This is a real situation I am dealing with. I was perusing some local design portfolios yesterday and stumbled on some work I thought was alright. Clicking through to the portfolio, I noticed something infuriatingly familiar — a brochure I had designed. Sure, the title was a different title, and the photos were of different people, but everything about the design of the thing, the style, the color, the way everything comes together to make this thing what it is? 100% Pure Nate Voss.

Now I know, or I guess, that this is something veteran designs have to deal with from time to time. Let’s say you design a series, perhaps of brochures, where you work out a complete design system, a whole visual vocabulary, grid system, the works. Then you leave this job, and some young production designer comes in a few weeks (or months) later to add a brochure to the line. Happens all time, that part. What doesn’t happen all the time and frankly should never happen any other time is that young production designer dropping that piece into their motherfucking online portfolio with no note or mention of any other designer’s participation or, verily, creation, of the work at hand.

Things not to do: Exactly this. And sources tell me that my work seems not to be the only person’s work being treated this way in this young man’s portfolio.