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Ok, so i’ve been away for a while somewhat due to personal issues, life never seems to take the high road, or that straight path eh? Never mind that though.

Besides buying up some nice domains and market5ing some of my other projects I have been looking around the design industry more and more, watching how people develop their sites and businesses, how designers are evolving and growing, and how some are simply failing.

It’s always shockingly surprising (for me, it’s sometimes amusing, ha!) to find such a creative mind that belongs to such a popular designer come up with a concept that’s so similar to some other, less fortunate, not so popular designer. Now my instincts always scream out RIP, PLAGIARISM, but really, that’s only because I hate both so much that I assume that and go to destroy the said perpetrator, so called designer. But this time I wont, I’ll act a little more professional, for now, and hope for an explanation, I also hope it doesn’t take a week for the said designer involved to contact me, because by then I’d have assumed stuff again, can’t blame me for tooting the horn after that ok?

(click image for larger version)

Jacob Cass, one of the more popular designers online today, someone, for once, I actually like, as a designer. Don’t know him personally but I respect how he works although just to be honest to everyone and myself here, I feel a couple of his logos are just hideous even though for some reason they’ve gained popularity, but hey it’s my opinion, and i’m always wrong it seems, so no problem.

So to find that Jacob had come up with an almost exact replica (concept, design and execution wise) of a logo posted on LogoPond  exactly 2 years to the day, well that almost rules out coincidence. Sure he provided a step by step guide of how he came up with the logo and everything, but still, an exact replica? it just got me scratching my head.

(click image for larger version)

Like I said, I’m not about to accuse jacob, not at all, I’m just want someone to throw me a bone here, talk to me, Jacob, come on man, are designers so much alike that we can’t seem to come up with new concepts? Are we all so influenced by the same sources of inspiration? or are we now taking advantage of our high profiles and using that to bend the rules? Have it as, my word against his and my word’s stronger because i’m popular. I really am starting to worry, not that Jacob did anything, again, I just want to stress that i’m not accusing him, just asking publicly in a polite , professional manner, what the fuck is going on? (ah, i couldn’t help myself).

And hey, I’ve come up with my fare share of designs that looked similar to others, my death logo, my Elle Hive logo, but they’re not identical in design and excuson, and they fit my industry better than the bloody originals too, absolutely unique in my opinion, no i’m talking about concepts that are pure and simple, rips, or close to being that.

Which makes me ask something else, when confronted with such a finding, should Jacob bow down and admit to seeing a striking almost identical similarity? and possible mention it to his client or offer to change it? Buy the other designers logo in an attempt to save face? Not give a shit and just shrug it all off? hey, life’s full of decisions, none are hard, they only take seconds to make. So Jacob, what’s yours going to be? and guys, what’s your take on this? Am i just full of bullshit as always or do I have a fucking point for once?

For the guys and girls reading this that use a ton of stock photography and so on in their design work check this out. Photl is the site I came across recently that has some pretty high quality stock photography which are equally as high in resolution. Free to use commercially too, ha no shit. Sure there has always been sites like sxc.hu but boy does that site have some tacky looking overused photos.

To use the site and have full access to all photos you just have to create an account, then bam you got gold. They add around 10,000-15,000 stock photographs every month, so you are sure to find what you need. They do have a daily download limit of 45mb, nothing a good proxie script can’t fix though

So go check it out, and be sure to pass the word on to all the other brothers out there looking for ripped stock packages on warez forums. haha. this site will help um out i’m sure.

Ok, i’ll keep this as short as possible and to the point.

There IS such a thing as smart spam, and it works. Really, it does what you want it to do.

Now here’s the thing, I did a little test to see how many people fell for it, and not only ended up on the site I sent them to, but were willing to follow through ALL the way based on humor alone to get here, It’s all in the mind, and hey, I made the last hurdle a tough one, to click or not to click, most people don’t but those that will end up here did. I want to know WHY.

What made you people click? What made the people I SPAMMED click? Because they knew me alone? or was it because of something else? Time to find out if spamming really works. Below is a copy of the spam email sent;

Hey*  this is Toni! Listen up this is spam BUT read on, really you’ll understand why if you do!

Grab a pack of MoJo Veez and get another pack for free! Satisfy your loved one be it man or woman! Make daddy proud! So what are you waiting for?! Buy some Mojo Veez now and help the starving children of Uganda! Think about it, the more Veez you take the more clean water people in Ethiopia get! It’s only fair so do it, do it as often as you can, buy more Veez if you do it regularly or on an hourly basis. Veez Veez good for your heart the more you eat the less people starve!

Mojo Veez only $19.99 buy them right now over at www.MightyPhallic.com

Buy now and get a pack for free, absolutely free. Save a life today and do it with the help of a Vee.

VISIT WWW.MIGHTYPHALLIC.COM TODAY!

I know, i lost it.

So, I’ll keep this short and to the point. If you want to be part of a new community that will focus on SEO (whitehat/blackhat), private design projects and online marketing then say I. This forums main drive will be to help designers/web developers to market their business and rank higher by whatever means/techniques then learn off the forum and choose to apply.

It’s going to be very hush hush and consist of an already active community (the old db that im merging into this new forum (has over 600 active members-once i mass mail their ass again-and a total of just under a 1,000)  so if you would like an invite into this pretty much new blackhat seo/design community then you know what to do, email me or comment.

This will be a tight knit community, and in all honesty if I don’t know you chances are I wont reply to your comment/email or ask you to join. It’s also an invite only forum so please keep that in mind.

This forum is part of the 5Fifths BlackHat Network and will be co-run by the likes of Quadzilla of  SEOBlackHat, Tanya of V7N, Str_0ke of Milw0rm, Takashi of YankoDesign and many others  all of whom are very capable Webmasters/Designers/SEOs, oh and i’ll be lurking around that’s for sure.

So this is not really a tutorial, you’ll see why in a minute, but I was asked by a company to come up with a new mark, a logo for their business. They’re a print agency and they wants something modern and fresh.

Thinking Process took me: 2days
Time taken to complete: 2days conceptual planning, 4minutes execution.
Tools used: Pencil-paper/Photoshop CS3/Paint Shop Pro X2
# of coffees had: 8 from start of conceptual sketching to finish.

Now concept aside, which took a couple of days to nail down, they came to me with a weird color scheme. It was in the form of another logo by Dache, ironic eh? Companies name was ‘translates to: Imitation’ and they wanted to imitate the same color scheme as another logo…well it wasn’t asking me to copy a logo, just a color scheme right? that’s ok.

So I nabbed Dache’s color pallet, suck on that one mate, haha, and proceeded to line up a bunch of squares on a layer, right next to each other. Simple enough right. This process up until now took me about, 2minutes.

Then I simply used the default tool in Paint Shop Pro X2 after playing around with a few concepts the day before on CS3 and applied the Distortion Tool - Spiky Halo which I’ve used a couple times in the past. Adjusting it to get the desired effect took me like half a minute.

I Applied the Background, chose the type added the company name and presented it to the client.

Done, in 4minutes, disappointed?  I don’t care. Which leads me to making my point, it’s not about how long it takes to create a logo, or the complex process, it’s the outcome, that’s all that matters, the concept and finished product.  You do it your way, I do it my way, we all earn a decent living.

Maybe I’m rambling, I like to think I’m making a point, what that is i’m not so sure now, it’s late, and I need to go to bed. heh.

The wild life reserve Samra contacted me a few months ago to work on an important project for their Cheetah Aid Department. This department’s main role was to provide other reserves in Africa with first aid and medicine for sick Cheetahs and baby Cheetahs.

After completing the project, a week after it went into print and then put into use as a stamp on all their med crates and gear and so on, we were invited to one of the Reserves and I can’t begin to tell you guys how cool of a feeling that was.

Me and Sasha had an amazing time, especially her as about 12years ago when she could still see clearly and was much younger her and her father had adopted a Cheetah. She never got to touch it of course, they paid a small monthly fee to help take care of it and so on.

Below is Sasha stroking a Cheetah for the first time, she was overcome with joy, a simple dream of hers made true, one of the happiest days i’ve had that’s for sure. Love you Sasha.

So yeah, I’m a very funny, friendly fun loving guy but when it comes to plagiarism and out right rips, i’m anything short of a mean mouthy mother fucker.

See a few years ago a friend of mine decided to set up his own site and use my work in his portfolio, I lost that friend and the on going dispute between me and him that lasted for 4months lost me other friends too. It was an emotional time as I had known him since pre-school. To this day we live maybe 20min apart but have not spoken a word to each other in years, at a time when I was struggling to get by, he stole my work and earned a lot of money for himself, it hurt.

I know how it feels to be discredited, a lot of us do, it’s not the worst thing that could happen though, It’s having your work stolen in more ways than one, and then the thief getting credited for it all. That hurts like a mother fucker to be honest. Such is the case with a good friend over at LogoPond, Mike (logomotive). I guess I wont say much on the matter and let these images tell their own little story, a picture’s worth a thousand words right?

Now wannabe logo designer ripping off logos to help tarnish his own reputation is one thing, but a HUGE educational Institution such as www.America.edu ripping not ONLY the entire site layout from a popular designer, but also it’s logo? Are you serious? Check it out, this is the ORIGINAL AMERICA LOGO FOUND ON LOGOPOND …wtf is going on? This is a .edu site, an education institute? there’s some legal ground here that needs to be crossed before owning a .edu, and they’re ripping off designers and coders? They’re not even putting in the effort to do it right by changing colors, or anything, I mean Dache had the common sense, or lack of to be honest, to at least borrow/rip the idea behind his plagiarized masterpiece, these guys leave it all as is, and use it. BULLSHIT.

Yeah, there’s so much bullshit making the rounds it’s making me sick…but hey, that’s the price us creative few have to pay right? Let’s pray I don’t run into any more of these Logo Pond plagiarists, don’t know how much more I could handle.

This is only an intro post to a series of SEO related blog posts so please don’t expect anything out of it - cheers

So most of us know how to design a good logo and I’m sure most of us can cook up a nice website template. A few of us can even code pretty good but how many of us logo designers/web designers know how to market ourselves online? How many of us know how to use and harness the full potential of online traffic, search engines and so on to convert a regular visitor into a potential client? How many of us know how to horde in targeted traffic? Not many right?

Well, before I became a designer, I dabbled in SEO. I have been dabbling along in SEO for the past 6 years in fact, PR7 websites and simple portfolio sites generating over 40,000 unique targeted visitors a month doesn’t do me any justice, because it’s not the page rank, or the amount of traffic that I get that really says anything about what I’m good at. Black Hat SEO is my game, a dirty game to many, a way of living for me. Being part of webmaster/seo communities since 2003 and in black hat communities and forums since just as long has won me a certain level of respect in the BH SEO industry.

Now I’m sure a lot of you designers have ventured into the realm of SEO, some may have even coughed silly amounts to get into some of the top BH SEO communities (some of the decent ones cost you a starting price of $100/month in membership fees alone, and these are the ones you can find by doing a little google search, hence not the very hush hush parties you would like to land in) but how many of you have been rewarded with decent targeted traffic conversion rates, google ad click conversion rates and so on? How about ranking for those keywords you want to rank for?

Well I could share a bunch of statistics to prove it can be done, instead as some may know, I am now using a brand new domain name for a reason. Apart from the obvious irony of the whole MillionDollarDude.com deal, me of course far from being a millionaire, this new domain name will help me talk you through the steps i’ll be taking to rank my domain name for all sorts of nutty keywords and rake in traffic that ends up converting. Now I’ll be documenting this, maybe not on a daily basis but as regularly as I can with what I’m doing and how I’m doing whatever it is I’m doing. I don’t have a problem with sharing some of the minor BH tricks with everyone as they have been used for years, just not in the way I use them, which will lead me to brag about thinking outside the box and doing things a different way and such later on.

So for this domain name, i’m going to focus on targeting design/logo related keywords, as well as some seo related ones here and there. I’m also going to focus on raking in download related traffic, that eventually i’ll have convert into premium font/icon/brush paid downloads. yeah, sounds good, along the way i’ll share some of my other sites with you guys and how I’m sort of using them to speed up this entire process, call it cheating, I call it…cheating too. heh.

This is a WIP - i’ll add more information on it once the clients send in their final feedback (been waiting for just over 2weeks for feedback on this 2nd revision). No rush, have more than enough going on with other projects but here’s what I’ve come up with so far, be inspired yo.