Am I understanding this right; that LayerVault is trying to claim that they are the sole owners of the flat UI trend? I'm sorry Allan, I've been a fan of yours since before LayerVault was even launched, but this is really low. And if I'm remembering correctly, this isn't the first time you guys have harassed someone about using "your" aesthetic.
What he said is that he is "the exclusive rights holder for the artwork contained within Flat UI". Presumably he's referring to Flat UI the UI Kit, not Flat UI the general trend.
Well, that remains to be seen. Looking at both websites, it's difficult to tell what they are talking about. Flat-UI doesn't seem to have any assets that mirror anything on LayerVault's. They need to be more specific.
> Flat-UI doesn't seem to have any assets that mirror anything on LayerVault's.
I would say that is the issue in a nutshell. LayerVault is claiming they are the exclusive rights-holders, yet absolutely nothing in Flat-UI is the same as anything on LayerVault's public site.
The only possible angle remaining would be if LayerVault had a bunch of these elements behind their paywall... something tells me that's not the case.
Edit: Alright, I admit the colour Turquoise is used on both pages. Still, I'm fairly confident turquoise boxes (of differing shapes!) are not copyrightable.
It's not about the flat UI trend. If you look at Layervault, their design is really unique and top notch. Flat UI-framework is heavily inspired by Layervault's design. There's no doubt about it. Same roundings, paddings, pastel color scheme, etc. They look visually extremely similar.
LayerVault is obviously pissed that a design similar to their unique design will be used by amateur Bootstrappers all over the web.
I think we're all upset more about the attitude and approach of how LV went about this.
You can't patent Colors / Helvetica Neue / Rounded Corner Squares. It just reeks of tactics similar to patent trolls.
I think a while back there was blog theme used that was similar to Svbtle, but there was no take down notice or such nonsense. It generated a decent discussion and conversations about something that's too close in style.
Look at @layervault on Twitter, they are just getting destroyed right now. Even by designers, their main target audience.
If they went along the lines like 'Hey, this is pretty similar to our design. We think it's cool we inspired you but can you deviate it from us a bit more or re-name the project to like Layervault Bootstrap?' I mean why not - have your name in the same conversation as Twitter Bootstrap!
It's unique and top-notch if you live in the bubble LV seems to think people do; even Google's been using a similar approach for a few years now as they focus more on design. They also got on the defensive recently regarding Pixelapse; a product that essentially does the same thing LV does (but better in a few regards), citing that the concept for a "Github for designers" was "stolen" and using screenshots to compare the two, which were both basically Dropbox's sync/manage drop-down.
Allan says Designmodo was not being cooperative in emails on the issue, and I think that's the point where you take it to a blog post with examples of the case you're trying to make, rather than forcing Github to shut down an entire project that goes outside of just the illustrations in question.
Their approach seems less about actually proving their worth by focusing on their product and ignoring outside "competition", and more about trying to shut down those that they feel are a threat to them. Not sure what exactly that says about them or the confidence they have in their own product, but it's a bad attitude to have towards innovation and inspiration.
I really really like LayerVault's style a lot and there's no doubt that Flat-UI is influenced by it, but it's not as if LV created this in a vaccuum. Dribbble (which is my main way of watching design trends) has had this stuff pretty common over the past three years.
They look visually similar. As well as dozens of other pieces/sites.
