Graphic Rating

InstantShift.com – how to copy Smashing Magazine and Psdtuts' Designs

• by Andy Gongea
• Dec 16, 2008
• 6 Comments »

I know that in the last weeks I’ve only wrote about good designs and well structured user interfaces. This post is something different. It is first a manifesto against so called “designers”, against lack of innovation and inspiration, against plagiarism. I know that these words are pretty heavy, but bear with me and you will see how far some folks will go.

This post’s target is a new graphic related site, that wants to be the new Alistapart based on their description. This site that I’m talking about is instantShift. For those of you used with big names of magazines from web design, web development and graphic design, the visual interface of instantShift may seem familiar. That is because the design is half Smashing Magazine – half PSDTUTS (or any other tuts site from Envato.)

Be creative…many people thinks that the person sitting next to them were born with god gifted skills of creativity but our view is simple… we think everyone had their own set of skills and creativity. they just need little shift to evoke them.

That is a quote from instatShift’s About page. So, let’s see how creative is instantShift. Let’s see their set of skills and creativity!

Half Smashing Magazine

Overall. The layout is from Smashing Magazine. It has the same visual structure and look as the old version. The difference between the old and actual version of Smashing Magazine was that the new one has fixed layout, while the old one had a width of 90%.

Right Side. The sidebar is identical to Smashing Magazine’s sidebar. And by that I’m referring that the code is the same. I will use Firebug in order to compare 2 sidebars boxes from instantShift and Smashing Magazine. Please look at the following image which compares the code between same visual elements.

The following image is the separator between the content and sidebar. Believe it or not, this is a copy of the image from Smashing Magazine theme. That’s because I think it is impossible to design it the same, to have the same style and also the same width, height and disk size. Check this out!

Half PSDTUTS

Content. While the overall layout, sidebar and header are from Smashing Magazine, the content area is from … let’s say PSDTUTS. The sad thing is that also PSDTUTS has a new design. It is not far from the previous one, still both were good enough for instantShift. From the old one the post preview on the main page is the same. From what I remember the style for the picture was the same and also the style for the spread toolbar – Digg, StumbleUpon, Comments etc.

Comments. Since archive.org is not working right I will wait for a reply from Envato guys. But I still have some common elements. How about the comment system. Same thing here, same technique – copy + paste. In the case of the comment form I must say that on instantShift the name, site and email inputs are above the comment area which is opposite to PSDTUTS.

Conclusion…?!

First of all, I don’t have anything against instantShift – I’m against graphic design plagiarism.
I think this is one valuable lesson. When you compete against other players don’t copy them – innovate. It is not bad to have sources of inspiration, but try and find what elements are good and adapt them for your style. Stealing is bad.

From my point of view, this heavily inspired site deserves a place in the Hall of Shame.
Cheers!

Design
Innovation
Creativity
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