It’s finally happened to me. Normally you probably don’t have the privilege to see this blatant ripping of ones own work but today it was brought to my attention.

Exhibit A, The Logo:

Wow, looks awfully familiar. This is the second version of his defamation, the first version looked like this:

It gets better.

Exhibit B, Twitter Page.

Now this didn’t bother me as much, but I figured I’d put it online anyway, just to finish off the point.

Great work at disguising it, I can hardly tell where your inspiration came from!

To finish off here’s the copy of the first email I sent to the guy.

Hi XXX,

Could you please provide me with an email address or telephone number to get in touch with you.

It has been brought to my attention that you have recently created Creative Collusions which can be found here http://twitter.com/CCollusions.

The logo is quite obviously a complete rip off of my own copyrighted logo for Zero One Hundred, my freelance persona. I created the logo nearly three years ago as the main feature of my brand. I could go into detail about how the logo was created, why and where but I’m not going to bore you.

Frankly I’m flattered you would attempt such a logo but to be honest, it’s a very poor attempt and I am therefore issuing you notice of a Request for Removal. Please delete all references which vaguely look like my logo, please remove it from Twitter and please stop using any colours associated with Zero One Hundred. This includes the background colours on my website http://0100.tv, the background colours on my Twitter page and even includes and design work I have produced that you blatantly decided to rip off.

By all means use me as inspiration, but don’t blatantly rip off other peoples copyrighted work. It could get you into a lot of trouble in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Goddard

I appreciate not everyone knows about copyright law, to combat that I suggest you read the latest UK copyright law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright,_Designs_and_Patents_Act_1988 so you know the basics. What it means (in it’s basic terms) is that any work you create is copyrighted to you. As long as you can prove you created it before someone else did, you’re in the right. Just bear that in mind for the future.

Here in the UK a General Election is upon us. The different parties are fighting for your vote and to promote themselves online most of the parties have launched brand new websites. Here is an analysis of the different technologies used to see who is the HTML5 of British Government.

The Labour Party

Notable technologies used:

• jQuery 1.3.2 + jQuery UI 1.7.2
• Prototype 1.6.1.0
• Scriptaculous 1.8.3
• Tiny MCE
• CSS3 (or at least what’s possible using 2.1)
• XHTML 1.0 Transitional

How does it stack up against web standards?

XHTML 1.0 Transitional with 301 Errors, 45 warnings (oh no Labour, thats bad!)

The Labour Party’s website is well laid out with a solid grid system organising content well. It has a great use of colour clearly defining the brand of Labour (Red). Overall a nice design worthy of any Government site. The use of jQuery seems to be a no brainer in modern websites and so it should be, it works so well.

Liberal Democrats

Notable technologies used:

• jQuery 1.3.2
• XHTML 1.0 Strict

The Lib Dems don’t really use a lot of next generation technologies. It pushes the boat out with jQuery, and that’s only used for the rotating banner.

How does it stack up against web standards?

XHTML 1.0 Strict with 1 Error (such a shame! It was only a target="_blank" too, never heard of window.open?)

The Lib Dems website is pretty horrible really. It’s untidy, poorly organised and their use of colour is pretty much horiffic. First impressions of the Lib Dems site is “Mothercare”, as they use the old Mothercare green their brand was originally built on.

Conservative Party

Notable technologies used:

• jQuery 1.2.6 + jQuery UI 1.8
• jQuery 1.4.2 (yes they really do include two versions, and ones not even Minified :-O )
• Dreamweaver Flash AC_RunActiveContent.js (why in gods name? swfobject anyone?)

How does it stack up against web standards?

XHTML 1.0 Transitional with a pass! Huzzah! (With 2 warnings)

Well after that win for Tory (pass) their design doesn’t do too badly either. With a great use of colour and clear use of typography and layout the Conservatives website is a joy to look at and play with (Homepage). It’s just a shame this is a front for an actually poor site overall. The design completely changes when visiting alternative pages, which is a shame indeed. But at least it passed validation!

Additional Information

Lets compare their Twitter followers:

Let’s be honest though this is a bit of fun, vote for who you like, not how popular they are online, but I know who I voted for!

We’ve all been there, with an opportunity to impress only to fail by handing out a scrappy piece of paper with your name and number on. Is anyone likely to find that piece of paper again once they’ve put it down? Are they likely to pass it along to another potential client? Or are they more likely to throw it in the trash?

A business card is an important piece of promotional material. Something that is unlikely to be thrown away if it does it’s job properly. It must be memorable, easy to read and contain all the information needed in a short amount of space.

Making an impact…

A business card usually comprises of two separate sections, and these two sections give you ample opportunity to get your point across quickly and concisely.

Section 1 – The imagination

The first section (namely the front of the card) is your canvas to create whatever you like. Try a doodle on your Wacom, write a funny line or even pop your tag line on there (mine for example is Artfully Illuminating Design, something I’ve stuck with from day one). It allows you to show a bit of personality, a bit of creativity and create something more eye catching than a scrap of paper.

The above design is quite eye catching using a bright blue (my trademark colour). Someone is unlikely to throw it away and is likely to remember the card. The little tag-line of “all your design are belong to us” probably won’t be understood by most clients as it’s a rip off of a humorous online phrase. It can however add that little extra in allowing the potential client to remember you.

Try drawings, jokes, fancy patterns, cartoons, phrases, photographs or even Haiku. It can really make a boring piece of card interesting.

Section 2 – The details

So you’ve got your potential clients attention, how do we hammer home the contact details?

It’s all about organisation and importance. You need to gently organise your details according to what you want on there. Obvious details are telephone number, email address and website (if you have one). Additional details you could apply are (depending on your industry);

1. Address
2. Work & Mobile telephone numbers
3. Social networking links (such as Twitter)
4. Alternative contact details such as Skype
5. Fax number (not so common lately)
6. Your job title
7. Your skills/attributes

Don’t overload the card with details, only list the important stuff and make sure the important stuff is the largest test on the card. Also ensure it’s readable when printed before you go an order 500 business cards. You have to bear in mind that just because it’s large on your 27″ monitor, it’s not when it’s printed only 3 inches wide.

Free Photoshop Template (UK sizes)

I’ve drummed up a few free templates for you to use. Simply pop in your details, print them and see how the look!

Please note these are set at 85mm x 55mm which may need changing before printing depending on which country your in.

Please also make sure your guide lines are on by using the shortcut Ctrl+H/Apple+H or clicking View>Extras. The outer border is your cropping area and the innder border is your bleed area. The inner rectangle is your safe zone. Try to keep everything in there. Happy designing!

Section 1 – The Imagination | Section 2 – The Details

Here we go with the biggies…

1. SmashingMagazine.com

Packed full of daily web resources from desktop calendars to tips on learning CSS. They have also recently had a redesign massively cleaning up the content (which was pretty bad on my opinion) and also aggregating content from websites such as spyrestudios.com, buildinternet.com and webdesignerwall.com. All of which are also great resources…

2. WebDesignerDepot.com

Not specific in it’s content, Web Designer Depot seems to feature everything from Illustrator spotlights (like the recent one on the amazing Archan Nair) all the way to freebies such as the nice RSS icon set. I do however recommend they remove the horrible “I WAS a fat slob” adverts on the right as it’s pretty dire to see (see screenshot to the right)…

3. Spyrestudios.com

Is very good at eyeing up great web designs and showcasing them on their site. They are a small design agency in Canada but have a great blog. They also recently showcased my website because of it’s use of cufon, the amazing javascript text replacement (towards the bottom of the list).

4. BestWebGallery.com

Not a brilliant resource per se but it does feature some amazing modern designs. Not to be used as a starting point for designs but rather as “subliminal inspiration”.

5. BuildInternet.com

Build Internet is managed by twins Sam and Zach Dunn and is a great place to read more about the business side of website design. It’s packed full of jQuery tutorials, graphic design resources, CSS information and HTML tips. Give it a look.

Now for the smallies, generally sole developers who blog about their industry, not necessarily “small”…

6. Adii Rockstar

Now Adii is quite a little celebrity online. He’s known well for his work on the WooThemes project which sells premium wordpress themes but makes for a very interesting read.

7. Fabio Sasso

He’s the guy behind abduzeedo.com and seems to be in deep in the website design world. He has some great work to check out and is involved in a large number of successful websites packed full of resources and inspiration.

8. Veerle Pieters

A graphic/web designer from Belgium, Veerle has tons of posts from over the years covering stuff from html to illiustrations. It makes for an interesting read if you dig deep into the older content. You’ll also see just how much a great designer knows about their industry when you read Veerle’s blog.

9. Collis

Probably should reside in the biggies list but because we aren’t talking about his amazing success story, Envato, he slots into the smallies. He’s the CEO of one of the largest and greatest design marketplaces on the web. He has his own blog called the Netsetter which covers mainly covers the business side of the design industry. (he also features a lot of guest writers too)

10. Chris Spooner

Because he’s a local boy! Chris was born and raised in Sheffield, UK, and runs his blog over at Spoon Graphics. He posts some great content covering mainly graphic design but it a great source of inspiration.

There are many more people to check out in the web design world, you just have a dig, and when you find them either subscribe to their RSS feed or follow them on Twitter like a stalker. Either way you’ll get great resources and good reads!

Also see @liammckay @kevinrose @shauninman @jasonfried

So it’s 4 months in on my new job and I’ve finally just launched the brand new Result Group website. It’s three solid months of development, hundreds and hundreds of tweaks, 1500+ lines of CSS and thousands more of XHTML programming and PHP. It’s built entirely by hand, no cheap CMS systems and no limitations on scalability. It also runs part of the site on WordPress (see the Rental News section).

Result Group develop world leading Rental Management Software and they needed a world class website to go along with that. The site was redesigned from the ground up by myself and there has been a lot of work chucked into a very fast moving three months. We finally went live last week and as of now, all hiccups seem to have been rubbed out.

It also uses GeoIP technology to direct you to the correct regional site (United States visit us.rentalresult.com while UK visit www.rentalresult.com).

It really was a mammoth task and one in which I’m very proud to have built solely.

Go check out Result Groups rentalresult website for their rental software and check out the design and jQuery loveliness.

I’ve been toying with Photoshop filters and different colours lately for a project at work and decided that what I created was good enough as a wallpaper! Therefore I am now announcing for download “Funkydory“. A very colourful and stylised background for your computer in many different screen resolutions. Just pick yours from the list below!

1024×768 | 1280×800 | 1440×900 | 1600×1200 | 1680×1050 | 1920×1080 | iPhone/iPod Touch

Elliott Burford has drawn some awesome ideas related to spam headlines.

Such classics as “Win your victory in bed” and “Show your longer organ off to your buddies” have been creatively drawn

Head over to elliottburford.com for 22 more illustrations. Brilliant.

I just launched a new FREE wallpaper on TwiPho. It looks amazing and was designed by the brilliant Graphic Designer Kyle Wilkinson.

Go check it out and download it.