Lately, my co-worker and friend Nathan Borror and I have had some discussions about what I like to call appropriation. You might call it remixing or influence, or you might refer to it as theft, rip-off, or copyright infringement.
Whatever you call it, one thing can not be denied: creative people, including us web designers, are more aware of intellectual property laws than ever before, and are tending to be far more uptight and even litigious about this sort of thing than in the past. I don’t think Nathan and I quite have the exact same view, but I think we do agree on this: a lot of people need to lighten the hell up.
A lot of this discussion came after both Nathan and I listed to an awesome episode of the great podcast Open Source entitled The Ectasy of Influence. That episode was a reaction to Jonathan Lethem’s terrific Harper’s article of the same name. The basic gist of the podcast is that appropriation of other people’s work is a core tenet of all forms of art (both fine and commercial), and that without it, many of our greatest artists would have never created their most significant works. Go listen to the podcast, and then return. Trust me.
I spent way too many years of my life studying jazz at a University. For those who don’t know, the way a jazz tune typically goes down is like this: a song basically consists of two things — a chord progression (the “changes”) and a melody (the “head”). That’s it. When a group of jazz musicians are on a bandstand, one will say something like, “let’s play a blues in F.” The blues, of course, is a set of changes (a chord progression). Someone else will say, “yeah, okay…how about Now’s The Time for the head?” Nods will ensue, and the next thing anyone says is, “uh one, two, uh one two three four…” and everyone starts playing the classic Charlie Parker tune. They group will play through the head, sometimes twice, and then there will be improvised solos. After the solos, they’ll play the head again, and the song will be over. Simple, huh?
Yes…but what about those improvised solos? How does one learn to improvise? Are they really making all that up on the spot?
One learns to improvise, mostly, by learning other people’s solos. When I played jazz trumpet in school, I had many an assignment to transcribe and/or memorize classic solos by Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, and Lee Morgan. Besides learning full solos, jazz students learn “licks,” short bebop phrases that work over a certain chord pattern, and scales designed specifically for a achieving a certain type of sound (such as the “blues scale” that most everyone learns in high school). Jazz musicians usually refer to all these bits as their “vocabulary.”
Imagine what would happen if someone cried foul and filed a lawsuit every time a horn player blew a Charlie Parker lick. It would be the end of jazz as we know it.
So, when a jazz player is actually on stage, playing a solo between the heads of a song, what they are really doing (almost always), is creatively piecing together snippets of other people’s solos, learned licks, and so forth. They are, quite literally, speaking with the vocabulary they’ve learned. They’re making up the sentences and paragraphs on the fly, but it’s pretty rare that they’re inventing new words.
In jazz, appropriation of other people’s solos isn’t only a given, it’s encouraged. It’s a part of the fabric of that music. Imagine what would happen if someone cried foul and filed a lawsuit every time a horn player blew a Charlie Parker lick. It would be the end of jazz as we know it.
I see the same thing in hip-hop these days. A quick Google search indicates that at least 15 different MCs have used the phrase “white tee and nikes,” or some derivative thereof, in their flows. I have no idea who said it first, but I don’t think anyone is getting sued over it. Some of the uses are no doubt referential — perhaps even homages to those who said it before them — and others are probably just flat-out theft.
Many creative people, be they web designers or otherwise, go through a process of “finding their voice.” This can take many, many years. Often times, during this phase, they re-appropriate ideas from other sources. Eventually, many of them will “find their voice” and become a great artist in their own right. Charlie Parker himself alluded to this when he said, “You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.” Should these people be shunned and ousted from the community while they are going through this process?
We know Picasso made a habit of ganking ideas from other painters. He even uttered the famous quote, “good artists copy, great artists steal.” We know that some of the greatest pop music of the past several years has been the result of heavy sampling (see Dangermouse’s Grey Album or Gnarles Barkley’s record “Crazy”). We know that some of the coolest web apps are mashups of data from disparate sources. And so on.
So why is it that we web designers flip out when we find a site that resembles our own?
I’m not sure. I don’t have all the answers here. I just want to start a discussion about it. My personal feeling is one that is pretty liberal. The only thing that really offends me personally, is egregious, flat-out theft of my intellectual property. You will make me angry if you directly steal my site’s design and pass it off as your own work. You probably won’t make me angry at all if you steal bits and pieces of my work and add value to them by mashing them up with your own ideas, or those of others. You also won’t likely make me angry if you steal my site’s design and give me proper credit. I probably will be irritated, though, if you steal my site’s design and sell it to a client.
What is boils down to, I think, is that it’d be nearly impossible to come up with hard and fast rules about this sort of thing. Each case needs to be evaluated on its own, I think.
But, overall, I think the web design community is just a little too uptight about this stuff.
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001 // Brian Ford // 03.04.2007 // 6:37 PM
“The basic gist of the podcast is that appropriation of other people’s work is a core tenant of all forms of art (both fine and commercial), and that without it, many of our greatest artists would have never created their most significant works.”
I think you’re actually talking about appropriating other people’s “techniques and styles” — and not so much their work. I suppose you could say collage is appropriating work, but there you’re taking snippets of work and combining it with your own work and (possibly) snippets of other people’s work to create a “new” work. This isn’t copying, really. You can bet that most artists wouldn’t have been cool with a wholesale recreation of a work if it were a stroke for stroke replication.
I guess I just feel like you’re saying that people are upset about one thing (copying) but then describing something different (mixing). I think most people would be with you on this?
“We know Picasso make a habit of ganking ideas from other painters. He even uttered the famous quote, “good artists copy, great artists steal.””
We know that? How so? I recall that Braque and Picasso basically -jointly- ushered in Cubism — but I think “collaboration” is different than “ganking”.
By the way, that’s the first time the word “ganking” has been used in -at least- 10 years.
In the end, even borrowing too heavily from one author for anything except “to learn” seems like a bad idea if you want to be taken seriously as a designer.
As for the quote:
I suspect he meant that copying is a reproduction of someone else’s work — stealing is taking someone’s work and making it your own.
002 // Jeff Croft // 03.04.2007 // 6:55 PM
No, I’m more talking about appropriating their work. Just like Dangermouse and Gnarles Barkey did. And just like jazz musicians do every day when they play licks directly lifted from Charlie Parker solos.
Exactly. This is the process of taking something, remixing it, and coming up with something new. It’s the process that I’ve seen web designers freak out over, usually at the same time as they listen to sampled music on their headphones.
Did you read the last part of my post? I clearly said that egregious, flat-out copying without brining anything new to the table and especially without credit and for profit is highly offensive to me.
There was a very sensitive and hot-button case late last year in which someone took the basic layout of one popular site, combined it with some graphics from another popular site, added a few things of his own, and then sold it to a client. Web designers (even myself included) flipped out. The guy basically got ousted from the community. Blogger after blogger wrote about how horrific an incident this was, and probably pretty much ruined his business.
I’m now wondering, in hindsight, how what he did was any different than what Dangermouse did. He took components from a few different sources — without permission — and mashed them up. Just like Dangermouse.
I’m talking about mixing, not copying. I think we can all agree that copying is offensive. But the thing is, what I consider mixing, you might consider copying. In the case I am referring to, the line was clearly blurred. He copied some graphics directly — but them “mixed” them with other sources. Mixing, or copying? I say mixing (now), but at the time a lot of people felt like he was copying.
Then you didn’t take my advice and listen to the podcast, thus you didn’t get the reference, and thus the joke was lost on you.
Which is exactly what I’m talking about. We should lighten up when people take bits from our work and make it their own.
I just re-read the post and thought I was pretty clear about the fact that I’m talking about remixing and re-appropriation, and not about flat-out copying. If I wasn’t, I apologize.
003 // Keith // 03.04.2007 // 7:03 PM
I agree with you. As long as it’s not blantant and obvious stealing, it doesn’t bother me so much. In many ways it’s better to be good than original and to that extent designers should “copy” what works.
I think most professional designers are fine with that. Hell some of the best Web designers out there make no bones about the fact that they draw inspiration from others, and why should they? It’s pretty common to see something that works and want to emulate it.
And, yes, each situation has to be look at individually and there is kind of a thin, fuzzy line between being inspired by/borrowing/copying, etc. and stealing. It’s a sticky issue at times, but, yeah, nothing to get too worked up about unless it’s outright, 100% obvious theft on an entire-design-type scale.
004 // Brett Terpstra // 03.04.2007 // 7:05 PM
I appreciate the jazz allegory, and it meshes well with my own arguments on this front. There is a fine line between “copying” and “mixing” and an artist understands that all visual ideas are inspired by something we’ve already seen. It’s what we do with that inspiration that draws the line between theft and inspiration.
And I perhaps should not admit this, but here in my corner of Minnesota, the term “ganking” has never gone out of style.
005 // Keith // 03.04.2007 // 7:11 PM
I should add that when I say “copy” I don’t mean it in the exact way you mean “appropriate” but recognize that there is a big grey area there and we could spend all day on the semantics of all of this.
To me it’s what comes out the other side that is most important, not exactly where it started from.
006 // Kwok Ting Lee // 03.04.2007 // 7:27 PM
Your analogy to jazz music reminds me of one of the most interesting ideas for a collaborative law review article I received from a fellow law student and avid electronic/sampled music afficionado: what is the legal status of sampling, say, 30 second snippets from other musical sources and then weaving them together, with a whole lot of creativity, into entirely new symphonic works that stand alone? Does the sampler need to obtain the rights from the original copyright owner or can he/she fit into some category of fair use or other exception to the copyright regime? And if sampling 30 seconds is all right, what about sampling 60 seconds? Where do we draw the line?
I never got around to co-authoring that article, as we both got sucked into other projects, but it remains an area on my “to be researched if I have the time” list.
I think Jeff has nailed it when he says that there is no clear line that can be drawn between appropriation and theft. Even today, sampling and parody cases in courts tend to end up being judged on its own facts, because there is no way to draw a bright line dividing legal and illegal appropriations of others work to create new and possibly original works.
007 // roberthahn // 03.04.2007 // 7:45 PM
I have a B.A. in Fine Arts. One of the things that came with the curriculum, intended or otherwise, was the need to copy other artists’ styles. Heck, I even had a prof who insisted we copy his style!
Your post, Jeff, provoked a couple of thoughts that I wanted to share. If web designers, as a generalization, gets that upset over perceived instances of design theft, then I think it’s because they haven’t had the courage to be freely inspired by other people and experimenting with styles that are not their own. It’s even weirder to consider their reaction when people generally redesign the look of their sites after a short lifetime - if their design was that good, why not use it ‘forever’?
That said, there is one quality about web design not found in music or possibly art (I should make an exception for collages and digital art), and that’s the ability to take any digital resource and make a bit-identical copy of it. The act of copying a file requires so much less effort than the act of creating it, that yeah, indignation feels like an appropriate response if evidence is found that a simple copy has taken place.
I mentioned making exceptions for collages and digital art. The latter, I think, has the same issues as web design, provided that the artist has made their source file(s) available to anyone. But collage is an interesting animal that I want to point out. It is a legitimate medium, the way painting, drawing, or sculpture is (and probably about as old, too). It shares one interesting aspect with digital art, and that’s the ability to use other people’s work as a basis to create your own. I’m pretty sure that as a rule, people (or organizations) don’t get upset if their work becomes part of a collage, and I wonder if one reason for that would be because of the time the artist had to spend integrating any one element into the work.
The bottom line then appears to be: it’s bad to make a bit-identical copy of someone’s work if it’s perceived that not much time was needed to integrate it into the new work.
The answer isn’t “don’t do that”. Dear God, I hope it never comes to that. But I think there is a way to appropriate elements and styles of other people’s work without ruffling feathers. I also think that using this simple technique would even make you (or your client) look more professional: add a colophon to the site. No doubt most of your readership and you have seen the ones at the end of the O’Reilly books. It costs next to nothing to add one to the site, and it would be a perfect spot to cite (even link to) sources of inspiration. Interesting fact: The earliest use of colophon is the Greek kolophōn, meaning ‘summit or finishing touch.’ I kinda like that thinking; let’s encourage the development of colophons, and make them the ‘finishing touch’ on our sites.
008 // Dane // 03.04.2007 // 7:58 PM
I spent two years as a jazz studies major myself. I remember pulling those all-nighters in the practice room, running Patterns for Jazz, memorizing Parker licks, and transcribing Adderley solos.
I would go through the Real Book, transposing on-the-fly and playing as many charts as possible in all twelve keys. I’d run through my chords, in fifths and fourths and chromatically and in ii/V7/I progressions. I remember woodshedding until my lips were bleeding.
Jazz has a reputation of being an art of pure spontaneity. Yet most of what I spent my time paining over in college wasn’t invention, or even improvisation for that matter, but mimicry and internalization. My job was to take the work of the greatest talents in jazz, coupled with a suffocating pile of music theory, and learn it all so I could ultimately forget it.
I couldn’t imagine learning jazz without listening to those wailing bebop solos, transcribing them, analyzing them and memorizing them, sometimes listening to the same fifteen seconds over and over for an entire afternoon.
And then, I couldn’t imagine learning web design by any other means, either. When I see something I like I immediately start ripping it apart. I want to transcribe its notes, so to speak, analyze the chord changes, find the tri-tone substitutions and such.
Sometimes these efforts of mine glow white-hot for a spell and are just as quickly abandoned, and other times they find their way into my future work. Sometimes the move is unconscious, the result of my internalization of a particular method.
Just as the best way to progress in jazz is to study the work of other jazz musicians, I believe the best way to become a better web designer (or developer or UI geek or whatever concentration) is the study other web designers. To demand invention and originality at every stop along the way does a disservice to the entire industry, as it effectively shuts people out of the very resources that got it here in the first place. Woodshed, then improvise.
009 // reese // 03.04.2007 // 10:27 PM
Last year someone took a huge chunk of my content, verbatim, plus my layout and worked up a site with it. Given google’s take on duplicate content, I was pretty ticked ;)
But what you’re talking about here is essentially the evolution of design. It’s probably darn near impossible for any designer to not be—at least at a subconscious level—inspired and influenced by other work that evolves itself into their own work. It’s presumptuous of anyone to claim their design work is entirely original—all art begets other art, and that’s part of what makes art and design fulfilling and a reflection of the world in various time periods.
Robert Hahn summed it up well in his comment when he said “If web designers, as a generalization, gets that upset over perceived instances of design theft, then I think it’s because they haven’t had the courage to be freely inspired by other people and experimenting with styles that are not their own.”
010 // Brian Ford // 03.04.2007 // 10:50 PM
“No, I’m more talking about appropriating their work. Just like Dangermouse and Gnarles Barkey did. And just like jazz musicians do every day when they play licks directly lifted from Charlie Parker solos.”
That’s fine — I guess there’s just too many words “copy” “appropriate” “steal” “work” etc — and I think that too many people will have different definitions of those words. Some people might have the same definition for two of them, while others might see them as different actions altogether.
First, I guess I wasn’t aware that there was an outcry about anything other than wholesale rip-offs. But then, I’m not really all that into the web design scene, so I wouldn’t know that. Second, I think if you were saying that the great artists fed off of each other when it comes to technique, etc — I can get behind that. On the other hand, I think their “work” was their own. Sure, they saw what other artists were doing, but that didn’t make them skilled painters.
The trouble with Design: You can copy and paste some code (whatever) without having any personal skill whatsoever and “appear” to be a talented designer.
I dunno, as an artist, I guess I’m just stuck on the analogy — because I think “what you can steal” as a fine artist is very very different from “what you can steal” as a designer.
011 // Jeff Croft // 03.04.2007 // 11:33 PM
This makes me thing of a couple interesting things:
Indeed. There is, of course, the fact that design is functional. It’s problem solving and communication, done for money, and often done for the purpose of making money for a client. It’s not art. Lots of designers want to believe they are artists, but we’re not. At some point, one has to ask, “if this particular solution to the problem is the best one and the one that best serves my client’s needs, shouldn’t I implement it, even though it’s been done before?” Wouldn’t you, in fact, be a poorer designer if you chose not to steal a great idea if that idea is the perfect solution to the problem?
This matter was discussed at least year’s SXSW in a panel with a guy from the Mac OS X team and a guy from the Vista team. The Microsoft guy said things to this effect. He said (and I’m totally paraphrasing), “Fine, Apple made Expose before we made Vista’s window switcher. And yes, we knew people would cry foul and say we copied the idea from Apple. But wouldn’t our customers cry even more foul if we didn’t give them a great window switcher? At what point is something just too good an idea not to borrow it?”
This whole topic is very fascinating to me — and I’m not proclaiming to have all the answers. I’d just like to see it discussed, that’s all.
012 // Jeff Croft // 03.04.2007 // 11:37 PM
Oh oh oh….I have the perfect example for this debate (thanks, Kyle Jones!).
Original: http://www.summer.tnvacation.com/ Newer site: http://www.toubeauty.com/salon/fresh-news/
How feel the masses on this one?
013 // porcupine // 03.05.2007 // 2:30 AM
Designing for yourself or your company must be the most difficult part of this work. Your website is home, is you. I spent many hours trying to convey me into a website. And I failed.
Then I saw Hemingway theme. I thought it was perfect for me (with some enhancements or modifications of course). So I adopted it.
Then I saw this page. I thought that it wasn’t fair for me to have a website which looks like Jeff Croft’s one. After some serious thought I kept mine.
Why am I saying all this? Because I think that good ideas prevail. And as Picasso implied great artists steal an idea and transform it to something new, original. Nevertheless a good idea makes everyone better, especially the one who had it at first place.
You must know it, much better than me, people who innovate might flip out when they see their work being copied and pasted, but they do know that they are ahead, they are leaders. So this thing is part of the game.
One more thing: think of someone who doesn’t have too many opportunities to learn more, to become educated, to do what he likes to do. When this person finds some valuable sources he sticks to them, because he knows he has no alternatives. What I am actually saying is being able to forgive and to forget others is good because it help us move on.
014 // Jesse Legg // 03.05.2007 // 6:30 AM
Great post. I call this the “Bags from Chinatown” problem. In the real world, anyone can see the stitching and design of the fake Coach handbag you bought in Chinatown is obviously of inferior quality. Some people, like myself before I was married, might not know what to look for, nor care. But if I did, I could.
Stylesheets and Python code, unfortunately, are not stitches. The average person cannot evaluate a piece of code, or even the results of executing that code. Even trained designers and programmers differ when evaluating style and form until conventions are established. Oops, did I say conventions?
The questions you pose seem to knot together with the question, what makes for good design? What if someone ripped off your site, but did so using table tags. Exactly the same look, but source code filled with tag soup. Theft?
Coach handbags get copied so quickly, sometimes the fake arrives before the real thing! They face the same problem as web designers or any other artist. When a copy can be made almost instantly, and for cheap, how do you differentiate yourself?
You can try educating your customers. Tell them why the rip-off design is no good. When you want to make changes, the rip-off artist won’t have muster to get the job done. Coach does this. They claim knock-off manufacturers employ child labor and violate all kinds of human rights laws.
You can also just be so damn cool that, like Charlie Parker, everyone knows you and wants to copy you. That’s probably the best approach but also the most difficult.
015 // Brian Ford // 03.05.2007 // 8:53 AM
“How feel the masses on this one?”
Well, I kinda don’t like that the sites both feature a photo contest. I think if you’re going to appropriate someone’s aesthetic work, it really ought not be for a competing service. (And this is something that -should- matter in the debate: Are the services identical as well as the design? Is the new site in a field unrelated to the original? Etc.)
Just in a design sense, I see the latter as homage, more than complete rip.
016 // roberthahn // 03.05.2007 // 9:10 AM
Jeff said:
As a designer who’s also an artist, I would say ‘well, duh! steal away!’ So I’m wondering if that isn’t as obvious to the designer-not-artists out there. And if that’s the case, why not?
Saw the two sites you mentioned in comment 12, and, well, there are resemblances, but I’m not seeing anything to get upset about. I would consider that an acceptable amount of idea stealing. Obviously the colors are appropriate in both cases. So if anyone’s indignant, I sure hope they can tell me why.
017 // roberthahn // 03.05.2007 // 9:22 AM
hmm.. A thought: if you were to visit my blog, you’d see that the dominant design element is the photo on the right. If someone were to steal that, I’d be pretty upset about it (unless they cited where they got it from). But if someone were to take their own picture, standing on the exact spot i was, and having a kid (even the same kid) do the same thing, I wouldn’t care.
Am I being inconsistent in my stance? I don’t think so. A photo is a representation of my skill in timing and composing the view. My work had more to do with getting the shot right than the result of that work. But if you make a copy of that image, without attribution, then you’ve sidestepped all the consideration that went into making the work in the first place. It is, quite legitimately, a violation of my copyright on that work.
So really, what this all boils down to is whether your copyrights have been violated or not. And the best way to approach that problem is to sit down and actually read copyright law.
The Canadian Copyright Act is quite readable, but may not apply in your jurisdiction. :)
018 // Gidget // 03.05.2007 // 10:17 AM
Here’s another dimension of this same issue - several years ago I was doing a lot of design for a large company in the luxury market. I developed a signature style, which has now been copied to death.
This both aggravates and flatters me - obviously what I did was good, to be so often copied. The lack of originality annoys me, and because it is now being so widely used, I possibly look like the imitator rather than the creator.
However, the net result of this is that it pushes me to be more creative, to come up with something new and interesting.
This “problem” is more prevalent on the web, because of the ease of the cut n paste, but I think the same dynamic holds true - once everybody’s doing it, you take up a notch, evolve it, find something new and interesting - and I think this process is what pushes design forward.
People do get so bent over this issue, and I think the reality is that all work is derivative to some degree, very very derivative on the web as a genre, and time is so much better spent on innovation than fussing over who stole whos header file or jumbo footer or color scheme.
019 // Seth Galitzer // 03.05.2007 // 10:46 AM
Maybe I’m just not an artist, but I guess nobody ever heard the adage “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” I do play tenor sax in a blues band, though. I haven’t played an original note in years. If anybody ever ganked one of my solos, I’d be thrilled.
020 // reese // 03.05.2007 // 10:47 AM
Something that seems to be lacking a bit in this debate and that I forgot to bring up as well is the issue of brand dilution from the client perspective.
Jeff, in the example you cited that happened last year, what if the site that ‘borrowed’ inspiration from another site happened to be in the exact same industry as site #1? Could that be a potential problem for site #1 in terms of brand confusion?
I know that when my own site was ripped, both content and the majority of layout and style choices, part of my frustration was over the copier’s inability to understand his own brand and that he piggybacked on mine (both in content and style)—he happened to be a web designer, so he was ‘in’ my industry. If, say, a random personal blogger borrowed heavily from my design work and wasn’t trying to sell any design services, I wouldn’t blow a gasket over it.
The music industry is an interesting analogy. When Vanilla Ice sampled Under Pressure, was there an outcry? You could argue that “Ice Ice Baby” created a new generation of Queen and Bowie fans, so there’s a kickback of sorts to the original creators. Obviously jazz is different than sampling, but does the evolution of jazz ‘dilute’ in any way the prior creations? Does a heavily borrowed design dilute its previous rendition, particularly if the inspired piece is a competitor in the same industry? I can’t help but wonder what Seth Godin would think of all this. He’s for idea sharing, in general—where does design and the unique elements of a specific design fall into play when it comes to commercial work?
021 // A Jeff Croft Fan Who Is Also An Irritating Pedant // 03.05.2007 // 1:36 PM
A tenant pays rent. A tenet is a principle. Just thought you should know. Great article!
022 // Dale Cruse // 03.05.2007 // 2:21 PM
Good discussion, Jeff. One small point, however: “Licks” are not relegated to just the bebop genre. There are licks associated with Dixie, big band, swing, and just about any other genre.
023 // Nathan Borror // 03.05.2007 // 7:25 PM
When enough people are copying ya you’re probably doing something right. It also might mean it’s time to come up with something new :)
Great post.
Like old stories passed down through generations — Art and Design lives on through appropriation.
024 // Jeff Croft // 03.05.2007 // 7:36 PM
Of course. But who wants to listen to that? :)
025 // Natalie // 03.05.2007 // 11:37 PM
I see where you’re going with the music analogy, Jeff, but my experience with music is different, at least in its relation to design. Recreational music like jazz or any music that’s not played for profit of any kind is very different. The world isn’t hearing that music or have access to it. It’s typically small groups. So “copying” doesn’t really hurt anyone because the audience is so small.
BUT… when music is broadcast, even when non-profit, it becomes a public thing and then takes so much away from the original creator of that music. In the same way, the web is much different because it has such a broad audience. If you were to copy a website for use on your own local machine or across a small office network’s intranet, that’s very different than a blog or other website “brodcasting” itself across the internet and through the veins of search engines.
Once the audience has expanded to a certain point, the theft has become so great that it creates real harm to the original creator, particularly in cases where a designer’s brand or identity are caught up in that design. When someone “appropriates” your brand, your identity, it’s detrimental to your business and reputation. It’s about more than intellectual property at that point.
There’s also a difference in motive. You can usually tell the people who are genuinely trying to learn and hone a craft, and the other creeps who just don’t care to learn and want to get things the easy way with no hard work - those people suck.
026 // Jeff Croft // 03.06.2007 // 12:07 AM
Natalie, I think I understand your point, so that’s cool…but, jazz most certainly is recorded and sold and still very popular, even today. It’s definitely not just something that’s played in smoky clubs for a few people who are still stuck in the 50s.
There’s even the whole genre of “acid jazz” and “trip-hop,” wherein people often mashup jazz horns and solos (which often use classic, appropriated licks and quotes) with sampled bass lines and beats (usually from hip-hop recordings, which are usually sampled from funk and soul records).
Your point (that stealing something on the web releases it to a wider audience) may be valid, but the suggestion that jazz is “recreational music” that is not broadcast and “not played for profit” is just not correct. There are still hundreds of jazz radio stations in the US broadcasting jazz every day and hundreds of thousands of jazz records sold every year — much of which features samples and/or stolen licks, the vast majority of which were taken without permission.
Okay, but it sounds like you’re talking about someone stealing your intellectual property (website, logo, some other brand asset, etc.), and trying to act like it’s theirs. That’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m talking about influence, remixing, and mashing-up. I said myself, at the end of the post, “You will make me angry if you directly steal my site’s design and pass it off as your own work.”
I’m talking about cases like the one mentioned in comment number 12, which could probably be called a “remix,” in music terms. There’s enough of the original in tact to see it and recognize it, but they’ve also clearly taken it and made it into something entirely new and their own.
That’s what I’m talking about.
Suck, they may — but are they really hurting you? Do you have any evidence of it? I’m doubtful. I’ve had my site “ripped” several times, and I can’t say it ever negatively affected me. Did it positively affect the person who “ripped me off?” Maybe. I don’t know. And I don’t really care. Unless they’re doing something that directly hurts me in some way that I can see and prove, I’m not going to be bothered. It’s simply not worth my time and stress.
It’s really easy to run around saying, “you’re devaluing my brand,” and “you’re causing confusion in the marketplace,” and “you’re killing my business” — but are you really sure any of that is even true? I’m certainly not.
Frankly, the only businesses I’ve ever seen ruined by people ripping websites are their own.
027 // Natalie Jost // 03.06.2007 // 12:37 AM
Jeff, I didn’t mean to say Jazz isn’t popular. I was only referring to Jazz in the context you used it. You talked about sitting with a bunch of guys and jamming, that’s what is recreational. I wasn’t talking about Jazz in general. :)
“Frankly, the only businesses I’ve ever seen ruined by people ripping websites are their own.”
Until someone thinks YOU’RE the copycat, right? You’re right though, I have no personal experience with this, thankfully. I guess for me it’s an issue of character more than anything. I just can’t respect someone (personally or professionally) who casually pulls pieces of one design or another and passes it off as their own idea.
But that’s the gray area. Where people are simply mixing and matching (creating originals of the pieces they’re using and not just copy/pasting), it seems that’s okay, if borderline, but blatant “re-labelling” of a design is just wrong, no matter the “designer’s” intentions. That’s what many people do and then later, when caught, they’ll say they were “inspired” to save face. If we’re really about learning - and teaching - there should be more accountability among peers, teaching us to really hone our individual skills and preventing copying in the first place.
028 // Moritz Angermann // 03.06.2007 // 7:03 AM
Hi Jeff, you are definitively right on the topic. I’ve been thinking about this issue for quite a few years now and came to the conclusion that it is in our nature. It is Evolution. Instant Creation is near impossible at least for humans. We are tainted by what we know, what we see, where our interests lie, what we’ve been tought by school (see your jazz analogy).
We have to accept that we are who we are and that a huge chunk in that is what we have experiences up to now. This is where ones style come from.
For every artistic work, you will concious or unconciously use what you know.
On Webdesign: Designing is a talent like playing music, something that you are born with or not. If you are not you can either pay a designer to do your work or rip someone. Latter one is what you do when you have no money and no respect for crediting someone.
Why do they get so p*ssed on rips? I have the feeling that many designers started off doing rips and modifying them. But beeing riped themselve is a completely different issue, because now the partcipants were swaped. If this is your first design where you did >80% of the design your self you feel pretty hurt on this. Especially if no credit is given. And let me repeat: In the old days giving credit was the appropriate way to thank the original author from whom you took the source. These days it seems like givin credit is putting shame on you.
In school I learned that giving credit where credit is due was the only way to avoid an F.
But it is something else: if you want to be taken seriously give credit where credit is due. And if the original author did explicitly said he does not want his work to be reused. Just don’t do it! Respect the author.
On the other hand authors should see: ripping a design does nearly never work correctly unless done by a real designer, because elements will not work, the content and the layout won’t match. etc. So either the designer is skilled and knows what he does or the rip is worth nothing. If he sold it for some buck… so what? he can get his next pizza and someone else was so stupid to buy it. I would not care!
As a designer you have to be aware that once your art is displayed on public someone will take ideas, small or big chunks from it no matter how bad your design is (it’s taste dependant). People will rip parts. And we should all get over with it and stop fighting so called interlectual property theft.
I for one like to work not fight. And a skilled designer will not loose his clients because someone else ripped his design. So how the ripper going to design for the next client he gets? Bet on luck to find a new one to rip? That’s a business model you really need to be afraid off!
okay I’ve burped enough now. I hope the point got through.
kindest regards, Moritz
PS: my Preview of this post reveals an empty post … omg?!
029 // David Comdico // 03.06.2007 // 11:43 AM
Appropriation in art is playful, an added layer of metatext that self-referentially places the work in a larger context. Commerce is a secondary concern, if a concern at all.
Web design is, generally, quite different in approach and effect and the commercial requirements inherent in this discipline enforce this difference. A web designer is usually concerned about their competetive advantage over other web designers and so are protective of their work.
One speaks to consumers, the other to the gods.
Thus is the difference between commerce and art.
030 // Grant Blakeman // 03.06.2007 // 12:08 PM
Intention. I think that whether or not someone “blatantly-copied” or just “remixed” an idea comes down to intention. Did you steal my work because it was easier, or were you inspired and are learning from it or taking it to a new level?
The problem is that intention isn’t easily judged.
031 // Eric // 03.06.2007 // 1:37 PM
I like Jay Leno’s take on this subject - and I’m paraphrasing:
Someone’s going to steal your jokes. When they do you just write new ones.
The reason I like what he says is because it floats right over the [creatively distracting] negative aspects of getting ripped off and keeps the focus on the golden goose.
032 // Peter // 03.06.2007 // 4:43 PM
OK here’s my take. I’m a programmer not a designer, but need to design websites every so often.
With programming am I bothered whether I write code that does something someone else has already created? No - because I can show the the code to achieve the result is different.
With design I find it a very hard line between inspiration and copying. I refuse to copy other people’s work, which means my designs are generally worse than they should be because I won’t take parts of someone’s design and weave them into mine. It’s the question of at what point it stops being inspiration? Is copying from multiple sources wrong? I’d say it is… it’s theft on a smaller scale. Yet it’s done pretty much everywhere.
When I do website design, if someone has come up with the best way to get to a result I cannot show that I approached the problem a different way and arrived at the same result. It’s like user interface enhancements - to copy may be better for the user, but it shows you are copying. There’s only so many ways a form can be laid out or a comment presented.
I like your suggestion that melding all the elements together makes it different from copying - I will be more laid back about whether I’m doing the wrong thing and see what happens…
033 // Jeff Croft // 03.06.2007 // 5:22 PM
Yeah, but that is jazz music. That’s what is on the records that are sold. Guys jamming. Jazz is improvisational by definition. If a music doesn’t include improvisation, then it’s very arguable whether it’s jazz or not. And if it does include improvisation, then it almost certainly has remnants of appropriation.
Perhaps, but that’s speculation again. Has this every really happened. Has any web designer ever been accused of stealing a design, when it fact it was someone else that stole it from them?
My point to you, Natalie, was that there are a lot of reasons you can come up with why stealing will harm a web designer’s business — but 99% of them never happen in the real world. They’re just theoretical problems, not real ones.
Right — I don’t think there’s any argument about that. I said it in my post, and so has almost every commenter. The problem is that it’s difficult to determine what constitutes a “blatant re-labeling”. The case I mentioned earlier (The Falkner Winery/Third & Grand case) was called a “blatant rip-off” by most web designers. And yet, it definitely wasn’t just “re-labeling.” It took parts from multiple sites and mashed them up.
It’s easy for everyone to agree that flat-out stealing is wrong. It’s difficult for everyone to agree on what constitutes “flat-out stealing.”
Right. So you are asserting that music, and other media where we see massive appropriation, is “art” and not done for commercial reasons? Man, i wish I had your optimism.
I’m glad you said it, because i was going to if you didn’t. :)
034 // Paul // 03.06.2007 // 5:38 PM
Jeff-
This is such a GREAT post. Being more of a developer than a designer, I struggle A LOT with designing even my own personal site. I lack some of the artistry to bridge the gap between developer and designer, and it’s frustrating. While trying to create my own site, I’ve been browsing the net looking for ideas. When I see something I like, I don’t feel much shame in grabbing the source and making an inspection. I don’t steal the graphics, but I’ll steal the ideas for the layout AND for the graphics.
I do believe, however, that credit needs to be given where credit is due. Seriously, I think we would have been sans at least one Vanilla Ice joke if he had blatantly said “Yeah, I liked the ‘Under Pressure’ riff, so I used it.” A simple thank you should suffice in each case, but I believe that MUST occur. However, the web is FAIRLY open source, due to it’s architecture, and if you plan on working primarily on the web, expect “appropriation” in some degree or another, and be flattered when it happens.
Paul
035 // Dan Rubin // 03.07.2007 // 12:40 PM
As a musician (jazz and all sorts of other styles) I get your point, and I see and experience it with the music I listen to (the Verve Remixed series is a perfect example of sampling in this manner), however I think comparing the issue to familiar product designs will make things even more clear (assuming we all agree that a primary difference between “art” and “design” is that design is meant to be used).
Automobile Design
Let’s look at something most of us use every day: the car. Since its introduction, designs have varied a bit, and certainly manufacturers and designers continue to come up with new concepts, but it’s clear that every car design out there has been directly influenced by what has come before, and not just from the same designers or manufacturers. Do you think Henry Ford and his team designed the Model A without first looking at what others had done, and incorporating the good parts?
Laptops
This shouldn’t need explaining for your audience: think of almost any worthwhile feature of a laptop, and then think of how many manufacturers copied that feature and incorporated it into their own designs. It’s exactly like the comment you mentioned earlier from the Vista guy at SXSW: how many Apple laptop features have become standard in all laptops over the years?
iPod
Easy example: Apple wasn’t the first company to think “ooh, let’s allow people to put music on a portable device and carry it around with them!” They weren’t even the first to allow you to do that with digital files. And do you think they were the ones who came up with the idea to let users listen to their music using headphones? Sure, they invented and pioneered other parts of the physical interface, and engineered an entire experience, but much of the core concept that is critical to the device was not original.
Phones
Think about it for about 10 seconds, then make your own list. This one’s easy. (yes yes, Apple is doing new things with the iPhone, but seriously, it’s still a phone, still makes and receives calls, still has a speaker and a mic, and is hand-held - think about the cornerstones of the design and you find an existing idea with an Apple skin - and you’re damn right I’m buying one :)
A few others for your perusal
I can go on like this for hours listing things we use every day without thinking about the design process that went into them, and how many designers of those products copied the good ideas and conventions that came before.
Without this natural process of appropriation, products would not improve as rapidly. I argue that the same goes for any interface, whether physical or virtual, and forcing yourself to start from a blank canvas every time you design will only limit your ability to invent and innovate, rather than enhancing it.
036 // Dan Rubin // 03.07.2007 // 2:56 PM
Strangely, I was given an error when trying to post the above comment (too many characters, even though it was just under the 3000 character limit on comments), so after chatting with Jeff briefly I decided to just post it on my site instead.
Now I return here, and see my comment… sooooooo, feel free to just keep the conversation going here, or if you want to go off on my specific tangent, head on over to my post and discuss.
037 // Jeff Croft // 03.07.2007 // 3:48 PM
Sorry about that, Dan — there’s a little screwiness going on with my comment preview function in which sometimes a “preview” gets posted. I’ll fix that shortly.
Great comment, though. :)
038 // Johan // 03.13.2007 // 7:32 AM
Good designers observe, and absorb all. This could be anything: from a thought, a conversation, a book or a movie. Who cares about art, anything can be turned into art. It just happens, and it just happens we design for people, and if anyone wants to call it art, i just dont care about it.
039 // Johan // 03.14.2007 // 8:58 AM
For example the SXSW logo (2007) is a totall ripoff from the Italian 70s animation series La ligna. But like any superb music cover or Picasso quote explains: just make it your own. BTW, I cannot see that from SXSW logo for that matter.
040 // Greg Paulhus // 03.24.2007 // 11:16 AM
I believe that in the music industry when you sample, you have to track down the sample and get permission, and you also then have to carve out a percentage of the royalties to the artist or artists you are sampling from. Heavy enough use of a sample on a song can actually result in the sampled artist legally being the author of your song. A well known case of this is Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve. The music is a loop of a Rolling Stones song, and it was deemed such a substantial part of the song that The Verve had to pay 100 percent of their royalties to the Rolling Stones for that song.
And, when the song was nominated for a Grammy, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were the nominees, not The Verve. If you listen to both tracks, it’s quite clear that Bittersweet Symphony wouldn’t be the song it is without the Stones track. The Verve clearly violated the original licensing agreement and used way too much of the original music, so much that the loop essentially became the song.
All this being said, I routinely archive good design ideas. If I see a site layout with a grid I think is good, or a nav menu idea, or an interesting logo placement, or other design ideas. I’ll note them, and maybe use them for inspiration. Recently I saw a site with solid color horizontal wide stripes mixed with a horizontal stripe with a slight angled line pattern. It was a nice upscale look, so I used the basic idea on a site for a client. The finished website looks nothing like the original site, but the ‘subtle angled pattern meets solid color’ is what inspired the overall design.
My opinion on the two sites in comment 12 is that the ‘inspired design’ is too lazy. It’s too close in my opinion. The Tennessee site is actually one that I archived in my ‘design inspiration file’ because I like the idea of the big horizontal nav menu. But I would never use the same colors and the same proportions. I would create something based around the idea of the nav, and the end result would be very different.
041 // Jeff Croft // 03.24.2007 // 1 PM
To be legit, yes — you do. Which is why I repeatedly used the Dangermouse example, since he did it without permission and created one of the biggest phenomenon of that year. Was it “legal?” No. Was it a great piece of work? Yes.
Okay, but there’s a world of difference between “lazy” and “stolen.”
042 // Greg Paulhus // 03.26.2007 // 7:23 PM
Well… I’d say the Grey Album is interesting, but it’s pushing it to say it’s a great piece of work. Many of the original Jay-Z songs were ruined in my opinion. 99 Problems is a good example, on the Grey Album it’s lame compared to the original. I was a percussion major in university (yes, break out the drummer jokes) and I do a lot of mixing and sampling these days. I give full credit for the idea of the Grey Album, but do I listen to it today after the novelty has worn off? Not really.
I guess the point is, even with something as interesting as the Grey Album, just ripping and mixing other people’s ideas or work is kind of lame. Like the inspired design from comment 12 is lame. The Grey Album isn’t lame, but it’s not great either, it’s just okay. That’s just one man’s opinion.
043 // Jeff Croft // 03.26.2007 // 7:36 PM
Greg-
That’s a valid opinion of the Grey Album, but I’m not sure that it really furthers the discussion here. The interesting question is not wether this sort of appropriation results in great art (because I think we would all agree that the answer to that is “sometimes, but not usually”), but rather wether it’s morally “okay” to do it.
044 // Greg Paulhus // 03.27.2007 // 10:11 AM
That’s what I was getting at with my opinion of the Grey Album. I would say no, it’s not okay. I’m a huge fan of inspiration, but the inspired design in comment 12 is hardly inspired, it’s a lame, lazy copy. Inspiration would be taking the original design idea and having it spark a new idea. I suppose a music analogy might be that while the Grey Album is interesting, it creates nothing new. Compare that to Pearl Jam’s latest album, clearly inspired by many sources but it creates something new, and I’ll probably be listening to it for years.
So, my final opinion? Appropriation is lame. Inspiration is cool. In the words of the rockers from the movie Airheads, ‘Don’t make us be lame dude.’ Or something like that.
045 // Willis Witze // 07.04.2007 // 2:29 AM
Very interesting article and discussion in the comments.
046 // Student // 09.04.2008 // 5:06 PM
Yes I think this is one of the longest discussions after a good posting I saw last days :-)