A Guide To How Not To Do Web 2.0 Design (And Tech Reporting)
One of the things I love about Web 2.0 is some of the creative designs out there. One of the things I hate about Web 2.0 is the lack of originality in design and typography. Let’s take a recent company that was reviewed and all the rage in the blogosphere.
The other day I was interested in a company that was profiled on TechCrunch. I’m a stat junkie so this company had a product that interested me. I looked over the product review on TechCrunch and I read the comments.
Mike Arrington is quoted as saying “breathless over blogstorm.” A few comments made me think okay this a great tool. I should check it out. Expecting to find a decent design + a decent product I made my way to the site.
What I found shocked and angered me.
I’d take a nice screenshot and show you but I want to see if you understand my anger so let’s fire up the old browser and head on over to Blogstorm.
Does anything strike your fancy about this website?
To me it looks eerily like Copyblogger’s new design.
Let’s take a peak at the exterior. On the outside the similarities are fairly noticeable. Both 3 column sites with nearly exact column widths. Site exterior framework is nearly identical with ads and top posts being in the right hand column.
None of this stuff is anything that is to huge. It’s a fairly straight heavily inspired design. No biggie really I see it all the time. A new design comes out one a popular site and 1-2 people copy it hoping for success. However this copycat got a nice review on TechCrunch. This makes me ill.
What in the world was Mike Arrington thinking? Obviously the guy doesn’t know beans about design because this is bad news for the designer in question. He basically just authorized mainstream theft of designers who deserve to be paid for their hard work.
Let’s take a peak under the hood now. Surely these guys aren’t so lazy as to copy and paste code and use it right? One thing I know about design is this. Every designer leaves behind footprints that make it easy for someone like me to tell if I get to know a designers code who that designer is.
I’ve worked with Chris Pearson a lot. So I can easily tell if he designs something without looking at the site in question. If you handed me some css. I could tell you if Pearson did it.
I’m looking at this Blogstorm code. You can too by checking out this link. There are two very different styles. It’s almost as if two designers were working on code and they didn’t collaborate properly.
CP codes Horizontally. I can recognize his style in an instant. Whoever started coding Blogstorm codes Vertically. However there are large ‘chunks’ of code that are obviously scraped from somewhere else that highly resemble CP’s code from Copyblogger. It’s a rather ugly style sheet because they had to ’scrape’ inspiration from somewhere and it certainly wasn’t the right thing to do.
In some cases they even kept various image references and paths and just renamed them. Whoever it was spent a great deal of time on the site. But truthfully someone should roast for this. It’s cheap and it’s tacky. And to be honest although some would say you can’t copyright CSS. It’s just downright stupid to steal someone’s hard work and claim it as your own.
1. If you are going to do a design for a Web 2.0 Startup don’t under any circumstance borrow inspiration by copy and pasting CSS. Start from scratch or hire a good designer.
2. If you are going to report a new startup Arrington please double check some basics like why the heck the site looks similar to one that is in your feedreader. If it’s not in your feedreader it should be.
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Three column sites with ads on the top right are not new or original in any way…Copyblogger is done with a CSS layout, BlogStorm was even done using tables. And writing code horizontally isn’t exactly unique.
I think you’re overreacting. At the very least, this isn’t something that needs to be publicly posted here–especially when it’s not your work and you don’t seem to have any actual proof.
If you can really show that it was stolen and the author seems upset, then sure, that’s messed up. But really…
Or is it just me?
By Elliot Swan on June 25, 2007 11:42 pm
Yes if you go through the code much of it is ‘borrowed’. Secondarily yes the original author was upset.
By David Krug on June 25, 2007 11:48 pm
Elliot,
Btw love your site design. I’ve never been there before thanks for stopping by.
By David Krug on June 25, 2007 11:50 pm
Copying code is clearly dodgy behavior that is rightly called out, but it is a bit much to expect TechCrunch to have seen every other website and know that any particular design is not unique.
By Mathew Patterson on June 26, 2007 1:55 am
Wow this site has really gone downhill. Poor post, poor show.
By Philip on June 26, 2007 3:04 am
Philip,
Before your criticize a site go ahead and leave yours so I can take a look at it. I’m 2 posts in so somehow I think you haven’t given me a fair shake, which just shows possibly you had an opinion before you came to the ’show’. In which case you didnt have the guts to even show me your ’show’. In which case I’m the guy with balls for showing up. And your the guy without.
Tata.
By David Krug on June 26, 2007 3:39 am
The design of BlogStorm was inspired by a whole load of popular blogs and web 2.0 sites. I do read Copyblogger and we did use the same 3 column layout for the design but so do a load of other sites.
We don’t run an off the shelf blogging platform like Wordpress and as you pointed out the code uses tables rather than CSS.
The last thing we want to do is cause offence or upset anybody, if either Brian or Chris feels we have overstepped a line here then I will be happy to discuss it in private with them and resolve the situation to their satisfaction. Brian did email me last week but didn’t mention any problems.
Patrick
patrick@blogstorm.co.uk
By Patrick Altoft on June 26, 2007 4:18 am
Not sure if I am missing something here, but the CopyBlogger themes is available to download….
‘…and you, my friends, have a brand new toy—the Copyblogger Theme for WordPress.’
http://www.copyblogger.com/the-copyblogger-theme-for-wordpress/
By Frostie on June 26, 2007 6:41 am
Frostie,
That Copyblogger theme is a two-column layout that originally graced the Copyblogger site. The active design there is now a 3-column layout that the author here has compared to the upstart Blogstorm design.
* * *
Given the fonts, sizing, and column widths that one now finds on Blogstorm, I have every reason to consider the site “heavily inspired” by the new Copyblogger layout. After inspecting the CSS, it does look as though some lines of code were likely copied and pasted from the Copyblogger stylesheet.
Whether or not that’s true really matters very little to me at this point. I’ve seen situations like this arise time and again, and while I used to get really upset over them, I know that two things remain true:
It’s going to continue to happen, and it’s not worth the energy or time required to worry about it.
In many ways, this is flattery.
While I personally would not copy and paste CSS into one of my own stylesheets, I can certainly understand why others would choose to go this route. As with any discipline, you have your purists, and you have those folks who just want to put something together and get it to market ASAP. I understand both sides; I just happen to be a purist with regard to this particular issue.
Finally, as far as Mike Arrington and TechCrunch go, it’s not his job to police design or even to been keen enough to spot something like this. In all honesty, if ever did notice such a fine nuance of a site that he was covering, I’d be blown away. After all, how could he keep the TechCrunch train chugging if he was reading Copyblogger and worrying about design all day?
By Chris P. on June 26, 2007 10:54 am
If you are going to report a new startup Arrington please double check some basics like why the heck the site looks similar to one that is in your feedreader.
I’m confused. You follow this up by saying that if it’s not in his feedreader, it should be. So, is it or not? That question would need to be resolved before expecting him to recognize the alleged rip-off.
More importantly, though, it’s a weird assumption. Feed readers are kinda suited toward not seeing the sites in question. By coincidence, Copyblogger is in my own aggregator and I never actually visit it, particularly given that Copyblogger provides a full-content feed.
By Su on June 26, 2007 11:39 am
Wow, wisdump is terrible now.
By Bob on June 26, 2007 12:49 pm
@ Frostie
that was the previous one they were using. The current rip of BlogStorm is from the actual theme they’re using.
By Hans on June 26, 2007 3:45 pm
Who knows what is going on here. I give up. I still think its cheap.
By David Krug on June 26, 2007 6:50 pm
Being a designer, and one that offers free themes, I can say that I relate to what David is trying to say in this post. However, I also know that Chris P. is right, in that it’s not worth it to get upset over certain things that happen to us as designers.
Someone taking my themes and distributing them without my permission, trying to rip off code on my current website are among the things that happen.
Unfortunately, c’est la vie. As it is flattering, it’s also annoying. But I have too many better things to do than to police people in a country 4000 miles away that probably will never end up using the theme they have “bootlegged” from my site somehow.
By Brian Gardner on June 26, 2007 7:17 pm
Ouch. Bad spelling, bad grammar, bad argument. You may only be two posts deep, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have come out of the gate swinging. You know what they say about first impressions…
By Megan on June 27, 2007 11:25 am
The Copyblogger theme was released as a package to be used by small businesses - check the copyblogger archives for details. Perhaps Patrick felt it was acceptable to download it (as invited to do so) and then make changes. Seems like the real issue is a lack of acknowledgement. That’s all.
By LSF on June 27, 2007 5:23 pm
Haha, I think I just saw reasons 3, 89 and 105 not to buy somebody else’s blog. Paul Scrivens leaves nothing but broken, pissed off communities in his wake. I wish to God people would stop buying his effin’ blogs so he’d have to get a real job.
By WJ on June 29, 2007 2:29 am
I don’t know that that is really true about Scrivs WJ - but this knucklehead (the “author”) is faaaaarrrrrr from his first two posts and a very loooooooong way from his first two Blogs and hasn’t changed one bit! Megan, he destroyed his first impressions ages ago.
It won’t be long before he leaves this one in his wake also. Broken rib, jailed in Mexico, booze problem or whatever other excuse he’ll manufacture.
Yeah you, David, Cowboy, whatever…
By Mark on June 29, 2007 6:41 pm
Mark,
Thanks for stopping by. Always a pleasure.
By David Krug on June 29, 2007 11:30 pm
“Who knows what is going on here.”
You should have found out before you made this post. You make it sound like you designed Copyblogger and this guy ripped it - you’re that pissed off.
And the ‘rip’ is debatable.
By Smith on July 3, 2007 12:13 pm