Don’t steal effort
A tale of my blog over three years.
I am not a designer but I like designing. I’ve designed all my personal projects and blog myself. But sadly, some people who do not appreciate the effort that goes into designing. You put the effort and they’d love to just rip-it off.
Let me tell you my story.
I started my blog in May 2010, using WordPress and built myself a custom theme of my own. A very simple layout and used this theme for a few months. A friend of mine who also started his blog around the same time copied my design for his first iteration. But, that was okay with me. Newcomers take inspiration from people they know. I’ve done that myself at times.
Around September 2011, busy with conferences - I worked on a design called Minimalistic Me. Being a big fan of Harry Roberts’s work, at that point of time I mostly copied his work.
Satisfaction doesn’t come in easy for me, so I started to redesign my site during early 2012. I consulted a good friend and who is also a designer. He mostly gave me honest feedback. This was the first time he actually patted my back (over the internet) for the result that came out this time. It meant a lot to me. This design was called Return of Minimalistic Me.
Now, coming back to that friend who loves to copy me. Once my latest design was out, even he had started work to redesign his blog. And his final result was again a copy.
By the end of 2012, I took decision of moving my blog from WordPress to Jekyll also decided to redesign it. The new layout mixed with some old components reflected me. Finally I was satisfied.
Two days back, the copying friend striked again. He copied my design. Again! It has the exact layout, similar logo design, similar visual style.
Seems like I failed somewhere in all these years. I think I should have told him that I did not appreciate him copying my designs as I thought he was learning and drawing inspiration. Maybe that’s why he keeps ripping-off my designs.
There will always be people who will steal your work. They will not even think about giving you credit for the work. Don’t wait for them to stop. They won’t. Tell them to stop.
Update
Just noticed his website and he went through two design tweaks. Now is nothing like mine and looks like a clone of Medium. Thanks to this post and the conversation I had with him, he ended up putting a subtle comment (people who masturbate over credits - that’s really badass) about the same.