A Class Act
A Class Act
A Class Act
14 Oct 2004 — 13 Comments
Several months ago, IconFish popped onto the scene sporting a very familiar look to our own IconBuffet. I don't necessarily consider this theft. It's simply lame. Come on, if you're going to sell creative services, at least give it a college try to not look like your ripping someone else off.
That said, IconFish sells their own icons, and if they feel they can sleep at night, it's fine with me. No hard feelings.
However, this morning I stumbled upon PearDesign. PearDesign is a special kind of company that provides "high quality icon design services." They've taken a new stab at lowering expectations by not only stealing text content from our Firewheel Design website, but stealing content from IconFish as well.
You know you've reached a new low when you're stealing from the thief.
Tom says
Will you be getting the legal eagels to deal a swift and allmighty blow?
Lou says
At least they gave attribution on the contact page (albeit unintentionally).
Mike says
Man, nothing burns me more than seeing that shit. If I were you, I'd do a DOA request against them. I know some people ........
Ethan says
Well, as Elvis said: "There's only one king, baby."
Peng says
Hmm... PearDesign's site seems to be pulled offline.
Keith says
I guess it is no surprise that these knock-offs never look as good as the originals. If you have to steal a design concept, you can't be expected to be able to carry it through.
Jason says
Not so fast. While I'm a fan of YellowLane and IconBuffet, I must say the IconFish site works. The similarities I see are that they are both narrow, 2-column styles. That aside, they offer completely different looks and IconFish gets the job done quite well.
Fernando Dunn II says
I hate this. Everytime someone says something about a rip, I ALWAYS come too late. Can you guys start grabbing screenshots? :)
I'm not sure what Icon Fish's original site looked like, but it was funny that you mentioned them. I remember when Dan Cederholm released his first icon set, the guy from Icon Fish (Luka Pensa) posted a comment to Cederholm's entry saying:
After this free advertising, I knew he'd be up to something later.
Dfox says
I dont get why you think the iconfish site is a ripoff... the two column layout? the centered content? you both sell icons?
bit harsh I think...
Keith says
First of all,
Jason:
I am not surprised by your comments considering the "Richard Mock Designs" site in your portfolio is a rip off of the Windows XP User Selection screen.
Dfox:
Considering you didnt leave a real email address, you are prolly someone from IconFish (Luka perhaps). The colors are about the only thing different from IconBuffet. Even the preview of the icons are the same with the red ruled lines. It's a cheap knock-off.
Justin says
I'm really not seeing any signifigant theft on Icon Fish's site. The each have a different feel going on. It really does look like two different sites that decided to have a slim profile, and just went in seperate directions from there.
Maybe the red lines and the iframes were taken from Icon Buffet, but those just seem like such small, trivial things.
The most important part, Icon Fish's actual content, their icons, are all very much not ripped off of Icon Buffet.
Wish I could've seen the Pear Design pages before they went down though.
Joshwa says
Hey Guys,
I've been stuck in court this week in Chicago, so pardon my lack of input... Couple things:
Yes, IconFish is its own site. They sell their own icons. I have no beef with that. However, right after IconFish was launched, it was mentioned by the site's owner in a forum that the design was inspired by IconBuffet. Yes, the iFrame and narrow centered column were definitely key elements taken. No big deal.
PearDesign seems to have quickly pulled their site. I appreciate this. I'll update the main post shortly as I have time.
The bottom line is that some ideas are inspired and some are simply stolen. We had cases of both here. While it's not my way of doing things, I don't have a problem with IconFish referending the design of IconBuffet.
I do have a problem with content being ripped off.
Luka Pensa says
Hi all,
well, after I got quite few referrals to www.iconfish.com from this site, I had to check what's all that buzz about.
To Keith:
as far as I know, Dfox is not related to me in any way. I am owner of iconfish, person who runs, it, etc - and I have no idea who he would be, just FYI.
To everyone:
well, as I admitted - IconBuffet is a great looking site and iconfish does remind with its main concept/layout lines to it. Especially because of narrow width and framed display of icons. But, icons there are original, and isn't that focus of that site anyway - content?
Look at Yahoo, now look at Excite, now look at any other portal.. they're all ripoffs of "original" portal (whichever that is), aren't they?
But, since iconfish is in redesign and major upgrade phase anyway (new one should be online in 1st week of November), I think this subject leads to nowhere, the important thing is - after it's redesigned and upgraded (to PHP solution), www.iconfish.com will be constantly updated with about 2 (or more) new icon collections a month.. and yes, they all will be at the special price (as the current ones are) and delivered in various formats, including vectors which rare few icon sites offer.
Cheers all, keep up the good work.
Luka Pensa
Gablu Studio
www.iconfish.com
www.gablu.biz
www.logoblu.com - test phase