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Share, Don’t Steal (why we copy)

WEB DESIGN January 7, 2011 by Patrick Cox 8 Comments

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Share, Don't Steal (why we copy)

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I’m totally guilty on this one Your Honor. I have copied sites before, but I have learned my Moleskine Notebook with jQuery Booklet
lesson and I will never do it again. I promise.
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Why do we do it?
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As designers w e have all done it, w e have all blatantly copied somebody’s design. Why
do w e do this? Are w e not brilliant visual composers? Can’t w e create our ow n w eb Hover Slide Effect with jQuery
masterpieces? I believe w e do this for one of three reasons:
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We are just starting out in the w eb design w orld – design immaturity.
We think successful or popular w ebsites have great design – design popularity.
POPULAR POSTS
We are told to from the client or management w hat to design – design pressure.

The first reason, design immaturity, is a natural thing. When w e first start out w e really Beautiful Slide Out Navigation: A CSS and jQuery
w ant to impress our managers and/or clients. We tend to look for divine interw eb Tutorial
Fixed Fade Out Menu: A CSS and jQuery Tutorial
inspiration only to w ind up ripping someone’s design off. We don’t really know how to
properly find inspiration so w e default back to mimicry. Hopefully w e all go through this Beautiful Slide Out Navigation Revised
phase quickly in our careers. But designing for popularity and design pressure are
battles that w e w ill fight through out the remainder of our careers. Beautiful Background Image Navigation with jQuery
Taking on a new design project can be a daunting task if you have no ideas and you have Twitter API and jQuery Showcase: Display your Followers
no inspiration to draw from. When you can’t find inspiration and ideas are just not coming or Friends
to you, its easy to take a popular w ebsite and copy it in order to get the project rolling. This CSS and jQuery Tutorial: Fancy Apple-Style Icon Slide
kind of thing alw ays leads me dow n the path of self doubt, w here I question my w orth as Out Navigation
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a designer. I get stuck not know ing w here to start and if nothing stops m y self loathing I
start feeling the itch to copy. A Fresh Bottom Slide Out Menu with jQuery
But sometimes as designers w e have brilliant ideas but due to pressure from management,
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partners, or any other stake holders w e are forced to copy. This recently happened on a
project I w as w orking on. Our client w anted me to straight up copy a really popular design Day and Night: Creating a Scenery Animation with jQuery
of our competitor, font-for-font, color-for-color. I felt I had some great original ideas, but I and CSS
knew the fight w asn’t w orth it so I threw in the tow el and w ent for the direct copy. Creating a Rotating Billboard System with jQuery and
CSS
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Since that experience I have come to realize the dam age copying another design can do.
Picasso said that a bad artist copies and a great artist steals. This phrase has often been
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used in the design w orld as w ell. I don’t think this is true in all cases, I believe great CSS3
designers are original thinkers w ho don’t determine a design’s success on its popularity or
how it’s received by a mainstream audience. Thumbnails Navigation Gallery with jQuery
Great designers have an uncanny ability to ignore everyone and do w hat is best for the
project, they let the design guide them. This kind of originality pushes the rest of us lackies
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to the next level, hopefully, unless w e keep copying from them.

Why it’s bad OUR FAVORITES

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You’ll never know why

It’s like cheating on a test. When you cheat on a test you don’t know w hy the answ er ABOUT US
is w hat it is, and chances are you’re not going to take the time to find out, cause if you
Codrops is a web development blog that publishes
w anted to know you w ould have done it in the first place. Copying design or copying
answ ers to an exam are not any different. articles and tutorials about web design, programming

The designer you are copying made his or her choices for a reason and you’ll never know and usability. The team of Codrops is dedicated to
that reason. Worst case, the designer you are copying, copied their design. When you provide useful and qualitative content that is free of
copy from someone else you don’t know w hy they used the design pattern they did or charge.
w hy they used a particular font or even w hy they used a gradient. This not only hurts the
original designer, but it hurts you even more. Next time w hen you are designing a site, you If you want to contact or hire us, feel free to use our
may not know how to fit in that cool gradient effect or font choice correctly.
contact form on our main page tympanus.net
Design is subjective and know ing w hy choices are made is one of the most valuable tools
you have. Know ing w hy a composition is so engaging or w hy a color scheme w orks so
w ell is never learned through copying, its learned through criticism, evaluation,
experimentation, and testing… but never copying.

You’ll get stuck

If you copy a design you w ill inevitably get stuck. Getting stuck in a design is like getting
lost in a m aze. Let’s say you show up at the client design meeting w ith your copied
design to show to the client. They see the design and love it, but like all great clients, they
w ant you to make a handful of changes. When you start w orking on the revisions you
can’t quite figure out how to make the new changes feel like they belong. Its not so easy to
make changes to an already finished product w hen you have no idea w here to begin.

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You’re stuck in the middle of the maze and you don’t even know how you got in. I know D ESI GN BY TY MPAN U S © 2011
this feeling w ell, I’ve been there a few times. C OD R OPS AD VER TI SE ABOU T C ON TAC T

When you create designs based upon your ow n ideas you w hy the design w orks or
doesn’t w ork. You know the genesis of the concept and you know w here and how the
concept can be altered w ithout losing its appeal. When you ow n the design, you ow n the
map to the maze, you know w here you are at no matter w here you are. By ow ning the
design you have the know ledge to better discuss the clients revisions right there in the
initial design meeting.

You’ll homogenize everyone else

This happens in the music industry every few years. One great example is the mighty
grunge era of the early 1990′s. You can debate all day w ho w as the first real ‘grunge’
band, but Nirvana w as by the far the trend maker. After Cobain’s music became so
popular you had this onslaught of other bands from the Seattle area that looked and
sounded very similar. By the time Cobain had killed himself in 1994, grunge music w as no
more original than it w as good. The copy cat bands of the day had taken every original
lyric and chord out of the grunge movement. Copy cat design creates the same effect. If a
particular look or design element becomes trendy, no matter how innovative, pretty soon all
the w ebsites that copy it w ill eventually blend together.

Take the Web 2.0 movement as a case study. The real substance of the Web 2.0
movement w as about dynamic sites, user-centered design and open communities. But
w hat do w e all remember about Web 2.0? Rounded corners. Why did this design
element become so ingrained in our minds? Because it w as popular. Rounded corners
w ere innovative at the time and so designers started adding this new design element to
their w ebsites. Then one day, all the w ebsites looked the same and no particular w ebsite
stood out. Now , every time w e see a rounded corner w e think “Ugh, Web 2.0. Blech!”

You’ll devalue yourself, me, and the rest of the community

If I spend thirty hours in Photoshop designing a mockup that looks identical to iTunes for a
new w eb app project, w ouldn’t it just be easier for me to screen shot iTunes and send it
over to the developer? When you copy, this is actually w hat you are doing. Do yourself
and everybody at the company a favor and take a screen shot, it saves them a lot of
design time and you can get back to w hat you do best, playing Angry Birds. When w e
copy designs w e are essentially devaluing the craft. At some point, someone is going to
question w hy they have designers if all they do is w aste time copying. A lot of managers
and clients already think design is over rated but w hen you copy it just proves them right.

This can be hard if you w ork for a company that doesn’t understand the relevance of
design. They may w ant you to copy everybody else. If that’s the case my suggestion
w ould be to run, run fast and never look back. You don’t need to spend your time as a
designer copying others, there are plenty of other companies that appreciate original
thought and design.

You’ll devalue the product

Most im portantly, w hen you copy designs, you devalue your site. The real value of any
pow erful site or app is its originality. Copy cat design only cheapens the site, it makes the
site feel dirty on some level. Its like w hen you take an hour picking out a rad shirt to w ear
to a concert and your friend show s up in the same shirt, now the shirt doesn’t mean
anything. Okay, bad example, but you get the point. When your site looks identical to other
sites, it has lost its pow er. The value of Amazon.com is its originality. They are the w eb’s
marketplace leader because they continually w ant to be better and more innovative than
the others.

Original sites w ork because they are original, they are designed for and around their ow n
ideas. Sites that are truly created mean more, not only to you but the user. They have
deeper value, they have meaning and they have a life of their ow n. Copied designs are
just that, copies, they are meaningless representations of other ideas and concepts. When
a design is copied, you not only copy the good elements you copy the w eak elements.

Share, don’t steal

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The web design community is such a great source for sharing ideas. That is the
greatest part of the interw ebs, designers can share ideas, concepts, patterns, elements
and graphics in a very open environment. Copying breaks dow n these open channels and
forces designers to blockade their ideas. Lets keep these channels open and respect the
designs of others so that w e can continue to steal inspiration from them.

Related Articles:
http://w w w .useit.com/alertbox/copy-big-sites.html

http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/copy-great-designers-steal

http://52w eeksofux.com/post/1014189735/copycat-design

Jack Black on Piracy

WRITTEN BY PATRICK COX

Patrick Cox is a UX enthusiast, w eb designer and front-end developer

for PMA Media Group.
Group. Besides being passionate about all things
interw ebs he's also a musician, snow boarder, and football fanatic.
Follow him on tw itter @pcridesagain.
@pcridesagain.

TAGGED WITH: COPYING,

COPYING, WEB DESIGN

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DISCUSSION8 JOIN THE DISCUSSION

JANUARY 7TH, 2011 AT 17:38

YOOSUF

TRULY AGREE WITH YOUR STATEMENT, I AM ALSO WITH YOU

GUYS. AS FAR AS I SEEN, MANY FREELANCE DEVELOPERS AND
DESIGNERS JUST STEALING STUFF FORM OTHERS AND SHOWING
AND SELLING AS THAT THEY MADE….

CHEERS AND HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

YOOSUF
HTTP://MAGPIELABS.CO.UK

JANUARY 7TH, 2011 AT 20:43

IDRAKI

That’s the disease this days. But some manage to break the habit
and eventually came out w ith something similar, but much more
brilliant. That’s w hat w e call improvise.

JANUARY 8TH, 2011 AT 05:32

LAZAAC

sharing is caring but copying others material is not acceptable..

thanks for the info… :) just sharing w hat w e ow ned..

JANUARY 8TH, 2011 AT 05:53

JB

I never copy a full w ebsite…. but I definitely grab elements that

stand out to me, manipulate them to my liking, and piece them all
together into one big collage of “stolen” elements. Obviously… I add
my ow n touch and creativity to the entire project as w ell.
Nonetheless… I never just steal a w hole site.

I like to look at the best designs, and try to make something better or
atleast as good as them. I w ent to the “college of Google” and
learned everything I know from forums and tutorials. I have been
designing for 7 years now am I am making around $50,000 per year.

I think looking at good design… and taking a little mini bite out of it,
and making it better or making it your ow n to help a project you are
w orking on… doesn’t hurt. As long as w hen you compare w hat you
took from another design to your ow n, it isn’t a blatant rip off.

Great article though!!!!!! I do agree w ith 95% of w hat w as said! :-)

JANUARY 8TH, 2011 AT 15:48

DESIGN CAVERN

Lol, is this for me ? :D

Thank you

JANUARY 8TH, 2011 AT 16:20

MICHAEL PEHL

If I copy something then it is NOT the design itself, only functions

and/or the layout (w here is w hat).

I am not sure if that is “stealing”. I do not like copies of competitors

sites.

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JANUARY 8TH, 2011 AT 20:24

MARCELO MIRA

Well, I w anted to say that I am identified w ith Patric at several things

described in the article. I copied over and felt pretty stuck and mixing
rusulting nothing but nonsense. But now I think it’s better to stay
w ith my ow n original ideas, because as Patrick says, I know the
roots and complete anatomy of design, and then i know how to take
better steps.

JANUARY 9TH, 2011 AT 16:09

DKM

Nice article Patrick!. But let me tell all of you something, having totally
against to copy entire w ebsite as it is and call it your ow n, should
not stop ‘sneaking’ their codes and see how it is done, and inspired
w ith it, and come up better site that can be completely original. How
many of you have not click “View source”!? and please don’t tell me
that you did not copied piece of code (css, jquery, etc.) from the site
and implemented your site. In my opinion, a good designer should
have curious mind, w ho goes beyond the original, but inspired by
others.

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