you then put a page up and take away the credit from the person who actually designed the theme you’re using? It’s bad enough that Aetomic is using a theme someone else designed to sell their web design services but it’s another thing to take credit for the design of the site by omitting the credit of the person who actually designed the theme. In my opinion this is a deceptive practice and makes me wonder how many other designs they pass off as their own and how many web designers are getting ripped off by this company.
Of course maybe I’m looking at this wrong. Maybe I should be downloading free themes, stripping the author credit and pass the design off as my own. It would save me a lot of work and obviously increase my profit margin. However, it wouldn’t put me in a favorable light among my peers.
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10 People Have Bloviated
Steve Tucker | Feb 27
This is an unusual one, because whilst the first design has definitely been inspired by the second, it also goes a long way to identify itself as unique, with many new visual features and alterations. But to answer your question I don’t believe a designer is a designer if he/she simply rips off other folks work. It shows a lack of talent, imagination and ultimately is just plain unethical.
Tec | Feb 27
Was it a matter of ripping off someone elses site, or a matter of them both purchasing the same template?
I am a developer myself, and though, my site has be designed not purchased, there are many design companies that will purchase a template or have someone else do it. Why would you ask?? time.
We have steady flow of work here, and i know there have been times and still are, when i have no time at all to update the site. We are more focused on our clients sites.
Yes, I agree that a design firm should be designing their own site, if in fact they are promoting web design, but at the same time, it is the service and end product they are selling for each individual client, not their own site design.
just my two cents
thanks for allowing comments
Pop Stalin | Feb 28
@ Steve: Would you say that since the company made an attemp at making it unique that it’s okay to not give credit to the original designer?
@Tec: This is a case of using a free Wordpress Template and modifying it. This template wasn’t purchased.
I’m aware that folks out there purchase templates for their sites and you can often see from their portfolio the talent gap, for lack of a better term, in the design of their clients’ sites and their own.
I guess the issue I have with this is that they didn’t give the original designer of the template the credit he deserves. It was his idea that this site is based on and in my opinion that’s theft. Just because they made some changes doesn’t change the fact that the basic structure of the original template is intact and therefore not their own.
P.S. Your portfolio gallery completely comes apart on Mac in Firefox.
Steve Tucker | Feb 28
Perhaps not Jen. You’re probably right, and I’d be unhappy with Aetomic (or anyone else) if they’d obviously copied in this way from me. I guess to me this is just not what I’d call your typical rip off.
Pop Stalin | Feb 28
Nope, you’re right, it’s a whole different kind of rip-off!
Steve Tucker | Mar 1
bulmam | Mar 23
Can you call yourself a web designer if you aren’t even designing your own website? yes , you can.
I know many people who took this FREE template, and adapted it on their own website, they designed it as they wanted.
You MUST realise that doing a web design for free imply to let people do. It’s “bad” but it’s like that. Doing a web design is not very difficult, you are proud of it but you don’t have to force people to over estimate what has been done.
You do it for the people, how can you alway think at yourself, you can be proud of yourself, it’s a great job but let people do! The web is free. I think that web-designers suffer from an inferiority complex because they want people to love there job… but I think that the fact that people modify a webdesign shows that they love it.
Sofna | Oct 4
That is kind of funny and I’d have to agree with Tec. My buddy used to have the ugliest design for his company website until I sai something to him. It was blinding, but his work is actually quite good. He just threw one up there so his company had a website. All his business was coming by referral and word of mouth. He is actually more of a programmer, but as Tec said. If you are using your website as a marketing tool, you should have a unique design.
Beth Binkovitz | Sep 24
I use free themes as the basis for what I give my clients all the time, particularly if they’re not particularly design-conscious clients and are fine with something “out of the box”. There are always people more talented than you are, and choosing the right theme to base your work on is part of being a good designer.
That said, it’s only a tiny part, and if you’re advertising your services on a site using someone else’s theme (or a close approximation thereof), you better damn well credit your source.
For example, on my personal site I use a layout based heavily on a basic theme designed by another. My solution is to include my own site along with those of my clients in my design portfolio, with a small description of how I built each one including whether I used someone else’s theme and where I got it.
So, no I don’t think using others’ themes is wrong, if they distribute them with the intention that other people will use them. Nor does it make you any less of a professional IMHO, since using the right design can save your client time and money. But failing to give credit where it’s due is negligent at best, very unprofessional, and shouldn’t happen at all considering how I think we all learned about plagiarism in grade school.
Beth Binkovitz | Sep 24
Oh and if it’s any consolation, Aetomic’s site doesn’t render properly in my browser and looks like they either didn’t know what they were doing when they set it up, or they stole it and didn’t really bother learning the workings of it before trying to force it around their content.