Stealing or Learning?

A quick ethics class

Recently it seems like a number of designers have been doing something quite wrong. In their defence, it seems like they really do not know it is wrong. I think it all boils down to how a lot of us have come to misunderstand what “steal like an artist” really means.

Spoiler alert (if you have not read the book): it is simply about drawing inspiration from different sources and not really about you copying someone’s great work in your own project.

Now that we are done with the clickbait part of the article, let us proceed to what I really want to talk about.

Learning. When it comes to design (mostly the visuals), it is perfectly okay (In fact I advise that you do), to pick someone else’s design and copy it pixel for pixel.

“Why should I do this?” you ask.

Well, it is pretty simple really, apart from studying basic visual design principles, there is no better substitute than practice, and you may not want to start off with just pulling out visual ideas from your head. I advise you to begin by replicating the beauty you see. You can go on Dribbble, Twitter or Behance to pick out designs and then you start replicating.

There is a catch though, and this is the really important bit. If you are going to post these replications that you are using to learn or grow, be sure to state that it is a replication and you should also give attribution(s) to the original creator(s).

Oh, by the way, you clearly should not replicate someone else’s work for a commercial product.

Takeaway

Draw inspiration from multiple sources and if you are still in the early learning phase, replicate the designs you love and give attribution to the original creators.

Fin.