Hey all. I found a site that I fell in love with the layout. Immediately, I printed a screenshot and redrew the whole thing with illustrator by hand, making modifications, and removing all text layout as I just enjoyed the underlying layout and color of the site.

My question is how far must one deviate from the original design of something before it goes from stealing someone's design to getting inspiration.

I have utilized the space differently in the top, made my own logo. and used a similar color scheme, along with removing a large number of widgets, ad space, and wood paneling in a multitude of places, and no code was pulled from the site whatsoever, just a screenshot. But I will not claim that is not directly similar to the origional site.

An image of my mockup:

http://www.one2fx.com/projects/one2fx09.png

here is the original site:

http://tastyplanner.com/

Is it standard practice and smiled upon (or at least not frowned upon) to utilize souces like this? Moreso would YOU be pissed if someone utilized your layout in this manner?

Should I at least contact them and ask if they have a problem with it? Would you guys even bother with making a site that looked this close to someone else's even if they said it was okay?

If this is not ethical or the proper way to do things, but you fell in love with a design and wanted to implement some of it, how much would you take from someone else. Maybe the header, and use some different boxes in the content area?

I try really hard not to copy things, but sometimes I think I work too hard to deviate from the original and just end up with a site that looks like doody.

I hate when I fall in love with a design that's not mine.. lol..

There are so many similar layouts these days, unless you took all the code, all the graphics, it's unlikely you'd be accused of theft. I think yours looks different enough to keep you in the clear. In general, a 30% difference is all that's needed to make something different enough to be 'yours'.

LadynRed,

Thank you for the prompt response. I had been asking coworkers and friends the same thing, and they said very similar..

I quote one of my friends, "To say this color scheme and layout belongs to someone is like saying 'i own all rights to the word 'yellow''. No one but me can use it anymore. It doesn't work that way."