[flyosity]

It's fun to watch something like this, but it looks like he copied & pasted a lot of elements from other websites into his design. Directly lifting UI elements & photos from other websites and dropping them into your site is a big negative in my mind.

[dmix]

I didn't see any photos that didn't come from istockphoto. The logos were his customers logos.

Most of the UI elements seem to come from other PSDs of stuff he's already created.

Inspiration from Basecamp and it looks like some Flickr screenshots... totally normal.

[flyosity]

I also didn't see any purchase process for the Eiffel Tower picture he found on iStockPhoto. Finding random images on the Internet and copying them into a design is not how professionals build websites.

[oneplusone]

You are allowed to use stock images in your designs to figure out if you are actually going to use it. It has an enormous watermark on it that you can't see because of the compression in the video.

[jmtame]

but it looks like he copied & pasted a lot of elements from other websites into his design

he was using them as inspiration, i don't think he actually copied any ui elements (unsure about where he got the photographs, but it's common practice to pay a royalty fee or use free if it's not required). as an example, many good designers will look at apple's design elements in mac os x or iphone os. you'll hear steve jobs got a lot of his inspiration from other sources too. that's how design works; you'll take something that's good right now and you make it better.

"The inspiration for the type of plastic case (a first for computers) for the Apple II came from Jobs seeing a Cuisinart food processor in the kitchen section of Macy’s.

Additionally, Jobs showed up at a design meeting for the Quicktime software product with a brochure from Hewlett-Packard with the H-P logo in a brushed metal.

The brushed metal ended up being adopted in across much of Apple’s software and some high-end hardware including the Safari Web browser and iCal calendar." Leader Kahney, Inside Steve's Brain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU&feature=playe...

[oneplusone]

The photographs are from actual Guestlist events.

[Keyframe]

I've seen A LOT of designers works like that, nothing unusual or evil. List of reference elements for inspiration from all over the place, crude placement and re-work/redesign/throwing out/making it all work together in the end. It's actually quite similar to matte painting if you think about it.

[dangrossman]

I thought I saw him lift a picture of a MBP off Apple.com into his document for a bit. I got a bit worried there too. I know lots of web apps end up with one of those generic MacBook pictures showing their site on the screen -- Apple won't sue you for using their picture?

[flog]

I spotted one site I know very well (I used to maintain it), which was the distinctive Xero.com homepage and sub pages.

I don't think it was copy and pasting, but "inspiration" ... This is how most designers work, I think.

[3pt14159]

Yeah, oneplusone loves Xero.com's design.