I guess you could say my passion is the design of logos. Has been for decades - when I’m not working on a new logo, I’m thinking about a logo. If I get bored with designing or working with logos I tend to write about them. A lot. Little featurettes like Some (almost) Golden Rules of Logo Design, a bit that’s been in our library for a few years now. There was even a version of Golden Rules that was syndicated for publication, but it’s different than the one in our library, and publication of that version requires a credit.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when my library article turns up on another logo website - some Utah(?) based cats going by the name of Logo Design Xperts - in all its glory. Claiming to be the ‘world’s trusted design service’, this lot failed to notice that the original critiqued our own logo, according to the rules I’d listed, and that I referred to the design in the feature using our company acronym - TLF. As in The. Logo. Factory. An acronym which they have left in the version they published on their website. Not sure how we can shoe horn Logo Design Xperts into TLF, but no mind. Just got off the phone with the nice gentleman who answered their toll-free (also the number for some online ‘University’ where you can - crikey - get a Bachelor, Masters or Doctorate degree in six days for a couple of hundred bucks) and (quell surprise) he had no idea how this would have happened, telling me that he would have to talk to his ‘webmaster’. I’m thinking something along the lines of copy. Paste.

It’s not just the gall of pinching someone’s material without so much as a credit (sometimes it’s almost flattering), it never ceases to amaze me when people claiming to be logo design companies (the ‘world’s trusted design service’ no less) seem to have no idea about copyright, intellectual property rights and other pesky concepts that are supposed to hinder folks from pinching other people’s stuff.

Probably should have added a ‘ no pinchy’ clause to the Golden Rules.

Update: Oh, these cats are too much. A buddy just pointed out that their Secrets of An Efficient Design Process article is a complete knock-off from our Choosing a Graphic Designer piece. All in the name of scoring well in logo design search engine queries.

Bad designers. No donut.

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