I feel like there’s a difference between Virgil Abloh being brought in to work on an iteration of the Air Force 1s and simply ripping off a design from an unrelated company, presumably without permission, and making a few tweaks.
The best way to make a really boring and generic product pop is... by copying a really boring and generic marketing page. God I miss the old internet. Give me some insane pixelated flash website over this bland trash any day. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/flash-websites-in-the-early-...
I've gone through my own cycle of this as a musician. Early in my music experience I was always obsessed with originality, and wouldn't learn a lot of existing pieces. At the stage I'm at now, I find great value in learning great songs and understanding why they work.
There is a lot of great work out there and if you are unwilling to be derivative in anyway, you'll intentionally avoid using and finding great things that others have discovered.
> When you recreate someone’s creation, you learn their story: every piece of brilliance, tradeoff, and imperfection.
I vehemently disagree that this happens. What you see is the end result, and thinking and struggling through for each element is not present. It is like copying the Mona Lisa and claiming the relationship with the sitting model and her smell and feel and complaints about cramped neck is all in the copied painting.
(Please do not change the cursor, specially the size. There is a reason I changed it.)
My favorite quote that expresses this idea is from Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the AK-47: “Before attempting to create something new, it is vital to have a good appreciation of everything that already exists in this field.”
In a marketplace, this is theft. (Which, given this example is of a website for a for-profit product, seems appropriate.) In a community it's tradition. Building on traditions in a community (aka great artists steal) is different than trying to get yours in a marketplace. Art and community traditions aren't a competition until they are dragged into the marketplace.
I kind of agree in the sense that stealing a good idea and executing it well is a skill. Copying someones site "pixel by pixel" seems disrispectful though and I don't know what there's to be proud of.
I remember working for a somewhat careless manager.. he just pointed at the chrome web dev store and said 'make it look like this'. I could have just copied everything wholesale but I actually handcrafted all the css, borrowing but generally using my own HTML structure, and js. The final result impressed even me. It made me feel.. if I worked on a team with real designers I could create something I would be proud of.
This isn't stealing in the "good artists copy, great artists steal" sense. This is just straight copying/plagiarism.
To "steal" effectively (in the Steve Jobs sense) means to pull details into your own work that are invisible to the naked eye. E.g., I'm going to "steal" the concept for DuckDB's new quack protocol as inspiration for handling a similar issue in my own embedded DB. It will exist as its own implementation/code, but the central idea or "aha" is what's "stolen."
Stealing is a source of flattery. I've had logos I've designed outright copied. Jokes on them: They discovered they could not copyright the mark and had to rebrand (again).
Stealing is stealing unless you're really good at it.
> However, it’s your job to go down the rabbit hole, learn the 100%, and sprinkle in your 3%.
I would say that there is a big difference between stealing without acknowledgement, and stealing with acknowledgement and actively learning through reverse engineering.
Very, and really very few things, especially in software engineering is novel or new. Everything is the same old concepts, repackaged, tweaked, renamed. Cyclical in nature, fads come and go.
The key is stealing from multiple sources. Grab 3+ different sites that you really love and extract the elements that really resonate from each and meld them together into your own synthesis. Copying wholesale and tweaking a couple of things is lame IMO. That being said, pixel-perfect copywork is a fantastic exercise for improving your design skills.
Others have said it, but I'm not a fan of the cookie cutter approach. Build on UX patterns that work, but try new things too. It'll be hard to let your brand infuse the design when you're doing a line for line reproduction.
Stealing is indeed a skill... and a sin (target missed) - by experience not good for soul.
Knowing what laws in the countries where your business evolve allow someone to get inspired (as state of the art) or reuse freely from other's work in specific industry is a more valuable skill... and better for soul. One could move smarter and faster with light soul around if rules of the game are known and all opportunities are considered and not missed.
while the article may be making the process sound more meaningful than it actually is, I think there's a definite benefit to learning by trying to copy others, then making tweaks as you go. Honestly, it can be quite interesting to code your own version of a tool you plan to use, then compare the code to the original to see how you both handled things differently. Or to just look at a random website/app/footage of the same and try to figure out how everything works there.
Actual stealing is an even more impressive skill. Usually involves intensively trained sleight of hand, elaborate ruses, a very good understanding of theory of mind regarding the victim's attention, and planned deescalation paths in case you're caught.
“Stealing is a skill” is catchy but doesn’t express the underlying concept as well as your other principles. I would suggest “learn by copying good things”, or “quality work is where you find it” or something to that effect.
I think copying a website like this is very poor taste regardless. If I see you doing this, I immediately lose trust in your product and will immediately leave.
If you can't put the effort into the face of your product, how can I trust you to put effort into the product itself? Shitty behavior, with a shitty justification self-affirmation blogpost.
Technically, everything is stealing and everyone is stealing others work, you might use an open source software, might build your own but uses someone else’s libraries, might take someone’s UI design like OP, someone might use someone’s components, dig deeper and someone is using the icons to build components, dig deeper and someone’s is using a software with builtin tools trained to make similar icons to others, really, there’s no bottom to it. And if you decide to reinvent the whole wheel from the little details, you definitely will have so many bugs and issues, and most likely no one will likes it because it’s fundamentally different than how they are used to use XYZ.
This is copying, not stealing. Stealing means taking someone else's ideas, not their final output.
Copying creates trends, where everything looks and feels the same. Stealing an idea and creating something of your own, AKA remixing, is a much more valuable skill.
I looked up stealing to ground this comment of mine:
> stealing: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice
I admire Ben for being so direct. I wonder why we fetishize, herbicide and normalize theft, even deception today. When did this become normal, and why draw the line at digital creation and not just allow theft of physical objects, too? (I mean I get the arguments about copying someones digital creation doesn't really mean you took what they had from them, you just made a copy, though this doesn't logically apply to if I also physically stole someones product and made a copy since copyright/patent protection likely applies)
I feel like there’s a difference between Virgil Abloh being brought in to work on an iteration of the Air Force 1s and simply ripping off a design from an unrelated company, presumably without permission, and making a few tweaks.
The best way to make a really boring and generic product pop is... by copying a really boring and generic marketing page. God I miss the old internet. Give me some insane pixelated flash website over this bland trash any day. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/flash-websites-in-the-early-...
I've gone through my own cycle of this as a musician. Early in my music experience I was always obsessed with originality, and wouldn't learn a lot of existing pieces. At the stage I'm at now, I find great value in learning great songs and understanding why they work.
There is a lot of great work out there and if you are unwilling to be derivative in anyway, you'll intentionally avoid using and finding great things that others have discovered.
Copywork is an exercise where writers just copy verbatim another writers work.
If you haven’t done it, it is an extraordinary way to see how the greats work.
It also tends to improve your own writing skills - at least as long as you are copying from your betters.
This seems like the web design version of this.
> When you recreate someone’s creation, you learn their story: every piece of brilliance, tradeoff, and imperfection.
I vehemently disagree that this happens. What you see is the end result, and thinking and struggling through for each element is not present. It is like copying the Mona Lisa and claiming the relationship with the sitting model and her smell and feel and complaints about cramped neck is all in the copied painting.
(Please do not change the cursor, specially the size. There is a reason I changed it.)
My favorite quote that expresses this idea is from Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the AK-47: “Before attempting to create something new, it is vital to have a good appreciation of everything that already exists in this field.”
In a marketplace, this is theft. (Which, given this example is of a website for a for-profit product, seems appropriate.) In a community it's tradition. Building on traditions in a community (aka great artists steal) is different than trying to get yours in a marketplace. Art and community traditions aren't a competition until they are dragged into the marketplace.
I kind of agree in the sense that stealing a good idea and executing it well is a skill. Copying someones site "pixel by pixel" seems disrispectful though and I don't know what there's to be proud of.
I remember working for a somewhat careless manager.. he just pointed at the chrome web dev store and said 'make it look like this'. I could have just copied everything wholesale but I actually handcrafted all the css, borrowing but generally using my own HTML structure, and js. The final result impressed even me. It made me feel.. if I worked on a team with real designers I could create something I would be proud of.
This isn't stealing in the "good artists copy, great artists steal" sense. This is just straight copying/plagiarism.
To "steal" effectively (in the Steve Jobs sense) means to pull details into your own work that are invisible to the naked eye. E.g., I'm going to "steal" the concept for DuckDB's new quack protocol as inspiration for handling a similar issue in my own embedded DB. It will exist as its own implementation/code, but the central idea or "aha" is what's "stolen."
Stealing is a source of flattery. I've had logos I've designed outright copied. Jokes on them: They discovered they could not copyright the mark and had to rebrand (again).
Stealing is stealing unless you're really good at it.
> However, it’s your job to go down the rabbit hole, learn the 100%, and sprinkle in your 3%.
I would say that there is a big difference between stealing without acknowledgement, and stealing with acknowledgement and actively learning through reverse engineering.
Very, and really very few things, especially in software engineering is novel or new. Everything is the same old concepts, repackaged, tweaked, renamed. Cyclical in nature, fads come and go.
Stealing in this context might be tad harsh.
The key is stealing from multiple sources. Grab 3+ different sites that you really love and extract the elements that really resonate from each and meld them together into your own synthesis. Copying wholesale and tweaking a couple of things is lame IMO. That being said, pixel-perfect copywork is a fantastic exercise for improving your design skills.
Does this level of copying not imply a copyright infringement?
Isn't this essentially what LLMs do?
Others have said it, but I'm not a fan of the cookie cutter approach. Build on UX patterns that work, but try new things too. It'll be hard to let your brand infuse the design when you're doing a line for line reproduction.
– when you get it wrong, people treat you with the contempt they reserve for a thief.
Stealing is indeed a skill... and a sin (target missed) - by experience not good for soul. Knowing what laws in the countries where your business evolve allow someone to get inspired (as state of the art) or reuse freely from other's work in specific industry is a more valuable skill... and better for soul. One could move smarter and faster with light soul around if rules of the game are known and all opportunities are considered and not missed.
while the article may be making the process sound more meaningful than it actually is, I think there's a definite benefit to learning by trying to copy others, then making tweaks as you go. Honestly, it can be quite interesting to code your own version of a tool you plan to use, then compare the code to the original to see how you both handled things differently. Or to just look at a random website/app/footage of the same and try to figure out how everything works there.
Good artists copy, great artists steal?
Still hurts to be the one being stolen from though.
Actual stealing is an even more impressive skill. Usually involves intensively trained sleight of hand, elaborate ruses, a very good understanding of theory of mind regarding the victim's attention, and planned deescalation paths in case you're caught.
“Stealing is a skill” is catchy but doesn’t express the underlying concept as well as your other principles. I would suggest “learn by copying good things”, or “quality work is where you find it” or something to that effect.
I think copying a website like this is very poor taste regardless. If I see you doing this, I immediately lose trust in your product and will immediately leave.
If you can't put the effort into the face of your product, how can I trust you to put effort into the product itself? Shitty behavior, with a shitty justification self-affirmation blogpost.
Off-topic; but the nerd in me complained:
In GURPS, stealing is two skills: filch and pickpocket.
Person learns the idea that being unethical pays of sometimes. And therefore, ethics don't matter.
Good artists copy, great artists steal, plagiarists copy and paste CSS wholesale
What do you do if your version becomes immensely more popular and successful then the thing you copied? When people start calling you a genius.
The Tim Ferris school of thought. Can’t say I agree with it.
Good artists copy, great artists steal. but this article doesn't seem to be about that.
Mintlify "stole" their latest design off Stripe. It's very obvious.
Most great products are nothing, but well-timed and well-executed stolen ideas.
Technically, everything is stealing and everyone is stealing others work, you might use an open source software, might build your own but uses someone else’s libraries, might take someone’s UI design like OP, someone might use someone’s components, dig deeper and someone is using the icons to build components, dig deeper and someone’s is using a software with builtin tools trained to make similar icons to others, really, there’s no bottom to it. And if you decide to reinvent the whole wheel from the little details, you definitely will have so many bugs and issues, and most likely no one will likes it because it’s fundamentally different than how they are used to use XYZ.
It's stealing when copyright is infringed and when the stealing part is not acknowledged. Otherwise, can we called it "inspired by"?
This feels wrong.
Anything for a buck!
Good artists copy. Great artists steal.
Plagiarists also steal.
OK, Benjamin.
This is copying, not stealing. Stealing means taking someone else's ideas, not their final output.
Copying creates trends, where everything looks and feels the same. Stealing an idea and creating something of your own, AKA remixing, is a much more valuable skill.
"Yes your honor, I copied it pixel-by-pixel."
I looked up stealing to ground this comment of mine:
> stealing: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice
I admire Ben for being so direct. I wonder why we fetishize, herbicide and normalize theft, even deception today. When did this become normal, and why draw the line at digital creation and not just allow theft of physical objects, too? (I mean I get the arguments about copying someones digital creation doesn't really mean you took what they had from them, you just made a copy, though this doesn't logically apply to if I also physically stole someones product and made a copy since copyright/patent protection likely applies)