This is a bit of a design nerd post, but I just realized that the new movie Avatar that was just released uses the font Papyrus for the main title. Now I know that’s not exactly amazing news to the rest of the world, but to designers it is a major embarrassment. I remember seeing this font all over the place before I went to college. I wondered why everyone used it and used it poorly. Well, it is a font that comes standard on most computers purchased today. Anytime someone tries to save a penny designing something on their own they go to this font because it looks different and artsy. But to any trained designer it is a terrible crutch, not original in the least bit. I pride myself on font selec5tion and have over 40,000 of the suckers. They are expensive and similar to a carpenter’s tools. Would you expect a trained carpenter to build your deck with “My First Craftsmen” tool set from Tonka? NO… Guess they spent too much money on effects. Rant over….

Some say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Imitating ideas makes a very fuzzy line in design. Lately, I see plenty of designs with watercolor textures. I started doing this when I was in college. It is where I came from as an artist. Does this mean that every ad or marketing scheme that includes watercolor textures was my idea and it was stolen from me? Nope. The idea is to be influenced by (not steal from) something great.

Complete Dreams Website Design stole from Wildfire and got caught. In early 2006, Wildfire Productions (a website development company Drew Stauffer and I started in 2004) completed a website for a customer trying to increase business at a vacation rental in Nicaragua (Popoyo Rental). Work completed for Popoyo included search engine optimization, site redesign, hosting, and css, php, xhtml development. We received numerous compliments on the site and the customer was very pleased. Within the S.E.O. package we offer analytics (tracking traffic; where did they come from, how long they stayed, etc.).

We kept seeing an inbound visitor to Popoyo Rental from www.chelseaviewmac.com. We checked the link to see what the potential interest might be in our customer’s site. We found our customer’s website hacked up and filled with Chelsea View’s vacation rentals content. It is stated at the bottom of the site “copyright 2007 Complete Dreams”. Well, that’s complete crap. Popoyo Rental: “copyright 2006 by Wildfire Productions” and Popoyo Rental was obviously stolen and altered to fulfill their client’s needs. Here are a few screen shots to give you an idea of how blatant the rip off is.

Here is the Popoyo Rental Site:

Here is the Complete Dreams website ripoff. They took the liberty of keeping, using and selling images and graphics from Popoyo Rental:

Here is a look at the code that confirms that the site was stolen as a whole:

And Finally here is how the morons at Complete Dreams Web Design got caught:

They forgot to switch the footer links.
Nice job guys!

Here is a link that shows how proud they are of “their work”. Complete Dreams is facing legal action by our company. They recently yanked down the Chelsea View site after their customer got wind of this.

My first post on this blog was about my daughter Carly King being on the cover of The Island Guide, an information guide for the Gulf Coast. Well, Santa came early cause’ it’s out! It only took a short, few hours for everyone at work to grow extremely tired of my handy Island Guide. I just needed to make sure that they had seen the guide and inspected the cover for a decent amount of time. Unfortunately, it not only had an adverse effect on people at work, it also seemed to affect Carly in a strange way. She has been on her “cell” since I got home and is, as we speak, giving me the universal sign for “piss off”, and she some how, like Madonna, has adopted a British accent. Is that even possible?

P.S. Sharee Faircloth; Compass Marketing’s Art Director, redesigned The Island Guide and did an amazing job in a very short amount of time. Here’s to you Sharee, Great Job!!!