Need the MyBB Community Opinion on This Website

Hi Guys,

I would love to get your opinion on this issue we currently have with this football club. Now before I start off let me clarify that we are not accusing this organization of anything (esp theft) for legal purposes, all we wanted to know is your opinion on the following dilemma we have.

We proposed a few ideas to this football club (and other football clubs, with their own samples naturally, they can be viewed on our company blog), email records and all included too, and we found it very coincidental that a few months after our proposal, and being given the contractual obligation excuse, Moroka Swallows launched a new website that had very similar "concepts" to our designs and ideas. I've included the image below for your perusal and to give your open and honest opinion as we honestly don't have anything to hide, nor gain from it.



As you can see from the image, we have 3 screens: On the left the old Moroka Swallows website (which can still be found at www.thebirds.co.za), on the right the new website (www.morokaswallows.co.za) and the middle our design concept on what we envision football websites in South Africa should look like, uncluttered and easily accessible.

1st point of concern: The website was changed from 3 columns to a 2 column website. Our concepts and proposal made mention of this in documents too, except our sample was a 1-2 column hybrid website.

2nd: On the right they always had the fixture's box (labeled Next Match on the old website), ours was dynamic "Last Fixture"/"Next Fixture" feature which would use JQuery to navigate through a season's matches.

3rd: Old website had no front page league log, our concept centralized on it, and new website has the same feature too.

4th: Positioning of the log and advertising to "flow" downwards instead of being scattered around like the old website, new website just has their ad below the log while our concept had the advert on top of the log.

5th and Final: The "widely used" club sponsors on the bottom of the website, old website didn't have it, after proposal the new website adapted to it.

Now again I will reiterate, could be just a "coincidence", below I will give timelines and anyone who see's or reads this will come to their own conclusion.

Old website was online from December 2008 - Late 2012 (Exact month not sure as we only saw the new website last month, i.e. December 2012). We made our proposal between March and April after some back and forth with the then Marketing Manager. New Website was launched late 2012 (but after July 2012 as indicated on Webarchives).

All dates are there courtesy of online web archives and correspondence with Moroka Swallows. So thoughts guys?

:wtf:

Apologies for the width of the image, Needed to fit all 3 on 1 image with as much detail as possible.

Time line on the image isn't right, it says the new website was published late 2011.

Other than that it looks to me like some ideas were "borrowed" from your concept, which by the way I like more than the new one (except I'm not too fond of that white gradient fade for the header logo).

Thanks DrJohnZoidberg, the white gradient was a quick fix because we couldn't find a transparent image of the logo at the time if you'd believe it, and we didn't have the time to trim the image just for a concept. Apologies again for the date on the image, it should be 2012 not 2011 (i.e. Late 2012 (Post July 2012)

Look, you obviously don't want to say it so I will. Either A) they asked their designer to update the design and he came back with a similar one to yours or B) they took what they believed were the good parts of your idea and implemented it into their own new design.

Either way, nothing wrong has been done... you made a proposal, none of which was your intellectual property, which they clearly liked, so they used it. If you used anything proprietary, there may have been an issue, but there isn't. Sure they could have given you credit for bringing those layout ideas to the table, but I'd never actually expect that to happen in practice.

At the very worst this is a morally grey area.

Dean said:

Look, you obviously don't want to say it so I will. Either A) they asked their designer to update the design and he came back with a similar one to yours or B) they took what they believed were the good parts of your idea and implemented it into their own new design.

Either way, nothing wrong has been done... you made a proposal, none of which was your intellectual property, which they clearly liked, so they used it. If you used anything proprietary, there may have been an issue, but there isn't. Sure they could have given you credit for bringing those layout ideas to the table, but I'd never actually expect that to happen in practice.

At the very worst this is a morally grey area.

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Hi Dean, thanks for your feedback, again legally, there's definitely nothing wrong that was done, and obviously we cannot publicly state certain things because of any other legal repercussions that might arise from such issues. Our main point in this exercise was not to gain or hide something, but to let the public decide on their own opinion what they think of such matters.

For someone out there personally, not the company, they might feel that someone as big as said client, together with their big contracted agency, ethically did something wrong, by using concepts from a smaller agency and not even crediting or having the decency to credit said smaller agency. On face value and social etiquette it's a big no no and questions their own creative credibility and how they do business, esp if it boils down to "borrowing" ideas from small players. But that's business and this comes with the territory.

But thanks for the feedback, highly appreciated.

purpleonlineadmin said:

Hi Dean, thanks for your feedback, again legally, there's definitely nothing wrong that was done, and obviously we cannot publicly state certain things because of any other legal repercussions that might arise from such issues. Our main point in this exercise was not to gain or hide something, but to let the public decide on their own opinion what they think of such matters.

For someone out there personally, not the company, they might feel that someone as big as said client, together with their big contracted agency, ethically did something wrong, by using concepts from a smaller agency and not even crediting or having the decency to credit said smaller agency. On face value and social etiquette it's a big no no and questions their own creative credibility and how they do business, esp if it boils down to "borrowing" ideas from small players. But that's business and this comes with the territory.

But thanks for the feedback, highly appreciated.

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I hear you - although about the borrowing ideas, understand that this happens every day in business. Going into that meeting, in your shoes, I would have fully expected even if they didn't necessary go with your agency, that they may use ideas they like. Sure it would be nice to get credit, but as I said, this stuff happens daily and on a muuuuuuuuch larger scale than this example you've put forward.

Sad part of life I guess - I mean, look at Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins - it's pretty much a prime example.

Dean said:

I hear you - although about the borrowing ideas, understand that this happens every day in business. Going into that meeting, in your shoes, I would have fully expected even if they didn't necessary go with your agency, that they may use ideas they like. Sure it would be nice to get credit, but as I said, this stuff happens daily and on a muuuuuuuuch larger scale than this example you've put forward.

Sad part of life I guess - I mean, look at Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins - it's pretty much a prime example.

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Absolutely correct, as I said also above, it is part and parcel of business, that is why we tend to show or at least see public perception and reaction when these things do happen because it happens far too often, especially for smaller businesses. We have nothing to lose from our side, but a very small, and potentially naive business owner would get the shock of their lives if this happened to them for the first time and all they had was their work ethic. The Winklevoss twins at least got some form of financial compensation eventually for inspiring Facebook and that's a win for the moral police lol

It could you been them taking your ideas or it could have been common sense from some other agency to have similar elements on the frontpage.

For future, when approached by prospective clients you can have your initial meeting then inform them that they need to pay for your proposal.
We recently specced out a site with about 300 man hours of dev work in it which took me about 3 days to spec. The client had to shelve the project due to lack of funds but we had stuck in a proposal fee so it wasn't time/money lost to us.
They were impressed with the quality of the spec and we got paid to do it, so no loss.

If they decide to take it to someone else and get a cheaper deal then that's their prerogative.
It would be a pity to lose the business but we know what our worth is and do we really want a client like that?

Personally I don't think they copied your design at all.
The items they have there are pretty common, header image, latest news, next match, log, feature video. Further down they probably have a twitter/social feed and a like button.
I'm surprised they don't have a background picture and have gone for the grey ..

Having a quick glance at 2 other PSL team websites, they have very similar elements to both of them ..

The design is clearly different to the one that was proposed.

IMO you're approaching a business gatkant-vorentoe. Doing a proposal before you even have the job means the company can take whatever ideas/work you've done and incorporate it into their site without having to pay you anything and using their own people for it.

With design it's necessary not to do all that work just for a proposal because otherwise I can get 100 designers doing a new business logo for me, I reject all of them (don't pay a cent!) and take their ideas to a designer who will charge me for 1 hour of his time which is super cheap and me being the efficient client incorporating the ideas someone else came up with.

Change the way you approach the business or you'll get people who take your ideas

Hi rward perfectly fine, and we appreciate your feedback. Very true on creating specs as part of consultation. Could you provide links to those 2 other PSL teams because we did propose to Moroka Swallows in addition to 4 other PSL clubs, and from those 4, 3 are contracted/managed by the same agency as Moroka Swallows (i.e. DSTVOnline).

Said clubs btw are Orlando Pirates, Mamelodi Sundowns and Moroka Swallows.

AcidRaZor said:

The design is clearly different to the one that was proposed.

IMO you're approaching a business gatkant-vorentoe. Doing a proposal before you even have the job means the company can take whatever ideas/work you've done and incorporate it into their site without having to pay you anything and using their own people for it.

With design it's necessary not to do all that work just for a proposal because otherwise I can get 100 designers doing a new business logo for me, I reject all of them (don't pay a cent!) and take their ideas to a designer who will charge me for 1 hour of his time which is super cheap and me being the efficient client incorporating the ideas someone else came up with.

Change the way you approach the business or you'll get people who take your ideas

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Hi Acid, thanks again for your feedback highly appreciated.

There are reasons we have certain protocols and do business this way knowing the risks involved too, that is why we have not even come in here "accusing" anyone of legally stealing anything. As explained earlier, this isn't a post to prove the legality of the concepts and designs. We just want to get feedback on the public perception on this and similar situations, if the design was an exact duplicate we wouldn't even be having this conversation as the images would be evidence in an actual case, as Dean and I also pointed out above.

Thanks for the advice and appreciated once again, but there are reasons why this is the approach chosen, due to our own experiences.

purpleonlineadmin said:

Hi Acid, thanks again for your feedback highly appreciated.

There are reasons we have certain protocols and do business this way knowing the risks involved too, that is why we have not even come in here "accusing" anyone of legally stealing anything. As explained earlier, this isn't a post to prove the legality of the concepts and designs. We just want to get feedback on the public perception on this and similar situations, if the design was an exact duplicate we wouldn't even be having this conversation as the images would be evidence in an actual case, as Dean and I also pointed out above.

Thanks for the advice and appreciated once again, but there are reasons why this is the approach chosen, due to our own experiences.

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That's fine. My own opinion is, even if they did use some of your suggestions, the chances are the company who did their design in the end, did so on their own and didn't use a framework/reference from someone else.

If you know who the company is, you can go have a look at their portfolio. You usually notice a trend in the design if they have a full-time employee that's been with the company a while. If other sites have a similar layout, then it's most probably not because they took the ideas from you.

However, coming from the ....er.... thrifty type of people myself, I wouldn't think twice of finding a company who can do it cheaper than you and telling them what I'd like based on your ideas. I've found a lot of companies have NO CLUE as to what they'd like on a website (they stared at their own old-design so much that something new like a drop-down box is amazing to them), but once that brain-butter gets stirred on the potential EVERYTHING changes and they know what they want/like and can give someone with the ability to do it for them the job, and not pay an arm and a leg.

I know I'd do that (the logo design one is common, especially when you're junior designer looking for work and don't know how the big bad world out there works)