Dishonesty

As I wrote in a previous post, I often “practice” graphic design on a web service. It’s called DesignCrowd. I just wondered how easy my profile page can be found, and googled “DesignCrowed designer Hiro Shibata”. I seem the only Hiro Shibata on the service, and it’s so easy to find the page. What was more interesting was the suggested search term.

130816_DesignCrowd

Apparently, many people have googled “DesignCrowd bad for designers”. I wondered what can be found with the search term, and found this article: Crowdsourced design is a risky business. In a nutshell, some “designers” copy other people’s designs and submit them to increase the chance of being selected, and the clients bear the risk of stealing someone’s intellectual property. The people who run DesignCrowd seem aware of this problem, and there is a function to “report an issue”.

As I wrote in the previous post, I do not expect to make money on this service, and use it to practice graphic design. So it does not make sense at all to me to copy other people’s designs. But I can easily imagine that some people do it.

When comes to dishonesty, some people may think of China which is known as one of the world biggest producers of pirated products and fake food. Recently I found a fascinating internet article: Chinese zoo angers visitors by passing off hairy Tibetan mastiff dog as lion. They displayed a large hairy dog and labeled it “lion”, displayed another dog and labeled it “wolf”, and displayed a white fox and labeled it “leopard”. It’s so easy to fake things in that way, and it’s equally easy to loose the trust.

Dishonest people may think they are cunning but in fact they are only unwise.

August 16, 2013Permalink