The greater design community (I use the word “community” very loosely in this context, I assure you), generally linked together through the wonders of the internet, is an amazing entity. It’s quite unlike a lot of the other creative circles I run in. I suppose every group of people united around a singular cause or task has its share of idiosyncrasies, but designers are a STRIKINGLY different set of people than my counterparts who write or create music.
The main area I see this in is the design community’s knack for jumping the gun on calling people out for what they perceive to be plagiarism (or ripping someone off, to put it less eloquently). In no other artistic discipline have I ever seen this occur so frequently, violently, and, unfortunately, ignorantly.
There are a number of unique factors when I try to look at the situation objectively. There are more and more people involved in this industry now who, like me, didn’t go to school for this, don’t have a degree, and continue to learn everyday in the very public forum of the web. Even more telling, the sheer volume of design easily available and connected through the internet is probably only rivaled by music in it’s accessibility now. This means we, as designers, come into contact with more work than we ever have. Between our insanely visually-overloaded culture and the amount of time that I spend online everyday, there’s no way of really quantifying the amount of design and art i’m taking in on a daily basis. I know that the things I take in visually are going to come out in some form or fashion eventually. Hopefully, those inspirations will come out in a way that is uniquely mine, despite its outside influence. This was summed up well by Chuck Anderson (an artist I unashamedly enjoy, am inspired by, and have ironically been recently accused of plagiarizing, much to Chuck’s own amusement) in the recent issue of The Royal Magazine:
I’ve always tried to live by this rule: be inspired, not affected. There are some great artists out there. The key is to let what they do inspire you, and for you to take that inspiration and apply it to your own work. Not to apply it to your own copy of their work. Don’t be affected. Don’t let what someone else does set a standard for what you have to do.
I think it’s an apt description to call the design community claustrophobic. All this closeness and saturation and the very real smallness of the web have led to a sort of hysterical mindset that fosters an environment for people who troll around the internet with no other purpose than to find designers and publically shame them for borrowing any element or technique from other designers. (I wrote a post about this sort of pervasive negative attitude a few weeks ago). But more often than not, as with every other artistic endeavor in every other artistic discipline, the supposed “originator” didn’t invent that element or technique either. I think what we have is a severly misplaced fondness for our own imagined ingenuity.
Let’s get specific, shall we? If I use an outer glow layer style in Photoshop (something that has been quite “trendy” lately and a technique i’m guilty of using at certain times for certain pieces), then SOMEONE is going to say i’m ripping off No Pattern or Electric Heat or [insert name of artist that YOU think I plagiarize]. Now, back up from it all for a bit and try to look at the situation objectively. The outer glow layer style is an easily-accessible feature of EVERY SINGLE COPY OF PHOTOSHOP since 6.0 released in 2002. And now, suddenly it seems, this feature can no longer be used without being accused of plagiarism. I’m not by any means trying to wash my hands of claiming inspiration from other artists or using techniques they’ve used (and written tutorials on in Computer Arts Magazine), but what i’m getting at is the faulty line of logic that critiques like those are based on. Just because one person has “done that” doesn’t mean it’s off limits to others now. How far do you want to take that line of reasoning? Pretty soon no one would be able to use the color red. Or the typeface Helvetica. That’s placing ownership on tools and techniques that anyone can use, and then crying foul when someone else puts it into use.
That thinking doesn’t fly in any other artistic discipline. No one goes to see Monte Montgomery play, walks up to him after a mind-blowing showing of musical genius and guitar-wizardry and says, “You loser, stop biting off Stevie Ray and Mark Knoplfer and Lindsay Buckingham… you’re completely unoriginal.” No, that’s ridiculous. We seem to love seeing musicians whose influences come out in their original music to make something unique. We embrace the movements in the painting world that spawned multiple artists with similar styles and techniques who made wholly new and unique pieces, even among their peers. But not designers. We demand something fresh and new and exciting every second of the day. The problem is, not only is there not really anything new, but our entire perception of originality is probably skewed.
I had someone rip my source code on this blog one time and post the site as their own work, complete with “I worked so hard on this last night” musings. I called him out. That was a clear case of plagiarism and there is really no excuse for it. It’s an unfortunately frequent occurrence. However, it’s not as frequent as the amount of times I see the word “rip” appear online in reference to perceived plagiarism. It’s rampant, wide-scale, uneducated nonsense.
Am I inspired by my peers? Yes. Does my work often have the same look and feel or visual elements as theirs? Sometimes. Is it intentional? Most of the time, no. Am I affected by their work to the extent that it changes my perception of how I need to make art? I hope not. But i’m also still new to this. I’ve been designing for about three years and i’m still learning the fundamental, basic aspects of doing what I do. I want to learn, and I want to make good art. But I wish the design community would spend more time doing those things, building friendships within the community with their peers and mentors, being humble (for once), and not worrying about where they’re pulling their inspiration from as much as coming up with better ideas than they had last week.
I feel pretty inadequate to talk about any of this, so i’d love to hear some of your thoughts on the subject.
After much hoopla and waiting, you can finally see pictures of my office workspace on my Flickr page. (As if you care). The objective, yet perceptive Lee and I deliberated for at least two minutes last night, and after we got done flipping out over how good The Island was, we decided that the overall winner of the little contest must be the lovely and talented Miss Casey Pelot for her almost perfect, perhaps-she-has-hidden-cameras-in-my-house-OH-MY-DANG-GET-OUT, borderline-scary description. To wit:
stacks of magazines. yellow post-it notes. G5 + apple display. yellow post-it notes. speakers. desk. chair (which wants to be a herman miller, but isn’t). walls that aren’t white (green?). VW paper weight. more magazines. Kensington Expert Optical Trackball USB Mouse. prints on the wall. and um…coke. caffeine-free if you’re still doing that.
A few things are off, but only by a bit or by circumstance. The VW paperweight was only recently replaced with the “@” symbol (which Google tells us is called an “amphora”) to increase the weight aspect of “paperweight” in light of the recent addition of a box fan for our insanely hot house. The Kensington Expert Optical Trackball USB Mouse, while indeed being a masterful piece of modern technology and a savior of sorts for carpal-tunneling computer nerds, is only absent because I am poor white trash. There are no prints on the wall because I took them down while rearranging the office a few weeks back, and then found out we were moving. And there’s a red Solo cup of caffeine-free Coca Cola Classic somewhere in my office, to be sure, even if it’s missing in the photos. For her amazing guessing/researching skills, Casey wins a hot-off-the-press 8″x10″ print of this photo, on some swank Kodak gloss paper. Congrats for your freakish paranormal abilities.
Bonus points and honorable mentions for:
Unicorn Princess poster on the wall.
taxidermied polar bear in the corner.
Guns. Lots of guns. And mounted fish.
…seventeen mirrors…
Fun times. And no, Gilmore, there will not be a sequel contest encompassing guessing what my bathroom looks like because honestly, none of you want to know those details.
No, really. It’s awesome. BEAUTIFULLY shot, intense, enjoyable, and probably the best production design i’ve seen in a film lately. I didn’t even want someone to hit Scarlett Johanson in the head… much. Sitting in the theater, I couldn’t help thinking that it’s a shame that director/producer Michael Bay gets such short shrift from the Hollywood elite (despite DESTROYING everyone at the box office). The again, The Island is one of the few films I recall him doing that didn’t have Jerry Bruckheimer producing, and if this film is any evidence of what Bay can offer as his own producer (or what an absent Bruckheimer does to change the overall film) then I hope to see more of a solo Michael Bay.
What a great movie. (And bonus points for a V For Vendetta trailer. Sweet action).
Thank you to the folks who participated in yesterday’s little experiment. It was fun for me. Lee and I will tally the votes, compare notes, etc. tonight watching things blow up and muttering statements about wanting someone to hit Scarlett Johanson over the head with a large, blunt object while we take in The Island. The workspace winner will be chosen via a complex set of algorithms taking into account accuracy, creativity, humor, and just-plain-freaky spot-on guesses from a few of you. Winner, you say? That’s right. It’s always a competition, haven’t I told you that before?
The winner gets a prize. The rest of you will get to see pictures of what my office really looks like.
This doesn’t so much apply to those of you who see me regularly, since it would be sort of cheating, but here’s a fun little thing for you non-local folks (brought on by Gilmore musing via email about what my work environment looks like, since I linked the Adobe office visit yesterday). Some of you read this blog fairly regularly, some occasionally, some of you are new, etc. So here’s the deal… based solely on what you know of my “internet personality” on this site and on HRTWRK, what do you think my office looks like? The place where I work and write and bring wonderful internet treats to you everyday. What’s the mental picture for you?
I’ll post a picture at some point after all your theories are exposed. This should be fun. Comment away.
I just finished watching Three Days Of The Condor. (I’ve been on this 70’s Dino De Laurentiis kick lately… it doesn’t get better than the tone, pacing, and absolutely amazing soundtracks of movies like this). Great flick, but let’s be honest about what the main draw is here. NO ONE had better hair in Hollywood than Robert Redford, circa 1967-1977. It’s just impossible to imagine hair that wonderful. The swoop, the shimmer, the carefully placed highlights, the clever sideburns. Try all you want to, gentlemen (and while we’re at it, ladies too) but there is no way that you will ever top that crop. Just go ahead and accept it and try to move on with your sub-par, borderline-pathetic follicles.
Did you miss me? Admit it. You did. You missed me something BAD. You were hitting your browser’s refresh button every ten minutes, or sitting by your RSS reader like a lovesick school girl thinking, “Surely my more-than-daily fix is hiding somewhere in the cracks and crevices of the internets?” And so I was. (Although, thinking about what one might find in the “…cracks and crevices of the internets…” isn’t a very pleasant thought at all, so just forget that I said it because the implications scare me).
My good friend Hope came to SC for an impromptu visit from Minneapolis. Sub-48 hour surprise visits are always a bit hectic, intense, lacking appropriate amounts of sleep, and quite fun. We went hiking yesterday (in the 100º heat) to a very awesome waterfall in Oconee State Park called Yellowbranch Falls. Short hike (relatively speaking), magical payoff; the place is beautiful. Well worth dealing with the ridiculous southern heat of late. (It’s actually 82º IN MY HOUSE right now, with the AC cranked. Curses on poorly insulated houses). All that to say, i’m still here; and it makes me happy to know that you missed me.
But that did get me thinking, as I am prone to do. Hypothetically-speaking, suppose there was a blog you read everyday. You don’t actually know this person, but you begin to feel like you do by reading the comings and goings of their life over a period of days, months, years, etc. How they live life, who their friends are, what they spend their time doing… you get the whole of the picture of life the writer paints in words. You also begin to know their schedule and know when they’ll post everyday. And then… nothing. Nothing for days. Maybe a week goes by. What would you think? That they died? That they just decided to become a technology-shunning journeyman sherpa in Nepal without so much as a clever splashpage or warning or “Dear Faithful Readers” post?
Wouldn’t that be odd? Would you feel sad? There are few blogs I read that I think i’m actually emotionally invested in the writer enough to care if they disappeared. There are even one or two that I would probably send out a search party for. But seriously, it’s a strange relational dynamic to be talking about missing people you’ve never met.
Growing up, musically-speaking, I was a Total Metal Guy™ in every way. If it involved some combination of massive guitar, screaming, speed, ample bounties of black clothing, anger, death, and/or band photos where all members of said band look like they could eat you whole and promptly poop you out at the gates of hell, I would most likely really enjoy it. I also liked Phil Collins, but I digress, as that is a story for another day.
As with any musical genre or sub-culture, there is a certain coded set of unwritten rules and regulations handed down from on high by metal’s founding fathers pertaining to how one dresses, talks, acts, rocks, attends shows, etc. (Such as one does not listen to the band one is going to see while one is entering or exiting the parking lot of the venue). When I was in the midst of it, these things came naturally to me. However, I must admit to being a bit removed from it these days.
I certainly still enjoy a good metal tune just as much as the next guy, but in terms of living, breathing, and loving the metal, it’s just not my thing anymore. I’ve mellowed in my old age. (And lost a bit of appreciation for most of the music I grew up on once I actually became a musician and understood more of what was happening). I’ve traded Slayer for Mayer. Pantera for The Philadelphia Experiment. Clutch for Coltrane. It’s the inevitable growing process of any musical appreciator, and one that I hope continues throughout my life as I constantly find and enjoy new and better music.
All that to say, tonight I ROCK AGAIN. My sister, brother-in-law, and I will be taking in the always-awesome Corrosion Of Conformity this evening. I haven’t seen COC since my freshman year of college, so this should be fun for a variety of reasons.
1. They’re a good band, and I haven’t seen a good show in months.
2. As an avid, professed people-watcher, there really isn’t a better observation deck than a typical metal show in South Carolina. I’m serious. It’s usually the environment where you’re like, “Wait… people like this EXIST? And in MY TOWN?” Yes. Yes, they do. And they are HILARIOUS.
3. Despite the southern-soaked metalness of it all, COC had funk genius Stanton Moore from Galactic play drums on their newest album. If you’re not up on your jazz/funk drummers, Stanton is from planet I’m-Stanton-Moore-and-you-don’t-know-crap-about-music. It added a decidedly different rhythmic flavor to the new stuff that feels welcomed. Unfortunately, he’s not touring with them, but in another blast from the past moment, former Cry Of Love drummer Jason Paterson will be handling drumming duty. Ah, the south. Where all bands eventually merge into one.
4. My wonderful sister took me to my first show (Trixter, Jackyl, and freaking KISS at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in ‘91 or ‘92) so there’s always a twinge of nostalgia that accompanies us when we go to shows together.
So we have the setting for the evening. But what the crap do I wear to the metal show? I’ve forgotten the code. I don’t know the lingo. THESE ARE NOT MY PEOPLE. My daily cotton/denim/flip flops uniform is not Total Metal Guy™ garb. I do not meet the minimum rock requirements. I need shoes with hardened soles, like the tortured soul of the metal itself, shirts of the blackest black, midnight dark like the shade of the nodules on the vocal chords of every metal frontman (who will soon sound like a midwest Waffle House waitress throwing back three packs of non-filtered Lucky Strikes a day). I need a mullet.
I’m woefully unprepared to rock.
And by “Hollywood” I don’t actually mean “the district of the city of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., that extends from Vermont Avenue on the east to just beyond Laurel Canyon Boulevard above Sunset and Crescent Heights Boulevards on the west; the north to south boundary east of La Brea Avenue runs from about Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills of the Santa Monica Mountains and Griffith Park to Melrose Avenue; and the north to south boundary west of La Brea runs from about Mulholland in the hills to Fountain Avenue, with Crescent Heights as the west boundary south of Sunset Boulevard.” I more so mean, “where they make movies.”
It’s a strange place because it operates on a completely different set of rules than our world does. Things are not how they should be. We know this and we’ve all experienced it during our movie watching endeavors, accepting the various absurdities as fact. Some examples would be:
Any police officer about to retire from the force will more often than not die on their last day (especially if their family have planned a party). (Caveat: Detectives can only solve a case after they have been suspended from duty).
Or, such brilliantly articulated and visualized observations like:
All beds have special L-shaped sheets that reach to armpit level on a woman but only up to the waist of the man lying beside her.
You can find these Hollywood anomalies, along with 38 others, here.
Boring. The whole of the world wide web. You are dead to me, www. I have to be honest, though. It’s not the internet’s fault. There wasn’t a point recently where the quality, quantity, or sheer absurdity of what’s available to me on the web quit engaging like it did in previous days. The internet hasn’t ceased to be interesting; i’ve ceased to be interested in it. That’s a not-so-subtle shift, and one that i’m sure most of you have experienced in your own lives or, if you happen to be perfect (and congrats on that, you superstar), you’ve at least been able to get a grasp of what it’s like through being a faithful reader of this particular blog over a period of, say, six or seven days in a row. That’s about the span of my boredom/inspiration/boredom cycle lately. I’m bored. I’m bored of being bored. You’re probably bored with my boredom.
From a PURELY practical, task-oriented view, there’s no reason for me to be bored. I have a generally fulfilling and occasionally (briefly) monetarily satisfying job doing design work and photography with enough client work lately to keep me busy. I’m at least averagely talented and interested in making music, writing poetry, sketching, and painting. I have a stack of half-read books on every open surface in my house. There are three or four fairly major projects I want to get rolling before year’s end. I have a family I don’t spend nearly enough time with and I have friends I spend ridiculously consistent amounts of time with. I could keep going. There’s so much I can occupy my time with that there’s no practical reason for my boredom.
I suppose that’s the point, in a way. Filling my schedule and my life up with things to occupy my time doesn’t really do anything for curing boredom. The external qualifiers and tasks don’t hit the heart of boredom. They’re more like putting a band-aid on a shark bite. It’s the internal struggle for imagination and creativity and different living that kills boredom. John Piper says:
Imagination may be the hardest, most God-like work of the human mind. It is the closest we get to creation out of nothing. We must conceive something that has never existed before and does not now exist in any human mind. The imagination must exert itself to see something in our mind when it is not there.
And here’s where I just shake my head at the ultimate irony that, as an artist who gets to make his living making art, my imagination is probably more dead than alive on most days. Somewhere along the way, I think i’ve stopped imagining things that aren’t and become all-too-comfortable accepting things that are and, perhaps worse, welcoming them into my life as all there is. And when that happens, there’s nothing left in my life to make me want to live it. When I begin to believe my situation and my thoughts and my half-interested heart are the end of the road boredom and the ensuing apathetic way of walking through life that always follows it kill any attempt to imagine anything. Again, Piper:
…here at the end of the twentieth century, a culture of apathy and boredom has taken deep root in America. This is different from fear… this is a cultural yawn… we see the attempt of a culture to find excitement and adventure and strong feeling in a workaday world that is just plain boring. It’s as if we were made for exploits and adventure and exertion and passion and risk-taking in some great cause, and instead what we do all day is sit in front of a computer or shuffle papers or make deliveries or drive a bus or clean a room or sell a product or shuffle portfolios or prescribe medicines or fix gadgets. Life in the real world seems to fall so far short of what our hearts cry out for that the best we can do is create substitute, artificial exploits… anything to transport us out of the boredom of the real world, and give us a little taste of passion and zeal and daring and energy and strategy and courage… even if it is an artificial world.
…we look like we are having a great time as we go from one entertainment event and program and mall and movie to another, but it is all artificial. We are not excited with real life. We are desperately waiting for the weekend when we can play, because real life is just not connected with any great cause that inspires in us exploits of courage or daring or risk or adventure or strategy or dreaming or deep camaraderie. We wonder why our relationships are so feeble and thin and fragile. And deep down we know that part of the reason is that relationships go deep when arms are linked in a great cause that you are ready to lay down your lives for.
There are a lot of things you could call my recent mental fixation on moving to California. It’s certainly about work, as I want to be in a creative environment where I can learn and gain experience and become better at what I do. But that’s just a practical reason; it’s not driving the mental avalanche of thoughts and responding actions. I think the heart of it has to do with stepping into the next season of my life where i’m living life with people who are united in something that feels like a great cause… something that matters. And that’s here, to an extent, but it’s not for me. What’s here is someone else’s great cause, but it doesn’t move ME.
California feels like imagination. Creating something out of nothing. Thoughts about moving somewhere that weeks earlier was just a spot on a map and is now becoming a million different scenarios and lives and potentials. And not for the external time-fillers, for something that matters in this season of my life. A great cause and people to live it with. Bring it.
Just on principle… Kenny Chesney, the inventor(s) of low-fat peanut butter, Juliette Lewis, Vince Vaughn in everything except Clay Pigeons, spammers, 98.957% of movie reviewers, Martin Lawrence, Good Charlotte, slow invoicing departments, whoever bought www.dotcomrades.com before I could, John Travolta, Dr. Phil and the Oprah he rode in on, anyone at Apple responsible for the lack of tabs in iChat, credit card companies targeting college kids, Ethan Hawke, me in relation to most women, everyone at PETA, girls who wear so much make-up that I could carve “Revlon Barbie” into their cheek, all but about 20 bloggers, Toby Keith, people who think podcasting is revolutionary, and the American health care industry for being able to get away with calling themselves “professionals” yet never having to keep a single appointment on time and, even more horrifying, after keeping us waiting because our lives don’t matter, proving it by accidentally killing more than 100,000 of us every year in hospitals due to preventable negligence.
My girlfriend has a freaking weird name:
Eman Driewgnikaerfasahdneirflrigym.
Aaron Belz - via McSweeney’s
(And by that I mean i’m finding myself to be a lackluster read of late, I can’t imagine what you must be suffering through, faithful reader… such things pass with time. Thank you for your patience and dedication in this, my time of non-funny). You should go visit Aaron, who redesigned IAAM with a nice, simple, I-love-negative-space layout. He’s got great work, as always and continues to be one of my favorite designers. You should also go visit Ryan because I typically hate reading most personal blogs, but I find his to be one of the best written, most random, insanely funny things i’ve had the pleasure of bookmarking in quite some time. (Maybe not as good as, say, THIS, but still, quite wonderful in its own way).
I have not learned much since I was born, but that has not stopped me from pretending to know things I do not.
You just don’t find gems like that everyday, people.
And no, when I say “adult” I don’t mean THAT kind of adult, you internet pervert. I mean I just had a meeting with my landlord (I think “landlord” is a hysterical word. It’s pretty dang antiquated, but it’s still sticking around in modern language. I mean… land LORD. That’s just funny stuff, don’t you think, Squire?) to discuss my lease. I can’t believe i’ve been in this house for long enough to begin discussing leases again. At least such negotiations are always a FUN PROCESS, right?
I bottom-lined him with admitting I most likely (definitely) won’t be here in a year, and therefor I couldn’t (wouldn’t) sign another year lease. He’s not keen on a six month lease because the main draw for this house is its proximately to Anderson College and renting it out to students. So… it looks as though Lee and I have a month to decide where to go. In layman’s terms, it’s time for Lee to find a house he likes and let me live there until I move.
For some reason, I am growing to love being backed into corners and forced to make quick decisions based on my gut feelings/life experiences/etc. It’s great. I feel like i’m living and moving and getting things done this way. The past three months of my life have been a lesson in learning to stop over-analyzing things so much and I assure you it is a welcomed lesson.
I want to reread Blink. I’m going to the bookstore. Right now.
I don’t know what it’s like in your little slice of the world today, but in SC it’s mother-hot outside right now. It’s a bit hot inside too, considering our poor HVAC unit’s filter looks like it ate a few wool sweaters for mid-morning snack and there’s ONE STORE in town that stocks that particular filter. Apparently the previous tenant/owner of my humble abode was also part-owner of a large heating and air installation company. This comes in handy most of the time, considering that our system works like a champ. It doesn’t come in handy when the filter gets funky and most stores say, “Wait… you need that filter for an HVAC unit in a HOUSE?”
Overcompensation in the air conditioning segment of life is just fine by me.