In a pinch, I needed to whip up a poster advertising a 1967 Ford Mustang raffle that my church is doing. So, in my pinch I went to the interweb and searched for “inspiration” to draw on and cobble a poster together to pass along to those needing the poster.

It was late at night. Time was short.

I perused many o’ pictures of Mustangs (coveting most of them) and saw some cool artwork… but one just caught my eye.  Not only was it bold and catchy, but the design lent itself nicely to the need, the resources available to me, and my ability to steal “copy” it.

In Photoshop I worked up the background, used the only picture of the Mustang I had received, plugged in the details for our raffle, and sent it off to someone to get it printed.

Here are the two posters — mine on the left and the original on the right (which, by the way, is *much* better than mine):

Like I said before… it was late and time was short. Thus, it did not even cross my mind to contact the original designer for permission or even give credit where credit was due. My bad.

So, posters were made and I TwitPic’d and Facebooked it to advertise what we were doing…… and then shortly thereafter…

UGH — I FELT SO CRUMMY as soon a I read that tweet!!!
I don’t know all the “rules” about copyrights and stuff, but I do know that I should have, at the very least, mentioned the source. I was just so focused on getting it done and then getting to bed that I overlooked it and never looked back.

So, via Twitter, I zinged @superman1224 back an apology. Jason replied back and was very gracious to my oversight!

Jason, FYI… I didn’t take your initial tweet as a “blast.”  I did take it as a rebuke and a tag on the shoulder to be accountable for my actions.  ;-)

So, let that be a lesson to me and to all of you — make sure you do your due diligence to give credit where credit is due!

As a side note… this whole interweb / social media thing is pretty neat (and crazy too).  It turns out that Jason runs in some of the same circle of web pals as I do… I guess we were just on opposite sides of the circles.  We’re now Twitter and Facebook buds and I’m looking forward getting to know him better and to glean from his skills and insights — because I clearly have none as a hack designer!