My Design Has Been Ripped!

Veron Ang is the founder and chief editor of Sparklette. She lives in Singapore and has dined and traveled across the world. She also runs Sparklette Studio, a web design and WordPress development firm. If you'd like to connect with her, head on over to the contact page or follow her personal updates on Twitter: @VeronSG.

63 responses Leave your comment

1. 
   Aen Tan
   January 13, 2007
    

   Hi Veron,

   Congrats on finding a ripoff of your site. They say “Plagiarism is the Best Compliment”. Now you know your design is so good people want to copy it.

   Thanks for posting the detailed close-ups and screenshots. Upon closer look, I have to say it is a very very heaviliy-inspired design, almost a direct copy but it is not completely a copy. While clues indicate that the texts have indeed been copied wholesale, the graphics although similar are original, as in she made it herself and not something that was “right-click save as” or directly taken from a screenshot. It would be more accurate to say she was reusing the design concept, maple leaf patterns and the layout and positioning on her own site, stuff which you can’t really protect by copyright. You can’t copyright the use of the maple leaf brush, the use of square thumbnails nor the use of script fonts and icons beside headings.

   Being a web designer, as she had claimed, commiting such an act of unoriginality can only bring much shame to herself and show how much a “web designer” or should I say “web copier”, she is.

   Finally, her own design is SHIT, she calls herself a web designer just because she knows a bit of html and photoshop? I know why she copied the text, look at her English!

   Shame. shame. shame.

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2. 
   Veron
   January 13, 2007
    

   *lol* I didn’t expect you to use such strong words against her. And you are right on about the “heavily-inspired design”. It wasn’t a case of right-click, save as, but the concepts were blatantly copied wholesale.

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3. 
   birdface
   January 13, 2007
    

   hmmmm… i have to wonder though… if the blog owner had contacted you beforehand… ask for permission to copy your layout, and restructured it to its supposed form… would you have allowed her to do so? would it have become a form of flattery?

   It does speaks volume of your beautiful work… to have people risking copyright infringement to rip it…

   frankly …. the reason i still check in from time to time is because of your blog’s exceptional design… and the wish to somehow emulate it…

   cheers Lady Veron… you have won… and the offender have raised a flag of submission…

   hehe… and oh… it seems like your rage still remain a force to be feared…

   ^)>

   Reply
   
4. 
   Harro!
   January 13, 2007
    

   Veron, wordpress themes are very common right? Is your site is based on an existing theme?

   If so, then there is a high chance that the structure will be the same. :)

   Reply
   
5. 
   Harro!
   January 13, 2007
    

   Just looked at the comparisons again.. and you are right, even the design elements are similar. :) Well, take it as a compliment really. Maybe its time to sell your WP theme?

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6. 
   Veron
   January 13, 2007
    

   Hey birdface,

   My rage still remains a force to be feared? You mean it ever was? *lol*

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7. 
   Veron
   January 14, 2007
    

   Hey Harro,

   I don’t quite get what you’re getting at. Besides the fact that I’m using a WordPress blogging engine, everything else in the theme has been designed from scratch (and I really mean from scratch, built in Photoshop, coded in HTML and CSS by hand). FYI the WordPress theme would not have elements like “Visitors”, “The Princess”, “Email”, “Web Design Services”, “Music Albums”, “Movies” and “Copyright”. I came up with the entire structure myself.

   Reply
   
8. 
   Anon.
   January 14, 2007
    

   I’m one of the frequent visitors of your blog since the time when you used to have a wap site. so I was quite upset when I saw her layout (especially the popcorns that she had used as well) and had to let you know.

   For now, I’ll remain anonymous. :)

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9. 
   Veron
   January 14, 2007
    

   Hey Anon,

   Wow the WAP site was a really long time ago! Would you please not be anonymous anymore? I’d really like to know who you are, since you probably know quite a bit about me already (from reading my blog). Pretty please? You could email me!

   Reply
   
10. 
    pkchukiss
    January 14, 2007
     

    Veron, you had a WAP site? That sounds really cool and geeky. I would love to access your WAP site, if you have one. It really is boring trying to read anything using the WAP browser, though if I used Opera Mini, it makes things a whole lot easier!

    Reply
    
11. 
    lucas
    January 14, 2007
     

    morally, she should not have copied your blog structurally. she did try changing the some of the images but she could have done more on the layout structure and concept.

    legally, she didn’t break any law. the web is free and the leaf and box cannot be properly copyrighted. there are too many surfers out there copying each other works.

    i admired your design from “scratch”. but even from scratch, your design originality and inspiration would have come from some experience or memories and fused into a concept you want to portray, so it’s that really origin original? no one knows.

    it’s a compliment that someone actually wanted your design so desirably. i have done web designs for projects, jobs, companies and even nus departments before, and i truly understand where you come from. the hours spent in perfecting the design you’ve in mind, is like seeing your baby grows. you want others to love your designs and also respect them as well.

    your design is good but i have visited your blog time and again more for your entries and the comfortable feeling your blog expresses.

    keep up the good work, you can’t stop people ripping off unless you exit the internet scene. true spirit of design is to better your previous design, believing there is no perfect design, less on stopping your design from spreading to others mind…

    Reply
    
12. 
    chillycraps
    January 14, 2007
     

    hi veron,
    think of it this way: your layout is nice, that’s why ppl want to copy. Now that should sound like a good thing.

    Kids nowadays really don’t have creativity.

    Reply
    
13. 
    iloveyongsi
    January 14, 2007
     

    hey veron,
    just chanced upon your blog and saw your bak kwa entry. kinda random but have you tried chicken bak kwa? *lol* you can have that since you take chicken. switched to that since i stopped eating pork ;)

    Reply
    
14. 
    Veron
    January 14, 2007
     

    Hey pkchukiss,

    I used to have a WAP edition blog that was made solely for viewing on mobile phones with non-colored screens. It had all my blog entries in full text but no pictures. Back then some of my guy friends in the army only got to come home on weekends. But they could at least surf my blog on their mobile phones! Haha!

    Well right now the WAP site is no more, although I do have a PDA edition available. So if you were to surf sparklette.net on a PDA, you would be viewing a very different layout that’s customised to the tiny PDA screen.

    Sounding all geeky now!

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15. 
    Veron
    January 14, 2007
     

    Hey lucas,

    Thanks for your kind words. You are right on a number of points but I feel I need to clarify a couple of things.

    1) I don’t think it is fair for anyone to question whether my design is original simply because parts of it were inspired from elsewhere. Even in the world of art, how many true artists are there? Van Gogh drew inspiration from artists like Monet and Millet. Would you consider him unoriginal?

    We each are unique in our own creativity. We are inspired by good designs done by good designers. But do we simply copy the exact same concept? No, we take these inspirations and churn out something new.

    There is a wild difference between inspiration and imitation. I think we need to be able to see that difference.

    2) This current purple fairy tale layout is the 11th version of sparklette.net. Believe me when I say that in each of these 11 layouts, all my effort had gone into bettering each design each time. And certainly not “stopping [my] design from spreading to others mind”, because if that was the case, I would simply have locked this website to prevent anyone from seeing my design in the first place. That would be an effective measure wouldn’t it?

    Like I said, I wouldn’t have minded at all if I had been given proper credit, or if it was just a small amount that was copied. Just not to the extent where random visitors can so easily tell at one glance that that website resembles mine.

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16. 
    Veron
    January 14, 2007
     

    Hey chillycraps,

    Thanks! I do feel flattered, but that’s after the peeve.

    Reply
    
17. 
    Veron
    January 14, 2007
     

    Hey iloveyongsi,

    Chicken bak kwa? Where can you get those? I wonder if it would be as good as the original pork bak kwa!

    Reply
    
18. 
    mervkwok
    January 14, 2007
     

    A software engineer once said to me that “it’s the greatest compliment an engineer can get when someone else chooses to copy our work”.

    In other words, you design sure is damn good to inspire a ripoff! :P

    (Off topic, I dread the day some guy start copying the applications I write)

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19. 
    Veron
    January 14, 2007
     

    Hey mervkwok,

    Thanks, I am flattered! Well I wonder if that day came for you, would you feel flattered too? Or annoyed?

    Reply
    
20. 
    iloveyongsi
    January 15, 2007
     

    hey veron,
    hmm my mom gets them for me from bee chiang heng, but you’re boycotting them, so… yar. maybe the other bigger brands will have them as well. anyhow, can’t remember what pork bak kwa tastes like to make a comparison, but the chicken ones are good!

    Reply