Visual Addicts

visualaddictsca

Submitted by Michael Small, @VisualAddicts Designer & Developer.

Visual Addicts is the brainchild of Toronto based web developer and designer Michael Small. It is the result of “five years of spiritual and professional transformation” and “30 some odd years of visual bombardment.”

Really clean design, the way the “VA” is set outside of the light blue box really makes it visually interesting, and stand out. I felt like the sub pages lacked the visual interest that the home page has though. The portfolio was very thorough and I think really gives a lot of information behind each project, I always really like that.

UPDATE: We’ve found out this site is an almost exact copy of the much superior website concentric-studio.com. So we are aware that it is a rip-off design.

17 Comments

  1. big guns

    hmm – can’t help thinking i’ve seen this design somewhere before – oh yeah – i have –
    http://concentric-studio.com/

    just another design rip off

    Reply
  2. doug

    Uh, has no one looked at http://concentric-studio.com/ today? This is a bit too close for original and “unmatched” style. #fail.

    Reply
  3. Gene Crawford

    YIKES! Yeah, does look like quite a rip. I’d never seen the http://concentric-studio.com site before, it’s much better as often rips fall short of the ripped…

    Maybe an explanation is in order from said designer?

    Reply
  4. Glen LaFortune

    We’ve been informed of this visual addicts site (through a fellow that visits this site).

    We’ve contacted them and hope to have this issue resolved (taken down). Unfortunately we’ve been ripped many times… but its usually not by someone in the same industry. =)

    Reply
  5. Gene Crawford

    I hope you get some resolution. Obviously we’re sorry at unmatchedstyle.com to even give that site any traffic and really hate that a rip so obvious slipped through like this. Thanks to the community around us here at unmatchedstyle we can root out copy cats like this really quickly.

    We’re going to run the concentric-studio.com site as a new featured site here very soon. Since it’s obviously the “inspiration” here and from where I see it the superior design.

    Note: Something weird is definitely up with whomever is behind that site, check their twitter account and how it’s been suspended.

    Reply
  6. Bryan Esler

    Wow. Total rip of http://concentric-studio.com/. But it’s done completely worse – the original version is much, much better.

    Not sure how this site was even approved to go on here. It doesn’t look nice (have you seen the Work thumbnails?) and it doesn’t even come close to the quality of the other sites on here.

    Reply
  7. Gene Crawford

    @Bryan – clearly it’s a rip off of Concentric-studio.com. But i’d have to disagree that if it were not a rip that it’s not a good design. Clearly the credit should go to the Concentric team for the great design, but aside from some lacking detail work it’s not bad.

    Of course you’re entitled to your opinion, we all are, and thanks for sharing yours man!

    Reply
  8. Sam

    Hey Gene, you should remove this site from here, so at least it doesn’t drive more traffic to this trash.

    I really hope no real clients got suckered into working with Visual Addicts!

    Reply
  9. Michael

    Dear unmatchedstyle community,

    I am the author of the Visual Addicts website that was featured here. Due to the backlash featured in this forum, I have since removed the site and contacted Concentric Studio with a formal apology for the similarities between the two websites.

    I assure anyone reading this that no harm was intended and that certain layout elements were indeed adapted from concentric-studio.com. However, all graphic design from Visual Addicts was completely original and the code behind the site was based off of the open source 960 grid system css framework and javascript libraries such as jquery which concentric-studio.com does not use.

    I also want to sincerely apologize to Gene Crawford who runs unmatchedstyle. I truly hope that this does not reflect poorly on the fantastic community and inspiration that he has built up here. I didn’t like some of the comments here regarding unmatchedstyle failing. This is not the case. This is a matter of poor judgement on my part.

    I would not have submitted my site to this community if I believed that I was in any way infringing on concentric-studios copyright. I felt the original art, sincere (and painstakingly written) portfolio write-ups as well as the technology driving Visual Addicts was different enough to warrant a release. Obviously I was wrong and for that I apologize to anyone who this may have affected.

    Note to Gene Crawford: I was completely shocked to find out last week that my Twitter account was indeed suspended. On further investigation, I found out that my account had somehow been hacked by what looks like another design studio making tweets about their pricing and other foolishness through me. I have heard no follow up from the Twitter management regarding this matter and have since stopped using the service due to this. Obviously bad karma building up.

    Hope this can at least be a lesson for us all to be a bit more detailed with our work, less lazy (as I clearly was for aspects Visual Addicts) and to give credit where credit is due.

    Good luck to all and I wish concentric-studio.com and unmatchedstyle.com continued success.

    Reply
  10. taufiq

    Yep, know at the first sight, Total Rip….

    Reply
  11. Gene Crawford

    @Michael – Thank you for the apology, it’s not good that this sort of thing has to go down so publicly, i’m sure you’ve learned the repercussions of it all as your comment suggests.

    The link to the site has been removed, no more traffic is going their way (or has been), I still want people to see it and what can happen in the community as a result. I’d like to ask that everyone please refrain from piling on if you can, the internet has a long memory and the current thread will serve as record enough.

    We’re going to feature Concentric’s website here soon as well to give them some credit and traffic.

    Reply
  12. Shaun

    @Michael: That was very big of you to publicly apologize and you handled yourself very well. I’ve seen so many people unabashedly rip so many designs that it was refreshing to see someone have the courage to speak up like you did, and I think you set an excellent example of how to deal with a situation like this (and why it’s probably a good idea to avoid a situation like too =P). You seem like a really good guy and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

    @Gene: So many galleries fail to acknowledge their own community, and Unmatched Style here illustrates how “with it” it is. This site is definitely my first stop for inspiration now. I hope to soon pride myself on getting one of my sites featured on here.

    Reply
  13. Gene Crawford

    @Shaun – Thanks for saying that! I do hope that we help in some small way to inspire and help web designers get better and do great work.

    Reply
  14. Michael

    Shaun, Thank you for the kind words. They are very much appreciated my friend. It’s good to know that there is someone out there that can at the least see both sides of the coin. I clearly made an error and have no problem owning up to it and your comment was very refreshing after all the heat that was put down here.

    To tell you the truth Shaun, you have completely restored my faith in the development community as I’ve had a bit of a hard time the last few days.

    For instance, at the time of this posting, this thread has 16 comments and the majority of them negative in nature. Deserving or not is not the point. It seems some are more intent on tearing down instead of propping up some of the amazing work that is featured on unmatchedstyle. I am not trying to absolve myself from wrong doing here, just maybe pointing out a critical flaw we have as a culture where we to easily tear down instead of propping up one another. Gene sets a great example of how to do this correctly with his constructive criticism of the works featured here. It is gentle, insightful and positive in nature.

    Again, I apologize to this great community here for my error and I hope to redeem myself in the future with some great work that is deserved of this many comments, albeit in a more positive light.

    Shaun, stay cool my friend and I truly hope to see some of your work featured here in the future. Your a good guy and I thank you again.

    Reply

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