Dustin MacDonald: Thievery at its Best

A couple weeks ago I came across an application called Libra. It's an app that allows you to manage multiple iTunes libraries. I have no particular use for this app, but what caught my attention was the icon. Three colored books, on a CD. That's it. It's so generic that one could easily ignore it...

But wait! Where have I seen these three books before? Hmm, libraries, books, hmm.... Oh, of course! Library, the predecessor to Delicious Library, had similar looking books! That's okay, people copy icon styles all the time.

...

Uhh, wait a minute, those books are just a little too similar. Let's look at the Library icon side-by-side with the Libra icon, just for reference:

Whoops! You can even see the word "ArcaneWare" on the blue book, the name of the company responsible for Library.

Now even that we know this is a ripoff, it's not a big deal. I mean, Libra is a relatively small app, and developers are poor. Clearly this is a common hack of the Library icon and possibly the default Mac OS X CD icon. But the story gets even better.

Today I came across an icon designer named Vincent van den Heuvel. Looking through his portfolio, I discovered something simply jaw-dropping. With a closer look in his portfolio, you can see that he indeed takes credit for creating the icon for Libra! Finally, our thief has been found! Strangely enough, his icon creation process doesn't contain ripping icons from other apps. I guess he forgot to include that step.

If you need some more proof, a simple Google search will expose the Library icon in other places. What makes me even more sick is that the developer of Libra most likely paid this guy for the icon. Hopefully someone will inform him of this post, if he wasn't already aware.

Design talent at its best here, no question.

Update: A few things have happened since I first posted this. Namely, the developer of Libra replied to my email. He wasn't aware that the icon had been stolen, and will be getting a replacement icon for Libra soon. There have also been a few changes on Vincent's site, but I won't go into detail.

Phillip 8/3/06 11:58 PM

That's pretty amazing stuff! I assume you sent the dev an email? He should be the first to know.

Dustin MacDonald 8/4/06 12:12 AM

Yeah, I did actually. I'm looking forward to a reply.

Tim 8/4/06 12:24 PM

Now you know what he means by "research by Google Image Search" in his icon creation process.

Did you try the video section on his web-page? It looks like Delicious Library, even the URL contains the name delicious. While this does seem harmless it does hurt your credibility if you are a designer.

Unless of-course if he was part of the Delicious Library development team in that case I apologize.

Dustin MacDonald 8/4/06 12:43 PM

With all fairness Tim, his Delicious Library collection there was made with DeliciWeb (http://homepage.mac.com/imaxinc/DeliciWeb/index.html). However, the wood grain background on his site is clearly from Delicious Library, not to mention his site design in general is clearly a ripoff of Mike Matas' blog.

And no, he definitely was not a part of the DL development team. I'll be posting an update on this whole topic later today.

Tim 8/4/06 3:17 PM

I didn't know about DeliciWeb. I stand corrected and apologize.

Tim 8/4/06 11:21 PM

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

DeathMurderKill 8/23/06 2:15 AM

How can you say he is ripping off Mike Mata's blog as you clearly are doing it yourself!

@Tim Ofcourse his video section is from delicious library he never said it wasn't he even made it in the URL. You can do it yourself if you care to check on macupdate. Why should you have to do everything yourself if there are very good substitudes

As far as I know there wasn't any payment made by Libra so I wonder what they e-mailed you

As far as I can tell he made MESA and the award icons totally by himself and google importer. Well if you need to make an icon for something linked to google you have to use something that clearly states google.

Dustin MacDonald 8/25/06 1:02 AM

DeathMurderKill, clearly my site is not a ripoff of Mike's. They are similar in design yes, but so are a lot of other blogs. If you're talking about the big centered header on top, you could say the .Mac blog is a ripoff, even.

However, Vincent's site is a bit different. Try opening a new Safari window with two tabs: one with Vincent's site, another with Mike's. Switch between the two tabs. Notice anything similar?

I'm not going to comment anymore on the issue since this is an old topic, but it is very obvious when someone blatantly steals.

Pixel Pop Designs 9/26/06 5:52 PM

Pixel Pop Designs 9/26/06 6:02 PM

Dustin, you will be happy to know that a new icon is on its way for Libra. After discussing the issue with Steve Roy, I picked up the reigns left by the last designer. He took the icon and should not have passed it off as his own design and give it to the developer. Thanks for bringing the issue up as icon design is a developing field where many so-called "designers" are knocking off or stealing others work and passing it off as their own. If you visit Panic's website, they have an entire page devoted to the "imitation as flattery" aspect of the sites that have stolen the Transmit icon. Very funny! http://www.panic.com/extras/ripoff/

Thanks again and keep up the good work!

Chris Kinsman
www.chriskinsman.com