All aboard the train of thievery. There’s been a lot of talk about people stealing designs lately. The obvious one is the highly disputed matter at Airbag. The most recent however is at Avalonstar where Bryan has posted about someone ripping off elements of his design in which he has worked hard to achieve.
It’s true though, how much design can you protect. None really, it’s open for all to see, steal and do what they want with it. The only real way to ensure that you are at least recognised as the originator of the design is to get in first and put it out there.
There is that saying, “Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal”. Well i guess that’s true, but in what way does a great designer actually steal. Is it the idea? Is it the colours? Is it the structure? Or is it just the whole thing blatantly taken with a name change? I don’t think that would make a great designer.
In the sense of elements of design if there are a lot of elements taken from somewhere and reused in the one place that’s obviously someone being a thief. However what about just one element derived from someone else, if it’s not been altered at all then again that’s stealing.
What happens when someone takes one element of a design, say for example a navigation menu, changes the colours to suit their site and uses that. Of course you could tell that they have used the same structure of menu, but it contains different menu items, colours, etc. Would you still consider this stealing?
People copy all the time. If the copy isn’t so much so that it’s blatant, would that be considered stealing? If so think about it this way. Many people these days have plastic surgery, and they request to have maybe their nose done in the style of a famous celebrity. Does this mean because they are ‘copying’ the style of nose this celebrity has, that they are in fact stealing this celebrity’s nose? And what if they get more ‘elements’ of that celebrity. Are they stealing the celebs identity? Of course it differs in the way that people are born with noses and a design takes a long time to produce.
Something, in regards to design, that people are born with however is natural talent. For someone that has a talent in design and they have focused on using this talent to produce quality designs, it’s a kick in the teeth to have someone come along and take something that they’ve worked so hard to achieve.
I wonder how the celebrities feel about having their features stolen. It’s obvious that designers are pissed off that someone has taken what they have worked on for hours on end and rightly so i say.
So if you’re reading this, and you know who you are, you evil plagiarisers. Think about how you could be affecting someone next time you use the copy and paste buttons on a design or anything that someone has worked their ass off to create.
