Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal

[ArticleBot]

This is an article discussion thread for discussing the SitePoint article, "Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal"

[Scratch2]

I totally agree with you on this one. The material facts are that there's very little truly original design out there, and for good reason, because its natural law that most new things FAIL - Darwin told us that...

I wrote an article comparing design to a virus that you can't innoculate yourself against, and arguing that designers need to give up the obsession with continual originality in place of a healthy dose of laziness.

[miked2004]

How many developers actually have orignal thought for every line of code, not many

[Dr John]

As an example of stealing from yourself, I was working on a Uni assignment, and after a while had made a reasonable design. then I got a client, so borrowed the assignement layout and altered it to suit the client. A friend was having a look at both designs out of interest and said why don't I take some of the idea from the client's site and put them into the assignment, as the client's site now had some nice bits the assingemnt didn't. As I'd started on the assignment first, I felt I wasn't digging up some work that had had many months of extra refinement, but was done simultaneously, so this was acceptable. A quick word with my lecturer got me the okay.

Result? One happy client and one high grade.
Then the friend who'd made the suggestion asked if she could borrow a bit of css I'd done for both, and has since rewarded me with a little paid work as well. Since then I've used a few bits from both designs for another client.

[nathank]

Great Article

[flameboy]

working with templates kind of illustrates this points. except that its hard to find a good template to begin with. is it a norm to use templates at all?

[Bilal]

good article indeed.. :) keep it up!

[dk40k]

Interesting article, but that is not entirely stealing, it's just using some of the concepts which are laid out.

[zhisede]

Agree with this articles.

[xtajman]

it's another way to develop design ideas

[guysmy]

Some might call it stealing, others inspiration. The same exact phrase has been said about great composers.

[guysmy]

I've got to tell you just a little story about Picasso that I love. One day he was riding on the train and the man next to him asked said "why don't you create paintings that look realistic - just like your subject?" The man then pulled out a photograph to show Picasso what his wife looks like. "She's oftely small and flat" said Picasso.

Pure genius that man.

nice one. i like to think of it as appropriating. information is free to generate from selective appropriations, no?

This is an article I look up whenever I reach a mind block. It sure is a great read!
Thank you for writing and publishing it.
-Sarita

Ok let me translate this article. ONE well known artist's work (possibly) achieved fame and notoriety through stealing and copying. Because he was quoted admitting to said scenario it's acceptable to strip integrity, originality and creativity from "art".

Please don't confuse yourself with artists if you've actually gone so far as to praise and condone this mentality. Admit you copy other's originality and need to one day push yourself away from relying on such a crutch through practice, experience and knowledge.

Learn TECHNIQUES of good artists. Taking a web site, moving some text around and modulating colors teaches you... Exactly, nothing. It puts money in your pocket. At least be honest about it. You're a tradesman, not an artist.

There are easy and amazing ways to inspire creativity and originality within yourself. This article teaches you how to be lazy and re-use someone else's abilities to make money for yourself. The information age just makes it so easy to do it's now the norm...

Try a different quote for inspiration like "Art imitates life". See where you get.

[genkied]

wow this article is a good one...

[WillisTi]

I think your spot on with what you say. Thoroughly enjoyed reading the article.

[bwdow]

Great article. I really loved it. Saved it. Will read many more times it.

[taledo]

Tis nice... I like

[Lars-Christian]

Very good article. It brings forth some very interesting views, some of which I agree very much with, but don't be fooled to think that it is radical thinking by any means. Anyone familiar to the Bible (not that I am) will know what King Solomon wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible: "There is nothing new under the sun."

[wiramax]

stealing design is not good...

[ronmatt]

I've been a designer since before they tagged us 'graphic designers', commercial art was the nominclature. The prevailing thought back then was 'there is nothing new, all has been done'. Every solution to every design problem has solved from every angle. Design is being either knowingly or innocently, copied, altered, personalized and reissued every day. But the same is true of everything manufactured, isn't it? Look at cars, boats, houses, clothing, furniture, food, snacks, soda, tv programs. Everything follows trends and is a copy of everything else. I do digital illustration. My stuff is original yet when I post things on the various forums, enevitably someone says "that looks just like so and so's". ( I usually don't know who sos and so is.) I guess the bottom line here is. Maybe we think our work is being ripped, but can we be sure? and if it is, consider it a compliment and go on with your life.

[operationpro]

Very good article.. and I total agree with it. No one can make a truely 100% Authentic design

[webfreebies]

This is my most favorite part of the article:

“What Picasso did mean was that great artists rummage through the great junk heap of lost, bypassed, and forgotten ideas to find the rare jewels, and then incorporate such languishing gems into their own personal artistic legacy… Picasso implied that great artists don't get caught stealing because what they appropriate they transform so thoroughly into their own persona, that everyone ends up thinking the great idea was theirs in the first place.”

This is so true in all arenas of art, whether web design or otherwise, and it's a lesson I learned fairly recently. There was a comics artist I used to revere as being so original and unique. Then by sheer accident I stumbled across a manga done years and years ago. To my amazement, the manga's style was exactly the style of this artist I had thought was so unique and original. It was obvious that he had based his style on the manga.

After that, I started to pick up on the idea that every single thing you come across is based on something that came before it-- and that often what one thinks is so unique and ingenius is really the person's skill in taking what existed and putting his or her own signature style so it seems unique.

This, I think, is the big secret of *genius/ talent* that no one likes to talk about. The genius isn't a person with God-given talent; it's the person smart enough to look at, use, and then riff on a larger variety of sources than the average person. While he or she is looking at and borrowing from everything from soup to nuts-- no matter how obscure, foreign, or discarded-- the average person looking to excel just keeps looking at a few sources.

[webfreebies]

Originally Posted by ronmatt

Everything follows trends and is a copy of everything else.

I wouldn't exactly say that everything *is* a copy of something else, but that everything is a variation of something that came before it.

I mean, take Moby Dick. Obviously, Melville was *inspired* by the Jonah and the whale story. But it's not a *copy.* It's still its own story.