The Haystack

20% of what you do today will be responsible for 80% of the day’s results. 20% of a company’s clients will be yield 80% of the company’s revenue. I can imagine that almost everyone is familiar with the 80/20 Principle, also known as the Pareto Principle. Pareto was an Italian economist who discovered an economic pattern: roughly 80% of the world’s wealth was in the hands of 20% of the people.

This imbalance, as it turns out, reveals itself not only in money, but in virtually any situation where there exists a relationship between input and output or cause and effect. And that’s just about everything. The imbalance is not necessarily 80/20. It can be 70/30 or 90/10. The point is that there is a significant imbalance.

It’s logical, when you think about it. Not all of what you do can possibly have the same effect on an outcome. Not every design will get the same amount of attention. In a 10-slide presentation, perhaps two or three slides will have the most impact. A site we just finished has several nice features, but only one or two of these will set it apart from similar sites. We paid the most attention to these features.

As a web designer, developer, or whatever it is you do, it’s a good idea to go into 80/20 mode at several points during your project. What are you doing right now? Is it part of the important 20% or the trivial 80%? Is that button really a show-stopper? The 80% is not bad, it’s just not as important. Utilizing the 80/20 Principle can help you set the right priorities. Short on time? Do 20% stuff. It will have the most effect.

Think about it… How much of Microsoft Word do you really use, Or any app for that matter?

Recommended reading: The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch. This book is a must have. Richard really goes geekily in-depth. The 80/20 Individual is also quite good, but you should really like the subject if you decide to read both.

JavaScript guru Peter-Paul Koch writes about the need to reach out to front-end developers at large companies. The ones using web standards should be encouraged to evangelize. Why? To in turn encourage non-standards-based (is that a word?) developers at other large companies who might not otherwise be convinced by the predominantly freelance and small-business based world of standards evangelists. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, mind you.

One of the article’s comments brings up an interesting point. While I don’t own a large company, we do serve some very large clients. And one thing I’ve learned from them is something anyone who sells anything could probably tell you: if you want to sell something, whether it be a product, a service, or an idea, you’re best chance is to first speak the language of the person to whom you’re selling. Once you’ve done that, you need to show the buyer what’s in it for them. At big companies, it’ll usually come down to the subject of money.

Peter-Paul makes an interesting point. Developers at big companies speak the language of other big-company developers. They have different work environments, often high-stress and high-profile projects, and they often work on one aspect of a project (e.g. only HTML/CSS/JavaScript). While this could be a great first step, we need to remember that getting large companies to embrace web standards will not only involve convincing the developers, but also the management of these companies. What’s in it for them? How’s this stuff gonna make them money? Got your pitch ready? Sell it.

This post has been edited since first publication. See my lengthy explanation.

Update: Company X have changed their site as of May 22, 2007. They seem to have removed our material.

Note: This is my personal reaction to Company X’s violation of Cinnamon’s copyright, and is not necessarily the reaction of our company. Cinnamon’s post can be found at the Cinnamon Blog (in Dutch).

I hate it when people call themselves designers and then blatantly steal the work of other designers and imply that it’s their own. And that seems to be what Company X Design (”Design” is perhaps an overstatement) has done with elements of the Cinnamon design. It’s so blatantly done, it’s laughable. I mean, at least tweak the damn design—change the color or something—like any self-respecting talentless hack would. Once again, we seem to support my theory that most copycats are complete idiots. As opposed to the last time, I’m now armed with screenshots.

[screenshot removed]

This is not a debatable point. It’s not a question of if copyright has been violated, but in how many ways. Three, from my first observations. All in the header. Let’s examine this using some comment overlays.

First, the type image. [screenshot removed]

Secondly, the tagline under that image. [screenshot removed]

Thirdly, the small images used to lead to our portfolio. [screenshot removed]

I wrote a polite but firm e-mail to these people requesting that they remove the offending elements within 24 hours. They did not. (Update (2007.05.20): I did receive an e-mail from them today, dated May 18, in which they ask me to specify exactly which images and text I am referring to. No contact information and no name was given. I promptly sent a non-sarcastic version of the above screenshots.) I threatened appropriate action if they did not. Obviously this made no impression. Now I’ve posted this. Company X, it’s your own fault. This was the appropriate action I was going to take. A simple blog post. Everything I know about search engines tells me that when people search for you, there’s a decent chance they’ll see this post. Since every time someone comes to your site they see elements of our work passed off as yours, it seems a fair trade. Enjoy the free publicity.

Now I’m willing to bet a few things, and I’ll update this post as they happen, just to increase my Nostradamus-factor:

1. Company X have at least one very good reason to have not answered my e-mail (beware: I will post your sorry excuse here). I have received an e-mail response. See above.
2. They will indicate that someone else did the design for them, or they bought it, or some such worthless bullshit, and that they had no idea that copyright infringement had taken place.
3. Who? What? Huh?

I don’t mind if people allow themselves to be inspired by my work and the work of my team, but don’t steal it and pass it off as your own.

Have a nice day.