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Logomaid: Mud and honesty
Written by
Lawrence
Saturday, 24 March 2007
Resounding across the blogosphere at the moment is Dan Cederhold's rip of his Simplebits logo by a chop-shop template marketing firm, puportedly selling for $199 USD. Now as a web design and developer professional, what does this mean ?
Firstly, as a web professional, ethics and integrity matter. Whenever a design studio is engaged to develop a new logo, there has to be a fair amount of due diligence carried out by the designer to make sure the logo being developed is unique and not indicative of any other brand or trademark out there. This also means, if and when an issue like Dan's takes place, the offending company has to have the sense of rationality to acknowledge their mistake, rectify it and move on. Anyone who refuses to mediate a solution in order to provide a resolution, in this respect, is there to merely perpetuate the conflict.
Secondly, this presents a demonstration of professional pedigree in dealing with conflicting information. Most "hack" designers tend to melt to butter when dealing with ideological or professional business conflicts, due to most developers not understanding the social skills needed to negotiate a win/win solution for all parties involved. This has also happened numerous times within the Joomla! community. The psychology of behaviour by a leader who does not effectively understand the consequences of leadership is that they will always resort to cheap and defensive measures in order to protect their own interests. I've have been discussing this at length with the various evangelists for Joomla! over the last few weeks, and the latest response is to have the entire discussion censored. In order to grow and mature, you have to confront your fears, not shut them out, let alone create sock puppets in order to attack people, as evidenced here ("ledo_bridgeportwv", "pretty_petra", and "midster_05" being the apparent socks).
Thirdly, as a web professional, there must be an open, transparent engagement with the rest of the online community, otherwise people within the web community will be harmed through the spread of misinformation and/or personal agendas. This is where, again, within Joomla!, things aren't exactly what they seem. Various people across the accessibility community, including myself, have had various serious accusations levelled at us merely because we choose to not toe the "party line" in terms of stating Joomla! can and will meet its accessibility targets for 1.5. Whilst these accusations are based on prejudices and misunderstandings, such action does seek to undermine the professional pedigree of reputable accessibility consultants. Censorship of any article that offers a critique, such as Joe Clark talking about the failed redesign of the TTC, just undermines the credibility of those who seek to control the wider community and the information they recieve.
Firstly, as a web professional, ethics and integrity matter. Whenever a design studio is engaged to develop a new logo, there has to be a fair amount of due diligence carried out by the designer to make sure the logo being developed is unique and not indicative of any other brand or trademark out there. This also means, if and when an issue like Dan's takes place, the offending company has to have the sense of rationality to acknowledge their mistake, rectify it and move on. Anyone who refuses to mediate a solution in order to provide a resolution, in this respect, is there to merely perpetuate the conflict.
Secondly, this presents a demonstration of professional pedigree in dealing with conflicting information. Most "hack" designers tend to melt to butter when dealing with ideological or professional business conflicts, due to most developers not understanding the social skills needed to negotiate a win/win solution for all parties involved. This has also happened numerous times within the Joomla! community. The psychology of behaviour by a leader who does not effectively understand the consequences of leadership is that they will always resort to cheap and defensive measures in order to protect their own interests. I've have been discussing this at length with the various evangelists for Joomla! over the last few weeks, and the latest response is to have the entire discussion censored. In order to grow and mature, you have to confront your fears, not shut them out, let alone create sock puppets in order to attack people, as evidenced here ("ledo_bridgeportwv", "pretty_petra", and "midster_05" being the apparent socks).
Thirdly, as a web professional, there must be an open, transparent engagement with the rest of the online community, otherwise people within the web community will be harmed through the spread of misinformation and/or personal agendas. This is where, again, within Joomla!, things aren't exactly what they seem. Various people across the accessibility community, including myself, have had various serious accusations levelled at us merely because we choose to not toe the "party line" in terms of stating Joomla! can and will meet its accessibility targets for 1.5. Whilst these accusations are based on prejudices and misunderstandings, such action does seek to undermine the professional pedigree of reputable accessibility consultants. Censorship of any article that offers a critique, such as Joe Clark talking about the failed redesign of the TTC, just undermines the credibility of those who seek to control the wider community and the information they recieve.
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