Hi y'all, I've noticed lately a very wierd phenomenon. There are currenly so many posts of clients opening contents, of logos banners, etc etc, and they have just gone after we made some designs. Conclusion is : some clients are stealling our designs. Designers : from now on I advice you all to put a "SAMPLE" title on each design (will start doing so myself). Clients: this is very fraustrating and annoying, to be honest. Us designers spend a lot of time and effort in order to design a design who fits your requierments at his best. Could you not steal the design and run away ? :| lol. thanks. Regards , Influ.
I agree... Unless you use clipart and most people on this forum do. If you use clipart then you selling stolen work anyway. It sucks but that's just the way it is unfortunately. Watermarking is a pain in the ass (for the thief) but it doesn't usually work that's why I rarely bother...
bakerbaker - youre right mate but most clients are no designers , and I doubted if they can get a designer to remove my watermark for them ... I know I wouldnt but who knows..:\
Wow! If somebody start a contest for 100$ and then find me on skype and ask me to remove a watermark (and I don't know where is it from) I will just remove it for 5$ and will place my own until he pays me. I guess somebody other is doing such services too. So he has 100$ logo for 5$ and this is why the moderators should do something. Maybe a "Guaranteed" money prize when CHs are filling money in their account before starting their contest. Something like this maybe?
bod4ilo - do you understand that you're only sabotaging yourself? because if we do that kind of works , tomorrow it will be your design whos watermark will be removed by another designer ... please DONT DO THAT KIND OF JOBS.
Thanks for bringing this here Iflu. Its a heroic of you. I think we should gather the names of the clients who were cheating and remind all the designers that whenever they will host a contest again. I think this is the most effective way for the betterment of us all. And by doing this we are making our dealings professional through protecting both designers and clients. Speak out designers! maybe you have the solution that were waiting for.
Well, my point is DP is not only for Design contests. I guess the contest section was started just to help website owners to get quick and cheap (in rates only) designs done. As we all know this is a webmaster oriented forum, and there are truly great resources for someone who want to learn web marketing stuffs etc. How many webdesign contests you see as compare to banner/logo design? The webmasters generally buy a template from various resources and after that if they think their website will be beneficial for them, they ask for some sort of stuffs like banners, logos... just to give website a better look, but not for branding purposes. And for that, a small community of 'designers' help them to paste a design piece on their desired space. So, these things will happen in future too, because the target of this forum is not we designers but the webmasters.
rymutia , ive posted a perfectly efficient solution at "feedback" forum. you're more than wellcome to support me there. Herdish are you stupid or just dumb? :\
light watermarks are easily removed, heavy watermarks spoil the design. also, watermarks won't protect your concept, which can easily be stolen, especially if the CH is also a designer. a better solution is to research your CH a bit before joining his/her contest. - check their itrader. any negative itraders? - is the CH a designer? a lot of the sham contests i've joined on DP were by designers looking for 'inspiration'. be extra careful in these cases. that said i've also held contests here myself - check their posts. high quality posts means they take the forum seriously, which increases the probability that they'll take their contest seriously. - check the threads they've started. pasts contests will show up there and you can check out how many were awarded/abandoned, level of CH participation, etc. - if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. some newbie with 50 posts offering a $500 prize? be careful! - and finally, as with any contest, be prepared to lose. you can lose the contest, or worse, lose the design to a plagiarist. either way, don't post anything you aren't willing to part with for free.
here is the solution and it only works when all the participating designers work together. when a contest holder leaves without selecting the winner, WE ALL HAVE TO LEAVE NEGATIVE iTrader FOR him/her. then they get lost because their iTrader is negative and no one will enter their contest in the future. and we are allowed to do it and this is the proof: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1659862#post13406321 we need to be a team
Sounds good to me, because if I put an hour into a logo and lose the contest to a better design its fine but if I put in an hour and the CH steals mine or anyone else's logo it just chaps my ass...
I wouldn't even if I was asked too. And when the mod said that you would lose a point for leavign neg itrader, what exactly does he mean?
To protect your designs: 1. Preview image (Low Quality and smaller size.) 2. Or add a little "Noise" on the preview image. Expirience photo retoucher can easily remove "Sample" Text from your designs.