Coming up with new design ideas is tough work, that’s why designers get paid the big bucks. If you want to be a reputable designer, the absolute last thing you should do is copy someone else’s work. Copying has no benefits.
- You don’t learn the thought process behind the design.
- You don’t learn the reasons why a designer made the button a certain way.
- You don’t know why she put the logo on the left side or why she emphasizes a certain header over another one.
- Copying is a way for lazy designers to cop out.
All you see in a finished design is that it looks cool. You want that appeal on your page but don’t want to put in the work behind it.
Be Inspired Instead
Seek out posts about why designs ended up as they did. 37signal’s Design Explorations are a valuable learning tool. As is Next Update by Garrett Dimon. Tim Van Damme has inspired quite a few people to make a personal “business card” website like his own.1 He even inspired me. Unfortunately, many people felt that it was okay to copy directly off his design. Tim worked hard to make his design useful and beautiful, but the lazy designers spent no time and effort and just copy and pasted his source code.
Do you want to be a lazy designer or a designer who learns from and is inspired by others?
Latest Offender
I came across one of these lazy designers when Tim tweeted about this fellow’s latest “design.” He thought it was okay to rip off the design of the Ballpark marketing page. See if you can spot the similarities:
The designer even has the stones to photoshop in his web address into the screenshot and change it to his product name in all of the testimonials.
Copying directly from one of your competitors is not a good way to get your business started on the right foot.
What’s Okay To Do
Be inspired. Seeing a particular element you like and modifying it to fit your site is okay. For example, say you like how atebits has an inset look to its dividers. Look at the code that makes that happen and learn from it. Take what you learned over to your site and change it to fit your design. It might look better with a larger shadow, a darker color, or maybe if you completely change it to green.
Side note: Don’t forget it’s possible to be inspired by something outside your normal line of work. Try going to the park, walking through a crowded street, or exploring what’s popular on Tumblr and Flickr. Something might catch your eye.
- See his Hall of Fame [↩]
Tags: cop out, copy, Design, thought process
Fantastic article. Thanks for the valuable links!