* bump *
got any response yet ??

maybe you gotta a designer moonlighting for goodthinxxx :Graucho

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he he, i told em off good,

well they ripped ya off but everyone rips everyone off in this biz - the best thing to do is to just be the first. Your designs are great.

agreed

As a follow up to this, yes I have received a response. I emailed both CEO's a few days back, and I was starting to think the worse since no response came in.
However, Tanja Rahman, the CEO called me from Germany to sort things out - said they were very sorry for what has happened, admitted that the designs are close copies - she said the designer they hired liked our designs so much that they thought they'd work off them .
Tanja was highly apologetic about the issue, and said that they have in house designers working around the clock to bring out new tours for all their sites, and they aim to have this done within the next 10 days.
So my view of goodthinxx.com has changed, and the response, though a little late (they were at a webmaster conference in Europe) was highly proffesional.
(Nothing above was a paid 'statement' btw - I was simply impressed because of the direct and upfront attitude of Tanja - she admitted they were in the wrong, and said they'd fix it asap - I appreciate those kinds of ppl)

Good to hear there are some people willing to fess up and fix problems... well done :thumbsup

Without the above, all you'll be doing is paying your attorney for C&D bully tactics... just like a lot of the TM domain issues. You can have an attorney attack them, but if they get their own it'll just come down to which one of you can afford to make their attorney richer.

Wow.. and they were in Germany to boot? No case at all.

That's cool that they say they are going to be compliant with your request though.

But the real question is how are they going to replace 44 sites with their 'in-house design team' in under 10 days when their in-house design team lacked the inspiration for to begin with.

Ah.. they just going to replace the handful that they have got busted on so far :winkwink:

I understand your sceptism - I initially was, but she said the copied designs were done by 3rd party design companies (who she said they'll be asking for a refund) (& yes I know that on the internet it's easy to point the finger and scapegoat others)
She said their designers will be working very hard to achive this - 44 sites is a lot of work though, like even a few weeks worth for my team of 20, so it's a huge challange for them - I guess keep an eye on their site to see how they go - Tanja seemed very confident howver they'd manage.

having photoshop skills and being creative are 2 entirely different things. Blue has *always* been creative.

Blue, I have to say these are direct rips.

You are entirely correct about using photoshop vs real designing.

They are clearly copies, I thank the webmasters who have offered their support on this, and am astounded that some webmasters can't see the similarities in the tours - but I am happy that at least goodthinxx admitted to it and it seems we are well on the way to solving this issue.

Ditto :)

Hi Bluedesign,

Thanks for the posts.

Wow, I think I was away in Seattle when you first started this thread. You know this shit has happ. to all of our design companies over the years, bunch of BS I would say.

I am having our project manager go through there sites right now and see what webinc.com designs were copied. I will then contact the ceo personally.

thanks

Todd

in a perfect world you would be able to sue .. but here's the reality of graphic design:

its all about ideas and recycling ideas. just like music .. everybody has an influence .. sometimes you'll hear a band and go WTF is that so & so when its really some NEW so & so who were INFLUENCED by the style or the artist and emulates it.

in graphic design school one of the things we were told is to look at other's designs for ideas.

yeah they didn't say RIP THEM OFF (and some of them are obviously copies of your work), BUT almost all the porn sites look alike now adays anyway.. look at some of the free content being offered by affiliate providers? all the splash screens from almost all the companies look similar in some way.

if you find a way to take legal action let us know how ya did it! id be curious to see how ya pulled it off..

some do, some dont, but what can you do??

Dear guys,
I recently came across your chat here on the GFY webmasterboard and would like to give you now an official statement how it could come to these similarities (ripp-offs) to other prominent websites.

We asked a free-lance web-designer to make some designs for us and he basically took the designs from the bluedesignstudios-sites without our knowledge!!

After finding this out we started immediate action and our webmasters redesigned the sites. About 80% of the sites are already redesigned - the rest will be finished within next week.

goodthinxx.com really wants to apologize for this and will definitely make sure that such ripp-offs will not happen anymore in the future.


www.goodthinxx.com
Karin Merzendorfer
marketing director
ICQ 235655675
Mail [email protected]
[email protected]

Im sure we all want to know who this free-lance web-designer is, at least I do.

sexportraits.com :thumbsup

Indeed

And these "new" designs are awful. Way to go :321GFY

100 :winkwink: