You may have seen NCGolfers.com featured in CSS galleries since it launched last summer:
Last month The Golf Channel, formerly an advertiser on NCGolfer’s site, launched a redesign of their own:
When asked about the similarities, The Golf Channel’s only response was to withdraw their advertising.
Most every designer admits to taking ideas from sites they admire and this example is nowhere near the biggest “ripoff” I’ve seen. But it seems to reflect pretty badly on the Golf Channel that they, as a large company with a large design budget, would need to borrow so heavily from a small private website which had not only carried their advertising but had already received recognition for the design. Not responding with any useful explanation makes them look even worse. More discussion at 9rules»
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Jesus, that’s just blatant. Would NCGolfers have any legal recourse?
--April 11, 2008 @ 1:26 pmRecourse for what? Getting design inspiration? This is a daily thing for designers, when you try to design based on a clients goals one of the first things you ask are other sites they like. Granted you don’t turn around and do a “copy and paste” but you do use the style and layout as inspiration. It doesn’t help that the site that is claiming to be ripped off has now changed their background image to the same as the golf channel. It is truly hard nowadays to be completely original, unless you are going for a poor usability site chance are the layout your going to do has been done.
There are tons of layouts that are just like this, it obviously doesn’t help that they are both in the same industry but this is nothing new. Exec at these big companies sometimes just say here is the site I like, lets remake it. At the end of the day nav, logo, banner ad and search are in the same spots, everything else is different with the carousel being close but far from the same. The way they have done the background I have seen many times before and honestly if I was thinking of designing a golf site I think I would have good for a similar background, it just plays well for the imagery of the industry.
They are both well done sites, Gold Channels is highly inspired but not a rip off.
--April 11, 2008 @ 4:23 pmI don’t disagree with anything Pete said. Legally, it’s kind of a non-issue. But when it happens to you, it’s a different story. No one likes that feeling of helplessness, especially when you’re a small designer and they’re a large company.
Again, forget the legality or copyrights or licenses or other fine print for a second and just consider the ‘common sense’ judgment the Golf Channel failed to show. They’d clearly seen the site before since they advertised on it. And when asked about the redesign similarities, they did not (from the sound of it) offer the chance for any dialogue. That’s two demonstrations of bad judgment from an organization that should know better.
--April 11, 2008 @ 5:31 pmMaybe they don’t have any recourse, but I would think that the designers of the original site are being damaged by this. Their once original design, which got them recognition, now looks almost exactly like the design of one of the biggest companies in the industry. For the people who didn’t know which came first (most people), it’s going to look like NCGolfers ripped off the Golf Channel.
--April 12, 2008 @ 9:34 amWe’ve changed up our design a little to separate the two now.. also, I’ve noticed The Golf Channel, has changed up their background as well..
--April 17, 2008 @ 4:46 pm