A place to cache linked articles (think custom and personal wayback machine)
You can not select more than 25 topics Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.

index.md 42KB

3 jaren geleden
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122123124125126127128129130131132133134135136137138139140141142143144145146147148149150151152153154155156157158159160161162163164165166167168169170171172173174175176177178179180181182183184185186187188189190191192193194195196197198199200201202203204205206207208209210211212213214215216217218219220221222223224225226227228229230231232233234235236237238239240241242243244245246247248249250251252253254255256257258259260261262263264265266267268269270271272273274275276277278279280281282283284285286287288289290291292293294295296297298299300301302303304305306307308309310311312313314315316317318319320321322323324325326327328329330331332333334335336337338339340341342343344345346347348349350351352353354355356357358359360361362363364365366367368369370371372373374375376377378379380381382383384385386387388389390391392393394395396397398399400401402403404405406407408409410411412413414415416417418419420421422423424425426427428429430431432433434435436437438439440441442443444445446447448449450451452453454455456457458459460461462463464465466467468469470471472473474475476477478479480481482483484485486487488489490491492493494495496497498499500501502503504505506507508509510511512513514515516517518519520521522523524525526527528529530531532533534535536537538539540541542543544545546547548549550551552553554555556557558559560561562563564565566567568569570571572573574575576577578579580581582583584585586587588589590591592593594595596597598599600601602603604605606607608609610611612613614615616617618619620621622623624625626627628629630631632633634635636637638639640641642643644645646647648649650651652653654655656657658659660661662663664665666667668669670671672673674675676677678679680681682683684685686687688689690691692693694695696697698699700701702703704705706707708709710711712713714715716717718719720721722723724725726727728729730731732733734735736737738739740741742743744745746747748749750751752753754755756757758759760761762763764765766767768769770771772773774775776777778779780781782783784785786787788789790791792793794795796797798799
  1. title: Copying is the way design works
  2. url: https://matthewstrom.com/writing/copying/
  3. hash_url: 4072b1e628106ec95319062a87d21f47
  4. <div class="l--grid copying">
  5. <div class="l--grid-narrow l--mar-top-s post">
  6. <div class="c--gray"><p>
  7. This is a very short book about copying. Its contents, unless
  8. otherwise noted, are licensed under
  9. </p><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CC-BY SA 4.0</a><p>
  10. (more on that in a bit). You can download, copy, remix, excerpt,
  11. change, and repost it however you see fit.
  12. </p></div>
  13. <p class="copying--chapter">I</p>
  14. <p>
  15. <strong class="t--transform-uppercase">Charles Eames</strong> said
  16. it best: “We don’t do ‘art’ — we solve problems.”
  17. </p>
  18. <p>
  19. To buy furniture in 1950, you had to choose between affordable and
  20. enduring, between rugged and fashionable. Charles and Ray designed a
  21. chair that was all the above and sold it for $20.95.
  22. They called it the LCW.
  23. </p>
  24. <p>
  25. The LCW embodies the Eames’ obsession with simplicity in material
  26. and method. “We want to make the best for the most for the least,”
  27. they said.
  28. The design was revolutionary: in 1999, <em>Time</em> magazine called
  29. the LCW “the best design of the century.”
  30. Today, you can buy a brand new LCW from Herman Miller (the
  31. officially licensed manufacturer of Eames products) for $1,195.
  32. </p>
  33. <p>
  34. Or, you can buy a chair called the “Fathom” from a company called
  35. Modway for $145.
  36. </p>
  37. <p>Functionally and aesthetically, the chairs are identical.</p>
  38. </div>
  39. <div class="l--grid-wide">
  40. <figure class="l--flex">
  41. <div class="l--flex-half">
  42. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/0b07ec2420d962333516565bbf3c484cc8b2ca4f/e52a1/images/copying-1.jpg" alt="Eames Molded Plywood Lounge Chair">
  43. <figcaption>
  44. Eames Molded Plywood Lounge Chair<br>© Herman Miller
  45. </figcaption>
  46. </div>
  47. <div class="l--flex-half">
  48. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/e244c88f486534fd5ef1b92be27de149fb5d95a4/6a616/images/copying-2.jpg" alt="Modway Fathom">
  49. <figcaption>Modway Fathom<br>© Modway</figcaption>
  50. </div>
  51. </figure>
  52. </div>
  53. <div class="l--grid-narrow post">
  54. <p>
  55. There’s an LCW from 1946 in MOMA’s collection. It’s one of the very
  56. first ever made. Most people would call it the original LCW.
  57. </p>
  58. <p>
  59. Charles and Ray Eames sold the manufacturing rights for their
  60. furniture to Herman Miller in 1947. Collectors call the LCWs made in
  61. the ’40s and ’50s “originals.” But in some sense, these — and the
  62. more recently manufactured Herman Miller versions — are copies of
  63. that LCW in the MOMA collection.
  64. </p>
  65. <p>
  66. And then there’s the Modway Fathom. It’s clearly a copy, an
  67. unlicensed one at that. But at $145 (the equivalent of $12.78 in
  68. 1947) it’s more affordable than the LCW was when it was first
  69. manufactured and sold. In spirit, it’s more of an original than any
  70. LCW: the best, for the most, for the least.
  71. </p>
  72. <hr class="copying--divider">
  73. <p>
  74. I’m sharing this story because it demonstrates a surprising fact:
  75. what makes something “original” (the first, the best, the most
  76. famous, the most true) or a “copy” (an identical copy, an
  77. unauthorized replica, an interpretation or a remix) isn’t always
  78. obvious — or important.
  79. </p>
  80. <p>
  81. I’m a designer. As a designer, I feel the need to be original. If
  82. you’re a designer, or even if you’re just interested in design, you
  83. probably feel the need to be original, too. We tend to worship
  84. inventors and originators, designers who were trailblazing and
  85. innovative. And we copy them.
  86. </p>
  87. <p>
  88. This oxymoron of a craft can drive a person crazy. There’s lots of
  89. space between originality and industry, authorship and
  90. acknowledgement, riffing and ripping. I wrote this very short book
  91. to explore that space.
  92. </p>
  93. <p>
  94. Some people have been frustrated by copying, refused to accept it,
  95. and struggled with every ounce of their strength against it. Other
  96. people have used copying to their advantage, whether to improve
  97. themselves, build a community, or subvert authority.
  98. </p>
  99. <p>I’ve only been able to have a career in design because I copied.</p>
  100. <p>
  101. I hope that by the time you’ve finished reading, you’ll see how
  102. important copying is. Right or wrong, virtue or vice, copying is the
  103. way design works.
  104. </p>
  105. <p class="copying--chapter">II</p>
  106. <p>
  107. <strong class="t--transform-uppercase">Steve Jobs copied.</strong>
  108. “Great artists steal,” he said, quoting Pablo Picasso (or was it
  109. Stravinsky? T. S. Eliot?). Jobs and Apple copied many designs in their early days, most
  110. notably from a Xerox research laboratory in Palo Alto. The story
  111. goes like this:
  112. </p>
  113. <p>
  114. In the early 20th century, Xerox was a pioneer of office technology.
  115. By the middle of the century, computers were getting smaller and
  116. more affordable, and Xerox knew they’d have to work hard to keep
  117. their market dominance. In 1970, The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
  118. — Xerox PARC — was founded to explore the future of the “paperless
  119. office.”
  120. </p>
  121. <p>
  122. Within two years, Xerox PARC had designed a groundbreaking computer
  123. called the Alto. One of its innovations was a graphical user
  124. interface: programs and files were displayed in virtual windows
  125. which users navigated using a mouse. It was an eerily accurate
  126. picture of what personal computers would look like 30 years later.
  127. </p>
  128. <p>
  129. Jef Raskin, leader of the Macintosh project at Apple, had seen
  130. Xerox’s work. He wanted Steve Jobs to see it for himself, and set up
  131. a meeting.
  132. </p>
  133. <p>
  134. “I thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen in my life,” Jobs
  135. said of the Alto’s user interface. “Within ten minutes it was
  136. obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day.”
  137. </p>
  138. <p>
  139. When the Macintosh was released in 1984, it featured a graphical
  140. user interface. Programs and files were displayed in virtual windows
  141. which users navigated using a mouse.
  142. </p>
  143. <p>It was just like the Alto.</p>
  144. </div>
  145. <div class="l--grid-push-right">
  146. <figure class="l--flex">
  147. <div class="l--flex-half">
  148. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/08f14f2c6bb50c5a76d1d2f55afdf8225ea016da/d6ad1/images/copying-3.jpg" alt="Xerox Alto Operating System">
  149. <figcaption>
  150. Xerox Star Operating System<br>© Xerox
  151. </figcaption>
  152. </div>
  153. <div class="l--flex-half">
  154. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/4a9ba3ffa923511892c05b85e016dad99982b3b7/fe2ca/images/copying-4.jpg" alt="Apple Macintosh Operating System">
  155. <figcaption>
  156. Apple Macintosh Operating System<br>© Apple
  157. </figcaption>
  158. </div>
  159. </figure>
  160. </div>
  161. <div class="l--grid-narrow post">
  162. <p>Steve Jobs didn’t like to be copied.</p>
  163. <p>
  164. In 1985, a year after the Macintosh was launched, Apple sued a
  165. company called Digital Research Interactive for copying the
  166. Macintosh’s user interface. Digital Research settled out of court,
  167. and changed the appearance of its icons, windows, and mouse
  168. pointers.
  169. </p>
  170. <p>
  171. In 1990, Apple sued both Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. The case was
  172. a repeat: Microsoft’s Windows and HP’s NewWave featured designs that
  173. Apple claimed were copies of the Macintosh’s operating system. But
  174. early licensing agreements between Apple and Microsoft made it
  175. unclear if any infringement took place; the case was thrown out.
  176. </p>
  177. <p>
  178. In the middle of Apple’s case against Microsoft, Xerox sued Apple,
  179. hoping to establish its rights as the inventor of the desktop
  180. interface. The court threw out this case, too, and questioned why
  181. Xerox took so long to raise the issue.
  182. Bill Gates later reflected on these cases: “we both had this rich
  183. neighbor named Xerox ... I broke into his house to steal the TV set
  184. and found out that [Jobs] had already stolen it.”
  185. </p>
  186. <p>
  187. The rampant copying fueling the explosive growth of consumer
  188. computers meant that by 1990, the desktop user interface was
  189. ubiquitous; it was impossible to determine who originated any part
  190. of it, or who copied who. The quest to stake their claim nearly
  191. consumed Apple. But when they emerged, they had learned a thing or
  192. two. Today, Apple holds more than 2,300 design patents.
  193. </p>
  194. </div>
  195. <div class="l--grid-wide">
  196. <figure>
  197. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/c6e3a601fe1273b3e15343f0d9bf3e0505307772/032f8/images/copying-5.jpg" alt="Apple's design patent for a device with rounded corners">
  198. <figcaption class="t--align-center">
  199. Apple's design patent for a device with rounded corners
  200. </figcaption>
  201. </figure>
  202. </div>
  203. <div class="l--grid-narrow post">
  204. <p>
  205. This story ends in 2011, with Apple suing Samsung for copying the
  206. design of its software and hardware products. One of the most
  207. remarkable claims: Samsung broke the law when it sold “a rectangular
  208. product with four evenly rounded corners.”
  209. </p>
  210. <p>
  211. The court rejected Apple’s claim to own rounded rectangles. But it
  212. upheld the other claims, fining Samsung a blistering $539 million
  213. for patent violations.
  214. </p>
  215. <p>
  216. Designers copy. We steal like great artists. But when we see a copy
  217. of our work, we’re livid. Jobs, on Google’s Android: “I will spend
  218. my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of
  219. Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to
  220. destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”
  221. </p>
  222. <p>
  223. Steve Jobs was unmatched in his visionary dedication to innovation.
  224. But he never came to terms with the inevitability of copying.
  225. </p>
  226. <p class="copying--chapter">III</p>
  227. <p>
  228. <strong class="t--transform-uppercase">John Carmack had </strong>a
  229. different relationship with copying. For him, copying was a way to
  230. learn, a challenge to overcome, and a source of new ideas.
  231. </p>
  232. <p>
  233. Carmack was — still is — a brilliant coder. He’s best known for
  234. programming the ultraviolent and action-packed first-person shooters
  235. <em>Doom</em> and <em>Quake</em>. Those games pushed the limits of
  236. consumer computers and defined a genre. But his first real
  237. breakthrough game was simpler, cuter, more whimsical. It was called
  238. <em>Commander Keen</em>.
  239. </p>
  240. <p>
  241. Growing up in the early ’90s, I loved <em>Commander Keen</em>. It’s
  242. a goofy adventure game; you guide an eight-year-old boy wearing a
  243. football helmet and red Converses through alien planets, collecting
  244. candy bars and zapping monsters with a ray gun.
  245. </p>
  246. <p>
  247. <em>Keen</em> began life as a copy of another of my favorite games:
  248. <em>Super Mario Bros. 3</em>.
  249. </p>
  250. <p>
  251. Before <em>Keen</em>, Carmack was working for a subscription
  252. software company called Softdisk. Carmack and the other programmers
  253. at Softdisk churned out these games at a prodigious rate: today,
  254. blockbuster games can take more than five years to create;
  255. Softdisk produced a brand-new full-length game every single month.
  256. </p>
  257. <p>
  258. In September 1990, Carmack decided that for his next game, he’d try
  259. to tackle a new and daunting challenge: scrolling. At the time, only
  260. consoles like the Nintendo had enough computing power to smoothly
  261. scroll scenery, characters, and enemies. The PCs were stuck to
  262. simple one-screen-at-a-time games. But if Carmack was going to sell
  263. millions of games like Nintendo had with <em>Super Mario Bros.</em>,
  264. he needed to figure out how to recreate the effect.
  265. </p>
  266. <p>
  267. So, on September 19, 1990, Carmack and another developer named Tom
  268. Hall decided to reverse-engineer the first level of
  269. <em> Super Mario Bros. 3</em>. Working through the night, Carmack
  270. coaxed his PC into scrolling and animating the world of
  271. <em>Super Mario</em>; Hall jumped back and forth between a TV screen
  272. and his computer, playing the Nintendo version, pausing to copy the
  273. images pixel-for-pixel.
  274. </p>
  275. </div>
  276. <div class="l--grid-push-right">
  277. <figure class="l--flex">
  278. <div class="l--flex-half">
  279. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/c96ef863000c95ef229c6623f607f443a0188b7e/5e461/images/copying-6.jpg" alt="Super Mario Bros. 3">
  280. <figcaption>Super Mario Bros. 3<br>© Nintendo</figcaption>
  281. </div>
  282. <div class="l--flex-half">
  283. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/863a8ab20376613b64817d0347bb5aa2d62dfcf6/53f49/images/copying-7.jpg" alt="John Carmack's unlicensed PC port of Super Mario Bros. 3">
  284. <figcaption>
  285. John Carmack's unlicensed PC port of Super Mario Bros. 3<br>
  286. </figcaption>
  287. </div>
  288. </figure>
  289. </div>
  290. <div class="l--grid-narrow post">
  291. <p>
  292. The next day, their coworkers were floored. Nobody had ever seen a
  293. PC game work like this. John Romero, Carmack’s closest colleague and
  294. future collaborator on <em>Doom</em> and <em>Quake</em>, called it
  295. “the fucking coolest thing on the planet.”
  296. He insisted that they keep copying until they had finished an exact
  297. replica of the full game. They were going to send it to Nintendo.
  298. </p>
  299. <hr class="copying--divider">
  300. <p>
  301. Unfortunately for Carmack and his team, Nintendo wasn’t interested
  302. in a PC version of <em>Super Mario</em> (their console version was
  303. doing just fine, thank you very much).
  304. </p>
  305. <p>
  306. Disappointed, but not defeated, they resolved to build a better
  307. version of Mario. Starting with Carmack’s code for scrolling and
  308. animating the screen, the coders — calling themselves Ideas from the
  309. Deep, keeping the game a secret from their day jobs at Softdisk —
  310. put their <em>Super Mario</em> copy through a complete
  311. metamorphosis. In place of Mario, it starred eight-year-old Billy
  312. Blaze. Instead of turtles and mushrooms, the enemies were aliens
  313. called Yorps. Instead of eating a mushroom to jump higher, Billy
  314. Blaze hopped on a pogo stick.
  315. </p>
  316. <figure>
  317. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/3915b2dcbfbf91aa3eeb376a535ae09db487d215/e87d5/images/copying-8.jpg" alt="Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons">
  318. <figcaption>
  319. <em>Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons</em><br>©3D
  320. Realms
  321. </figcaption>
  322. </figure>
  323. <p>
  324. The debut <em>Commander Keen</em> game,
  325. <em>Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons</em>, was a huge
  326. success. More than 50,000 copies were sold, making <em>Keen</em> one
  327. of the best-selling PC games of its time.
  328. </p>
  329. <p>
  330. Unlike Steve Jobs, John Carmack never changed his mind about
  331. copying. When his boss at Softdisk suggested that they patent
  332. Carmack’s PC scrolling technique, Carmack reeled. “If you ever ask
  333. me to patent anything,” he said, “I’ll quit.”
  334. </p>
  335. <hr class="copying--divider">
  336. <p>
  337. In a 2005 forum post, John Carmack explained his thoughts on
  338. patents. While patents are framed as protecting inventors, he wrote,
  339. that’s seldom how they’re used. Smart programmers working on hard
  340. problems tend to come up with the same solutions. If any one of
  341. those programmers patents their solution, the rest are screwed.
  342. </p>
  343. <p>
  344. He concluded: “I’ll have no part of it. Its [sic] basically mugging
  345. someone.”
  346. </p>
  347. <p>
  348. In his games after <em>Keen</em>, Carmack would go beyond simply
  349. refusing to patent his inventions. He would release the source code
  350. to the biggest games of the ’90s, <em>Wolfenstein 3D</em>,
  351. <em>Doom</em>, and <em>Quake</em>. Everyone is free to download,
  352. modify, or copy them.
  353. </p>
  354. <p class="copying--chapter">IV</p>
  355. <p>
  356. <strong class="t--transform-uppercase">It’s one thing to copy.</strong>
  357. It’s another to encourage others to copy from you. Richard Stallman
  358. went even further — he made copying a right.
  359. </p>
  360. <p>
  361. In 1983, Richard Stallman wanted to build a new operating system. At
  362. the time, Unix was the most popular and influential operating
  363. system, but it was expensive to license. Commercial licenses cost
  364. $20,000 — that’s $52,028 in 2020 money.
  365. And Unix was closed-source.
  366. </p>
  367. <p>
  368. So on September 27, 1983, he wrote this message on the Unix Wizards
  369. message board:
  370. </p>
  371. <blockquote class="t--family-mono">
  372. Free Unix!<br><br>
  373. Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete
  374. Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix), and
  375. give it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time,
  376. money, programs and equipment are greatly needed.
  377. </blockquote>
  378. <p>
  379. That Stallman would write software and give it to others to use, for
  380. free, was a radical notion. To drive the point home, Stallman wrote
  381. a manifesto, defining the idea of
  382. <strong>free software</strong> (“Free software is software that
  383. users have the freedom to distribute and change.”) The manifesto kicked off the free software movement.
  384. </p>
  385. <p>
  386. The enduring innovation of Stallman’s movement was how he and his
  387. co-conspirators used software licenses. They flipped traditional
  388. licensing on its head: instead of prohibiting the copying or
  389. distribution of the software, a free software license guarantees the
  390. right of people to use, modify, distribute, and learn from its code.
  391. </p>
  392. </div>
  393. <p class="l--grid-push-left">
  394. <figure class="copying--quote">
  395. Instead of prohibiting the copying or distribution of the software,
  396. a free software license guarantees the right of people to use,
  397. modify, distribute, and learn from its code.
  398. </figure>
  399. </p>
  400. <div class="l--grid-narrow post">
  401. <p>
  402. New kinds of software licenses weren’t the only product of the free
  403. software movement. Ideological offshoots quickly spun out into new
  404. groups, like the <strong>open-source software</strong> movement.
  405. While Stallman’s free software faction was centered around a small
  406. group of hard-line progressive coders, the open-source movement was
  407. broad and inclusive, abandoning some of Stallman’s more political
  408. language to spread farther and find new audiences.
  409. </p>
  410. <p>
  411. Permissive licensing and distributed source control form the engine
  412. of modern software development. They create a feedback loop, or a
  413. symbiotic pair, or a living organism, or maybe even a virus: the
  414. tools that software developers use are themselves products of the
  415. open-source philosophy. Free and open-source code replicates itself,
  416. mutates, and spreads instantly across the world.
  417. </p>
  418. <hr class="copying--divider">
  419. <p>
  420. The free and open-source software movements (sometimes combined into
  421. a single acronym, FOSS) were echoed by another revolution in how
  422. creative works are licensed. In 2001, Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson,
  423. and Eric Eldred started Creative Commons, a non-profit and
  424. international network dedicated to enabling the sharing and reuse of
  425. “creativity and knowledge through the provision of free legal
  426. tools.”
  427. </p>
  428. <p>
  429. Nearly 20 years later, nearly half of a million images on Flickr
  430. have Creative Commons (or CC) licenses. Wikipedia uses CC licenses
  431. on all its photos and art. MIT provides more than 2,400 courses
  432. online for free under Creative Commons licenses. Countless millions
  433. of creative works have benefited from the open-source approach to
  434. licenses and permissions.
  435. </p>
  436. </div>
  437. <div class="l--grid-narrow">
  438. <figure>
  439. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/a19baf08ad09c7e052d4064ed8cbead32c5a1a70/89826/images/copying-9.jpg" alt="An image of a feedback loop from Flickr's Creative Commons archive">
  440. <figcaption>
  441. An image of a feedback loop from Flickr's Creative Commons
  442. archive
  443. </figcaption>
  444. </figure>
  445. </div>
  446. <div class="l--grid-narrow post">
  447. <p>
  448. A decade ago, the open-source movement came to design. Michael Cho
  449. created
  450. <a href="https://unsplash.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Unsplash</a>
  451. in 2013 to share a few photographs he thought might be useful to
  452. designers at startups; as of September 2020, Unsplash hosts
  453. 2,147,579 photos, and all-time photo downloads are well over 2
  454. billion.
  455. Pablo Stanley recently released
  456. <a href="https://www.humaaans.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Humaaans</a>, a collection of Creative Commons-licensed designs that can be
  457. re-assembled into editorial graphics.
  458. <a href="https://feathericons.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Feather icons</a>,
  459. <a href="https://heroicons.dev/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Heroicons</a>, and
  460. <a href="https://icons.getbootstrap.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bootstrap Icons</a>
  461. are all open-source and free-to-use collections of UI icons, used by
  462. designers to build websites and applications.
  463. </p>
  464. <p>
  465. Meanwhile, the explosion of open-source design resources has been
  466. bolstered by a new class of tools for sharing and collaborating on
  467. design.
  468. <a href="https://www.abstract.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Abstract</a>
  469. is a version-control system for design that promises “collaboration
  470. without the chaos.” With Abstract, many designers can contribute to
  471. a single file, without worrying about overwriting each other's
  472. changes or always needing to download the latest versions. Figma,
  473. too, has just launched
  474. <a href="https://www.figma.com/community" target="_blank" rel="noopener">its community feature</a>
  475. , allowing designers to publish files and download each other’s
  476. projects. It’s not hard to imagine how this will evolve into a
  477. designer’s version of
  478. <a href="https://github.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GitHub</a>
  479. in the near future. Other design tools have followed suit: both
  480. Sketch and Framer have launched community content hubs, laying the
  481. groundwork for distributed source control.
  482. </p>
  483. <p>
  484. Copying is fundamental to design, just as it is to software. The
  485. rise of permissive licenses and version control tools makes it seem
  486. like copying is a new idea, an innovative approach in an industry
  487. that thrives on novelty. But the truth is, copying has informed art
  488. and industry for thousands of years.
  489. </p>
  490. <p class="copying--chapter">V</p>
  491. <p>
  492. In China, there are many concepts of a copy, each with distinct
  493. subtext. Fangzhipin (仿製品) are copies that are obviously different
  494. from the original — like small souvenir models of a statue. Fuzhipin
  495. (複製品) are exact, life-size reproductions of the original.
  496. Fuzhipin are just as valuable as originals, and have no negative
  497. stigma.
  498. </p>
  499. <p>
  500. In 1974, local farmers in the Xi’an region of China unearthed
  501. life-sized sculptures of soldiers made of terra cotta clay. When
  502. Chinese archeologists came to investigate the site, they uncovered
  503. figure after figure, including horses and chariots, all exquisitely
  504. detailed. All told, there were more than 8,000 terra cotta soldiers.
  505. They were dated to 210 BCE.
  506. </p>
  507. <figure>
  508. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/67da4e33e9db15e360d0cd212926b8aa5e09d757/b06c3/images/copying-10.jpg" alt="Terracotta warriors, Xi'an city">
  509. <figcaption>Terracotta warriors, Xi'an city</figcaption>
  510. </figure>
  511. <p>
  512. The terracotta warriors instantly became cultural treasures. A
  513. museum was built on the site of the excavation, but many of the
  514. statues were also exhibited in traveling shows. Hundreds of
  515. thousands of museumgoers all over the world lined up in galleries to
  516. see the soldiers.
  517. </p>
  518. <p>
  519. Then, in 2007, a revelation rocked the Museum für Völkerkunde in
  520. Hamburg, Germany: some of the terracotta warriors it had on display
  521. were not the originals that had been discovered in the field in
  522. Xi’an. They were copies.
  523. </p>
  524. <p>
  525. The Museum für Völkerkunde’s director became a pariah: “We have come
  526. to the conclusion that there is no other option than to close the
  527. exhibition completely, in order to maintain the museum’s good
  528. reputation.” The museum issued refunds to visitors. The event kicked
  529. off a rash of geopolitical finger-pointing: German officials cried
  530. foul, saying they were duped; Chinese officials washed their hands,
  531. since they never claimed the statues were originals to begin with.
  532. </p>
  533. <p>
  534. The statues in the Hamburg museum were fuzhipin, exact copies. They
  535. were equivalent to the originals. After all, the originals were
  536. themselves products of mass manufacturing, made with modules and
  537. components cast from molds. Almost as soon as the terracotta
  538. warriors were discovered, Chinese artisans began producing replicas,
  539. continuing the work that had started more than 2,000 years
  540. before.
  541. </p>
  542. <hr class="copying--divider">
  543. <p>
  544. It’s easy to attribute this approach to copying as a cultural
  545. curiosity, an aberration particular to China. But copying was just
  546. as vital to Western artists.
  547. </p>
  548. <p>
  549. Japanese art was one of the main sources of inspiration for Vincent
  550. van Gogh, himself one of the most influential European painters of
  551. the 19th century, if not of all time. Van Gogh was fascinated by the
  552. woodblock prints of artists like Hiroshige: stylized and vivid, they
  553. captured dramatic moments within compelling stories.
  554. </p>
  555. <p>
  556. Van Gogh’s interest went beyond inspiration. To study the techniques
  557. mastered by Japanese artists, he copied prints by Keisei Eisen and
  558. Utagawa Hiroshige. He tried to replicate their bold lines, their
  559. energetic compositions, and their strong colors. For his copy of
  560. Eisen’s A courtesan, van Gogh started by tracing the outline of the
  561. courtesan’s figure directly from the May 1886 edition of Paris
  562. Illustré. For Flowering Plum Tree and The Bridge in the Rain, both
  563. copies of Hiroshige prints, he added borders of Japanese calligraphy
  564. he had seen on other prints.
  565. </p>
  566. </div>
  567. <div class="l--grid-push-right">
  568. <figure class="l--flex">
  569. <div class="l--flex-half">
  570. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/6a6a1d3bacb2409aee732c112317ab78697b83ff/ba1c6/images/copying-11.jpg" alt="Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake (1857) by Hiroshige">
  571. <figcaption>
  572. <em>Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake</em>
  573. (1857) by Hiroshige
  574. </figcaption>
  575. </div>
  576. <div class="l--flex-half">
  577. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/abe088ff554219cdb7d1562a5a54a91c586e2bba/be71d/images/copying-12.jpg" alt="The Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige) (1887) by Vincent Van Gogh">
  578. <figcaption>
  579. <em>The Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige)</em> (1887) by
  580. Vincent Van Gogh
  581. </figcaption>
  582. </div>
  583. </figure>
  584. </div>
  585. <div class="l--grid-narrow post">
  586. <p>
  587. His practice with Japanese styles provided a crucial breakthrough.
  588. Van Gogh began to flatten landscapes. He outlined his subjects in
  589. bold black strokes. He painted with eye-watering colors. His
  590. interpretations of reality lit the art world on fire, influencing
  591. artists and designers to this day.
  592. </p>
  593. <p>
  594. By copying directly from Japanese artists, van Gogh’s works became
  595. what we know today.
  596. </p>
  597. <p>
  598. He was clear about this influence. In a letter to his brother Theo,
  599. he wrote: “All my work is based to some extent on Japanese art.”
  600. </p>
  601. <hr class="copying--divider">
  602. <p>
  603. There’s another word in Chinese for a copy: shanzhai (山寨). It’s
  604. translated to English as “fake,” but as with most Chinese words, the
  605. translation is lacking. Shanzhai literally means “mountain
  606. stronghold;” the word is a neologism, a recent invention, inspired
  607. by a famous novel in which the protagonists hide in a mountain
  608. stronghold to fight against a corrupt regime. Shanzhai products are
  609. playful, drawing attention to the fact that they aren’t original,
  610. putting their makers’ creativity on display.
  611. </p>
  612. <p>
  613. Take the popular shanzhai novel
  614. <em>Harry Potter and the Porcelain Doll</em>; in it, Harry goes to
  615. China to stop Voldemort and Voldemort’s Chinese counterpart. It
  616. doesn’t pretend to be an original. It plays on its fake-ness: Harry
  617. speaks Chinese fluently, but he has trouble eating with chopsticks.
  618. </p>
  619. <p>
  620. It’s easy to think of shanzhai as a Chinese quirk, but there are
  621. parallels in Western culture. One in particular, is a staple of the
  622. design community: the unsolicited redesign.
  623. </p>
  624. <p>
  625. An unsolicited redesign demonstrates a designer’s ideas for how a
  626. well-known website or app could be improved. They range from
  627. single-screen aesthetic tweaks (like
  628. <a href="https://dribbble.com/shots/13154163-Instafresh" target="_blank" rel="noopener">this take on Instagram</a>) to in-depth case studies in UX, IA, and content design (like
  629. <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/gmail-an-unsolicited-redesign-1-2b244886eef8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">this redesign of Gmail’s mobile app</a>).
  630. </p>
  631. <p>
  632. Unsolicited redesigns copy the visual elements of the original as a
  633. starting point, then transform those elements to produce something
  634. new. Like van Gogh tracing Eisen, designers can pick up new
  635. techniques and approaches just by copying. But when a designer riffs
  636. on the original, they can create something new and inspiring.
  637. </p>
  638. <p>
  639. The design community has a complicated relationship with unsolicited
  640. redesigns. On the one hand, they’re the mainstay of talented young
  641. designers looking to demonstrate their ability to think critically
  642. about design and apply their skills. Companies have used the
  643. unsolicited redesign to position themselves as leaders: in 2003,
  644. 37signals (creator of the popular project management tool Basecamp)
  645. created redesigns of PayPal, Google, and FedEx to critical acclaim:
  646. their redesign of an online car dashboard “could do for cars what
  647. TiVo did for television,” Jason Kottke proclaimed.
  648. </p>
  649. <p>
  650. In rare cases, unsolicited redesigns turn into solicited ones. In
  651. 2018, Adam Fisher-Cox published a redesign of the digital signage of
  652. the AirTrain system at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The
  653. agency overseeing AirTrain saw the redesign and hired Fisher-Cox to
  654. implement it.
  655. </p>
  656. </div>
  657. <div class="l--grid-wide">
  658. <figure>
  659. <div class="l--flex">
  660. <div class="l--flex-half">
  661. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/6d01670fb1837936a4144c089965129891fe8d72/24ae4/images/copying-13.jpg" alt="The old signage for JFK's AirTrain">
  662. <figcaption>The old signage for JFK's AirTrain</figcaption>
  663. </div>
  664. <div class="l--flex-half">
  665. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/aea3c4615e8e7da46ad389562cfc0c3151a70e74/9f2fd/images/copying-14.jpg" alt="The beginning of Adam's redesign, copying directly from the existing signage">
  666. <figcaption>
  667. The beginning of the redesign, copying directly from the
  668. existing signage
  669. </figcaption>
  670. </div>
  671. </div>
  672. <div class="l--flex">
  673. <div>
  674. <img loading="lazy" src="https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/4b78ae72718afd062c56551468d4cc3ab3e61f3a/8d4e6/images/copying-15.jpg" alt="The final redesign comissioned by the agency in charge of AirTrain">
  675. <figcaption>
  676. The final redesign comissioned by the agency in charge
  677. of AirTrain. All images courtesy
  678. <a href="https://adamfishercox.com/portfolio/airtrain-arrival-signs/">Adam Fisher-Cox.</a>
  679. </figcaption>
  680. </div>
  681. </div>
  682. </figure>
  683. </div>
  684. <div class="l--grid-narrow post">
  685. <p>
  686. On the other hand, unsolicited redesigns are often looked down on.
  687. In a 2013 essay titled “Keep Your Unsolicited Redesign to
  688. Yourself,”
  689. Eric Karjaluoto argued that without acknowledging the constraints
  690. and incentives that guided an original design, the redesign is
  691. “utter fluff.” Those working on unsolicited redesigns “should know
  692. better than to waste their time.” There are countless other
  693. invectives against unsolicited redesign across the internet of
  694. design blogs.
  695. </p>
  696. <p>
  697. In 2011,
  698. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111208041110/https://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Andy Rutledge’s unsolicited redesign of <em>The New York Times</em></a>
  699. drew the attention of design pundits in countless blog posts and
  700. tweets.
  701. But if they disagreed with Rutledge’s conclusions, many defended his
  702. approach. “Sometimes we need to go crazy and mock up stuff that
  703. can’t absolutely work in its pure form,” wrote Stijn Debrouwere,
  704. because “a full-on rethink might be what we need to move
  705. forward.”
  706. Even Khoi Vinh, previous design director for the Times, supported
  707. the practice: “Unsolicited redesigns are terrific and fun and
  708. useful, and I hope designers never stop doing them.”
  709. </p>
  710. <p>
  711. The shanzhai approach of copying — to learn, to invent, to comment,
  712. to make a statement — is just at home in the West as it is in China.
  713. </p>
  714. <p class="copying--chapter">VI</p>
  715. <p>
  716. Copying can be instructive, challenging, devious, or revolutionary.
  717. To me, copying is fun.
  718. </p>
  719. <p>
  720. When I was young, I liked to trace. My mom would buy me tracing
  721. paper, and I’d copy comic book characters line for line. Pulling the
  722. paper back from the original was a rush. I drew this! With my hand!
  723. Sure, it was a copy, but once I signed my name in the corner, it was
  724. my copy.
  725. </p>
  726. <p>
  727. These days, there’s automatic copy protection on just about
  728. everything. You can’t easily pirate Netflix streams, copy Kindle
  729. books, or torrent Adobe Creative Cloud. But designs are different.
  730. To copy a design, all you need is tracing paper.
  731. </p>
  732. <p>
  733. In fact, you don’t even have to draw. Pull out your phone, take a
  734. picture, and save it to your Pinterest board. You can use a color
  735. picker to extract the exact shade from the design, use a physical or
  736. digital measuring tool to get the pixel-perfect dimensions, and use
  737. <a href="https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WhatTheFont</a>
  738. to learn the typefaces in the design.
  739. </p>
  740. <p>
  741. If you’re looking at a website, you can just click “view source” and
  742. see all the design decisions laid out in granular detail. That’s
  743. exactly how I went from tracing comic books to being a designer: I
  744. copied designs from websites I liked and pasted them onto my Xanga
  745. blog.
  746. </p>
  747. <p>I copied because I could.</p>
  748. <p>
  749. In my first design job, I copied relentlessly. I had created a music
  750. magazine with friends and tried to recreate the layouts I saw in my
  751. favorite mags. Wired was a constant source of inspiration: I
  752. obsessed over their typography. When I figured out that they were
  753. using Joshua Darden’s Freight Micro, I switched our magazine to use
  754. it, too.
  755. </p>
  756. <p>
  757. Copying helped me develop as a designer without needing to go to
  758. design school. For lots of people too young for college-level design
  759. programs, or without the means to attend these schools or bootcamps,
  760. copying serves the same function.
  761. </p>
  762. <p>
  763. And then, when folks like me wind up in a career in design, we find
  764. that copying is still useful. I eyedropper colors from Apple’s
  765. marketing websites. I start my color palettes from Google’s Material
  766. Design examples. I screenshot and recreate components from
  767. Facebook’s new redesign.
  768. </p>
  769. <p>
  770. I don’t fancy myself to be the van Gogh of design, to be anywhere on
  771. the level of Stallman or Carmack in my approach to copying,
  772. possessing even one-one-hundredth of Steve Jobs’ ability to steal
  773. artfully, or to be in any way comparable to Charles or Ray Eames.
  774. But I can certainly copy all of their work. I can copy their
  775. mindset, their process, and their designs.
  776. </p>
  777. <p>
  778. I can make cheap, small-scale facsimiles, fangzhipin, to demonstrate
  779. some quality of the original. I can make exact replicas,
  780. pixel-perfect fuzhipin, to learn how the originals and their
  781. creators work. Or I can create shanzhai, unsolicited redesigns,
  782. commenting and riffing on the work of others. All these copies have
  783. an important role to play in the process of design.
  784. </p>
  785. <p>
  786. Whether you believe that it’s worthwhile or worthless to copy,
  787. whether you think that copies are a valuable part of the design
  788. community or a scourge, you are using software, hardware, websites
  789. and apps that all owe their existence to copying.
  790. </p>
  791. <p>As long as there is design, there will be copying.</p>
  792. <hr>
  793. </div>
  794. </div>