I’ve seen plenty of designs completely ripped off in my day.  One I recently saw was over at MattBrett.com. He posted the stolen design on his flickr page.

So this morning, I was scanning the pages of doom (craigslist) for a possible new band mate when I came across a post claiming to be the next place where chicago musicians meet on the web.  So I went to BandMix.com.  Instantly I noticed that their design very closely resembled Purevolume.com.

I kinda believe with all the CSS galleries and Smashing Magazines out there, it makes it easier to steal designs and borrowing concepts from others too far, but it still doesn’t give any excuse to blatantly copy someone’s design.  Usually it seems that people catch this and start the flame train (which they should).  So I guess since I haven’t seen anything about these two sites here is the beginning of my flame train.

Here are some more links exposing rip offs… Some of these are just sad

here | here | here

Well after a few weeks of work and a couple rounds of revisions, the new Kings of Leon website I designed has launched in tandem with the release of their new album “Only by the night” which hits stores on the 23rd.  Pictured here is the original mockup/design I did (because after handing it off, the band wanted some other changes, therefore the company I was contracted with to design this changed it based on their requests.  Just a side note if you are wondering why it looks so different.).

The band as well as their fan-base and community love it I hear.  I’m  really happy and had a great experience working on this.  I am currently working on another high profile artist site, but can’t discuss it anymore until I hear more about the mockups I’ve submitted that are in review.  More to come.

So recently I’ve been tasked with going through resumes for a couple current job openings at my company and have come to the realization that once you post a new job, the flood gates basically open.  To be quite frank, it is a painstaking process (mostly mindless clicking).

When I check out a new candidate that has posted their resume (and HOPEFULLY some sort of portfolio.. but I’ll get to that in a minute) to the system, I hold my breath usually for about 2 seconds until it opens.  Now it’s make or break time.  At this point, it’s basically another black on white word doc/pdf or every once in a while it will have a little flare to it (which excites me).

A boring resume I can stomach, but not including a portfolio for a graphic design/web design/ ANY DESIGN job is absolutely instantly rejected.  And to the people who actually DO have a portfolio… please, please, go take a gander at the big dawgs.  Go take a look at other peoples’ portfolios and take notes.  

To whom this may concern (future co-worker):

• Include a portfolio! (I’m not sure how many times I have to say that)
• If applying for a design job, try something different than the black on white resume (nothing crazy but something a little different if only to make it stand out from the pack)
• Put the link to your portfolio somewhere I can find it in under 5 seconds (top left or right, underlined.. doesn’t matter)