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Since so many of my readers are asking me about blogs, I thought I would post this video on "What is a Blog." Its about 4 minutes long, but has a lot of good information and explains some major differences between a website and a blog. Take a look!
Plagiarism (from Latin plagiare "to kidnap") is the practice of claiming, or implying, original authorship or incorporating material from someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgment.
After 9 years in the web design business, I'm not surprised at what happened this week, but I am surprised that it didn't happen sooner. A client walked away from a project yesterday because we refused to plagiarize another website they liked and wanted to use as their own design. My company took quite a substantial monetary loss from this, but I do not regret not giving into this client's demands. We stood by our moral standards and I'm proud of it no matter what the dollar amount the lesson had tagged to it. I'm sending the company their refund today with a clear conscience.
Here's the rest of the story...when we begin a project, we ask our clients for three sites they like and which elements they like the best as well as those they do not like. We need to "get into the client's head" before we start the design process so we can deliver the site in the style the client is looking for.
This client showed us three sites and was leaning toward one design in particular. We took elements from that site and presented 2 comps that were similar in style, but not exact copies. The client was very upset and pressed us to do a 3rd and 4th design that blatantly copied the site they really liked. Although we used elements and mirrored the placement of pictures, we did not copy the design and colors exactly. I told the client we could not do this for legal reasons. After all, our name was going on the bottom of that site and copying a site is plagiarism which is illegal which would have left both of our companies vulnerable for a lawsuit. It didn't matter to them and they decided to walk away from the project.
The question I have is why would a company hire a web design firm to copy the design of another web design firm? That doesn't make much business sense and it leaves everyone in a very awkward position. If I had known this from the beginning, I would not have taken on this client's project, but unfortunately, this information didn't come out until the first 2 designs were presented.
Although I regret the fact that we have a company out there that doesn't feel as though we did our best work for them, I don't regret the fact that we stuck by our moral compass and refused to plagiarize another designer's hard work. In the end, plagiarism doesn't pay both monetarily and morally. I only hope that their next designer also refuses to give in to their demands and holds themselves to the same high standards all web designers should adhere to.
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