Ok I am not bitching about everybody who offers custom design and development, but I see a lot of so called web design companies offering this to clients but then clearly sell on other peoples work.
The worst case are people that sell a static design to a client, then rip off the HTML code from another persons site and customise it a little. This has happened a few times to me now (the ones I am aware of!) and one case they even ripped off the tracking code, which sort of gave the game away.
The other more common case are companies that use out of the box applications / open source scripts such as Joomla. They sell the website, find a free or premium theme customise it a little and claim it is bespoke.
I am sorry but in my eyes that is not custom or bespoke! That is re-selling another persons design!
I personally think a bespoke design is something that has been created from scratch, most likely in PSD form then sliced and coded into (x)HTML. Then depending on the job it maybe integrated into an application. This means the client gets the exact design they want, if they don’t like a colour or layout they can change it during the design process. Once they are happy with the design they sign it off and it then is coded.
Some companies are so lazy (or stupid) they don’t even change the bloody name of the theme they used! One example recently (I won’t name names) did an e-commerce site in Joomla. I viewed the source and saw the theme name gk_eshoptrix_2. A quick Google search led me to Gavick.com. A quick look at his demos and I found the theme in question. The ONLY alterations done were the shop name, and 4 images. I am assuming the theme was supplied in PSD so it probably would of taken 30 minutes to do!
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying people can’t do this, or that people can’t take design ideas from other sites. But if you are selling a template site to a client, it is only fair the client knows this first!
