Copying design: nefarious or necessary?

Justin Shattuck’s beautiful site was recently featured on a lot of style gallery sites, and for good reason. It’s well layed-out, nice colors, pretty good contrast, great content. And as he pointed out in a recent post, being noticed has as many good points as bad. One of the most unfortunate results of such accolades are those who hop on for a free ride by ripping off someone’s design.

I sympathize with the complaint. I’ve spent way too many hours working on this site, moving stuff here, tweaking stuff there, completely thowing out something I just spent hours on because it just doesn’t fit. It’s part of me, like a child (or at least a really well-liked cousin). And if someone copied my design (not that I think it’s that good, but just to carry the thought), I too would have mixed feelings. Part of me would seethe that someone would take what’s so much part of me without a thought or a whim about it.

On the other hand, shouldn’t good design be mimicked and reused? Isn’t that what sparks and nurtures its growth? Now, I don’t want to get into the whole “is graphic design art” argument, so just for the moment, because it suits me right now, I’m going to assume that it is. It’s certainly a living, breathing beast, at least as much as dancing or painting or any other art form. You wouldn’t try to hold down a dancer and smother her beauty and elegance. You wouldn’t hide a great painting away (well, Dorian’s being an exception). Great design, just like great art, should be shared, copied, reused and recycled. On the web, that means maybe a some little element works okay in the page header of someone’s site, but take that same element, rethink and retool it, and it might just explode as a splash screen or carried over to a page layout.

I’m not embarassed to admit that I take stuff I find - whether it be in print, on the web, a detail in a building or maybe in a stage backdrop - and incorporate it into my own designs. But I try to take the spirit of whatever inspired me, filter it through my own bias and experience, and give it my own treatment. And though I can usually point to an element and remember the source, it has taken on a life of its own and doesn’t just look like a twin of the original.

Justin’s argument is about someone taking an entire design, not just some little piece of it. And to that I say if you put something out in the public domain, then the inevitable will happen. But if a person just has to copy someone else’s work exactly, then it seems obvious to give credit where credit is due. Just out of good form, if nothing else. I’ve just really launched this site, and when I’ve been inspired by something on another site, I put a link to it so the whole world can see what I thought was really cool. And if someone sees this site and feels inspired enough to copy its design, I hope they’ll be curteous enough to give me my propers.