Comments on: Design Process 1- Great designers steal?

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 03:03:42 +0000

If an existing work inspires you, and you improve your technique by imitating it, I wouldn’t consider it stealing. You talked about tutorials being a good way to learn Illustrator on another post, but I find that I learn best when analyzing someone else’s work. I don’t duplicate, but I may take pieces add my own input and alterations to create something new.

By: Randa

Randa — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:08:46 +0000

Yes – that’s a great way to learn. I have done that for practice as well. Thanks for your comment!

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:14:24 +0000

Yes, I think inspired is the right way to think about it. I teach design here in Dublin and I give my students websites and brochures that I would consider to be nicely designed and then ask them to reproduce them as closely as possible. The idea is NOT to just copy but to really look closely at how the designer made the piece look good. Sometimes it can be as simple as a couple of dotted lines to separate sections or it might be just that white space is allowing the design to breathe. After they have re-created the design, I ask them to create a design for something completely different but to use what they learned from the inspirational piece.
all the best

By: Tara

Tara — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:51:42 +0000

I have only just started using del.icio.us i will try that.
Thanks for the compliment, yours too.

By: Randa

Randa — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:35:07 +0000

Yes, that is a good idea. I tend to use del.icio.us to keep track of inspirational sites, and it works pretty well for me. Thanks for your comment- love your site.

By: Tara

Tara — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:13:31 +0000

I think its fine like you as to find inspiration for other design as long as you don’t go as far as copying it. I find what helps me when I am stick is to collect together magazines print out bits from the web and paste them up onto A2 card as mood boards – so I can see it all together and decide the type of “feel” I am looking for for my design. I am just reading a book The Principles of Beautiful webdesign and that talks about a similar approach to what you mention. They suggest everytime you see a webdesign you like to take a screen shot and file them in folders – such as 2 column, three column etc, which sounds like a good idea.

By: Asgeir Hoem

Asgeir Hoem — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:23:03 +0000

When it comes to the creative part in the process, e.g the phase after the formal brief and research and the boring stuff, you should try out some methods for boosting your creativity. I’d recommend reading Lateral Thinking or Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono, though you’ll find great walk-throughs and summaries online.

These techniques helps you escape the rigid patterns of thought, and encourage fresh, creative thinking.

By: Johan

Johan — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 07:17:40 +0000

It’s not called stealing, it’s called “being inspired from”
The same thing applies to all fields that require some kind of design. I work with writing code, and all programmers are “inspired” by other work.