Five Sharp - a design studio that steals

Well it's turned up that a member of a design forum i frequent - QBN - has had some of their folio stolen and used by a design studio called Five Sharp (www.fivesharp.com). The weird thing is that the designer has never worked there and in fact never even heard of them.

This brings into obvious question the ethics of such a design studio as well as what other work of theirs is stolen? Is anything in their portfolio actually theirs?

To many people this may seem not so important but in a field where the difference between getting and not getting work is guided by the folio (as well as budget obviously) it becomes a very real issue to any working designer. It also begs the question 'will i as a client actually get a result i expect?' as the folio dictates the kind of work you can expect from a studio and guides where you might spend your budget.

Now this may not be the company's fault. It may be a single person there has passed off work they have stolen as their own to flesh out a folio or get a job and then this piece of work has been used by the company as a marketing element (a fairly standard practice in my experience). For this reason the designer has been in touch with the company and will hopefully get a good result.

If any other graphic designers stumble across the path of this blog entry and discover some of their own stolen work please drop a note and let us know!

Below is a screenshot of the stolen work on the Five Sharp website: