ANDREW JOHNSTONE

Have you ripped people off? I have. Have you been influenced by people? I have. Have you taken a design that just blew you away and recreated it using your own style? I have. Have you seen an element of a design and thought, cool I might do something like that as well? I have. If your answer to these questions is No then your either a liar or your not a designer.

Face it people, everyone uses elements from their day to day life in their designs. These elements have all been designed. Whether it is something as invisible as a chocolate bar wrapper or the font used at the train station, they are all products of a designers ideas, skilled or not. We use these things consciously or not but we still use them. The same goes for designs we see in books or on the web. Whether we like to admit it or not these elements are all being stored in our brains and used later. We may not know exactly how and we may not have consciously thought about it but they are there. If you dig deep enough into ANY design you can find some influence. My argument would be why bother digging?

Ok ok, I am not going to be hypocritical and say that I do not get annoyed at seeing people rip other people off (It has happened to me). If a design, layout or idea has been blatantly ripped off then I am all for trying to castrate the people who did it. However I am just tired and bored of all the people out there who seem to have started to look at designs not for there beauty but to see if they can find the influence in it. You can hear them all over the net squawking things like, 'Oh see that arrow. That's soooo Designers Republic!!'. No it isn't, it's a fucking arrow. Ok the Designers Republic have a thing about using arrows, but does this mean they are the only people who can use them? I think not. This may sound like an excuse as I myself tend to love using arrows (bastard things look so funky) but it isn't, it's just the cold hard facts. Too many people are too preoccupied with what other people have done, they should start worrying about their own work instead.

A good illustration of this is the recent anti 45degrees talk going on around the design scene. What I want to know is what exactly are they complaining about and why is that the people doing the complaining have sites with 45degree graphics all over them? It's such a pointless waste of time complaining about the angle of a graphic or line that someone may be using. Ok lots of people have done it , but so what! Why can't they? The thing that annoys me the most is when 'big name' sites hassle smaller sites for using them. What's all that about? Simply trying to make excuses for being the major culprits. Trying to be cool by going against the trend when not long ago they jumped on the bandwagon just like everyone else. I may be a cynical bastard but at least I have enough brains to just let people design what they like regardless of their influences.

Well, I seem to have started rambling again. So back to the question. I don't think that it is a particularly fine line between ripoff and influence. Everyone knows a ripoff, it is so blatantly obvious and so pathetic that it is not even really worth commenting on. To illustrate this point let me go back a few weeks and explain something that my good mate Justin Fox of Aus Infront said to me. A website had blatantly ripped off the MUGSHOTS section of DiK and in my usual fiery manner I got aggro. After a day of stress and death threats Justin called me and trying to calm me down said "Everyone knows that DiK did it first. People will know that these guys ripped you off so why are you worrying?". This is true. A blatant ripoff while still very annoying is, as I said above, so pathetic that we really shouldn't even dignify it by getting annoyed.

Influence is influence and it is within all of us as creative individuals. We should embrace it not try and fight it. We should stop bitching and hassling people who show obvious influences as we have all been there and it is all part of the learning process. I know I personally taught myself a lot by copying what other more experienced designers had done for fun. It taught me things that no teacher or class could teach and allows you to grow and create your own style.

The reason I decided to write on this Theory topic for Jade was that it is something that has been on my mind for ages. I made a cover a couple months ago for DiK that sort of made fun of it all. It illustrates how I think people are taking this all a little bit too seriously and should just relax and enjoy!

Comments are welcome - andrew@designiskinky.net

Andrew - DiK

PETER REID

there is inspiration everywhere. It flows through our work, throughout our lives. We are inundated by it with a simple search , we create it, we buy it, we criticize it, we feed ourselves upon it and without it, we might lose our drive for glory.

Therefore , inspiration seeds itself into our thinking unknowingly, without pause. As we feed ourselves with inspiration as we do, it inherently becomes the ground in which we proceed upon. It lives in an infinite amount spaces, and brushes through our thinking in new forms every single day, sometimes unknowingly.

We reference this inspiration with respect, and apply thinking inherent only to the current problem at hand. This is the point in the entire process where the fine line can surface, where you either begin to surface inspiration within yourself, or you fall down to the streets of the copout, the undeniable ripoff.

the ripoff is blatant and totally exposed, especially in this market. a breakthrough revelation will surface, but this idea will have an undeniable course of repitition in execution until it is exausted by the one or many. This is the model for trends in my opinion. There is too much to be had, to surround yourself in an endless pursuit of repitition.

"If you strive to inspire , you will never copy , you will create."

Isn't that what we, as artists, are here to do? to create ? To put forth ideas in hope that they may infect change into the largest media man/woman has ever witnessed? We have quickly become part of the building process, and I see no reason to level off anytime soon. The ripoff is another day wasted, we must enforce change to ensure new inspiration for days to come.

take your inspiration as it surrounds you. You can feed off the monitor and marvel in the worlds design crew (k10k // threeoh // h73 // dik // zeldman) as I do daily. But we also must step outside for at least twenty minutes a day because the inspiration surrounds you, in all senses. It can be a creative director, it can be the woman next to you on the train. It can be submethod, or it can be Wallpaper. It can be Fila Brasilia or Frank Sinatra. It can be David Carson s Second Sight or Harper Lee s To Kill a Mockingbird. Take a walk to the center of town, and watch how the world operates for an afternoon, this is inspiration. The people in the museum are as much inspiration as the art itself. Inspiration is what you want it to be, and it is everlong.

commonsense.

NICK FINCK

We have treaded this ground in the past. The question is simpler to ask than to answer. Where does one draw the line? Why is the line so gray and vague? Who is to say what is over or under the line? The facts are that only you can define the line and therefore only you can pass the judgement on yourself. True inspiration comes from the heart and mind and soul, to quote Webster's:

Inspiration is all around us, it is in our music, it is in our homes, it is in the way we talk and the way we walk. Today we have the web and that brings us one more step closer to each other. We can now communicate with those ½ ways around the world from us and in doing so we become inspired. Inspired by different cultures, inspired by different philosophies on life and visualizations of the way things are and they way they ott to be. Inspiration can make us or brake us; it can drive our passion and fuel our soul. Inspiration can also make us into followers, clones of each other replicating pure craftsmanship over and over until it no longer is a craft or unique in anyway. We are at the hands of our own mercy, only we can pull ourselves out from the crowd and make a difference. Only we can choose not to follow the beaten path and build out own paths.

For every brick laid in the most elaborate and phenomenal architectural structures of the word there will always be one brick taken. Not for the sake of inspiration, but for the sake of hoping to achieve the same beauty that was in the original work. The result is simply a well-crafted brick that is out of place, all alone, separated from the original idea that it is but one brick of a greater being. Alone the brick is nothing but a stone, but when used within a structure and guided by a master plan it is truly a thing of beauty.

Today I think of us as the architect of a new generation. We work in a digital medium surrounded by pulpless offices and binary bits of data. We are but ones of thousands if not millions like us. Each of us struggles to be the master architect. Each of us wants to stand out and be recognized for the beauty that we create. However, some of us feel that there is no beauty in out designs, our architecture is flawed and out of place. So those of us who struggle for perfection sometimes go to see other structures, other works of magnificent creators to feel inspired almost as if we were three years old again, oblivious to the world and convinced of immortality with a strong passion in our hearts.

Little do we learn that it's not about being perfect with unbridled creativity, but it's about learning from our mistakes and learning from others. For every piece of work we see, we see someone's passion. For every piece of work we take, we take away a piece of the creator's heart. We can only save ourselves from this pain by being ourselves. Making mistakes and learning from them. Watching others make mistakes and learning from others. We can only be inspiring original to others if our works are original and our hearts are pure. Do not paint a picture with used paints. Invoke your passions and ambitions to guide your works and use only fresh paint take you there.

- Nick Finck
Digital Web Magazine