How do designers steal? Of course, this is not to copy the design of others, but how to learn and learn. May be a lot of designers heard this view of the first reaction is, let me copy, no, I am a designer to do original, plagiarism will have copyright risk, too low and so on! Picasso once said: Good artists copy, great artists steal. Today I’m going to share some of the things I’ve learned in my work that have helped me find inspiration when I’m not.
Bad case
Apple released the design for the iPhoneX this year with a full-screen design and a fringe at the top that has long been ridiculed, but the real reason for the fringe is that the sensors needed for Face ID can’t be replaced any better, so it’s a compromise for functionality.
This is other companies MWC2018 on the release of a number of Android flagship, including many domestic phone companies, have followed the “trend” decided to use the same design, even a lot of large manufacturers also blindly follow the trend. If it is true that the top has the same Face ID as Apple, then it is understandable, but it does not. They designed it in this way, purely for copying, why can’t they make it more beautiful? Like Xiaomi, they have some ideas of their own.
Maybe these companies have a lot of business strategies that we don’t know, but this kind of blind copying is not desirable.
This is Apple’s facial recognition emoji, and there’s a lot of top-notch technology in there.
This is the new product effect of a company’s press conference. It can be seen that it is also a copy of Apple’s technology and ideas. There is no essential difference between the two, and the above cases can only be copied at most! Instead of stealing, what exactly is stealing, and how do we steal?
A good case
Japanese designers saw the smooth mouths of birds, which help them fly faster while reducing air resistance in the air. Japanese designers borrowed this feature and design to create faster and quieter bullet train designs.
Foreign well-known clothing designer works, we can see that the works by masters in these clothes, did not like traditional costume designer, to copy format of big shop sign, on the basis to do some small changes, but they are very crossover, going from the nature, looking for inspiration, from all kinds of traditional embroidery, including clouds of the sky, the sea jellyfish, will seek inspiration from the paintings to create, That’s what Picasso meant by stealing.
A group of cake works, draw inspiration from the nature of architecture, to give the cake different beauty.
The seat design imitates the swing.
The design of the wooden pile handbag, the designer will be the whole or part of the bionic object after processing and finishing application to the product appearance, let a person have some kind of related association of a design method. Thus bring people back to nature, return to the emotional needs of nature.
The brainchild of designer Dae-hoo Kim, this volcanic humidifier was a winner of the 2013 IDEA Design Awards. The main feature is that it looks like a volcano, with water pouring straight in from the top, steam coming out of the same mouth as it works, and with a subtle lighting effect (which is standard on today’s humidifiers), it really looks like a volcano.
So stealing is not about copying and pasting, it’s about standing on the shoulders of giants and combining. Instead of blindly copying the design, we need to understand the reasons behind the success, and then think about how we can improve it as we design.
How do I do that in the UI?
As we said, copying the difference between copying and stealing, seemingly has nothing to do with the UI design, but in the UI are interlinked, don’t know whether you do the design process has a reference, all sorts of style are mixed together, like above, transformers animated suddenly appeared a doraemon, this design is not set, sometimes feel that the interface button good-looking moved, Sometimes we feel that the color matching in the interface is nice and copied over, resulting in our interface is not similar, so what should we do?
Just steal one point
A good UI works, there are several common points: the concept, style, color and layout form of interaction, so we are looking for some good reference, only reference as a point of the design for inspiration, too many points will be copied abandon, because the only reference to a point, so there are many places we need to create, so have our own thinking inside.
Stealing concept
The design by Paul Flavius Nechita, who has a very good concept, is a design of a bank card, and the information on the card is very good to enter the user information.
Artem Borodynya, a designer, came up with an idea for a card filling. He learned from Paul Flavius Nechita’s design work, extracted innovations in cards and inputs, and recombined them with their business characteristics to create a new design. This is a very successful example of using other people’s ideas for your own projects.
This is also a design of the original, a very cool dashboard design, creative concept texture is particularly good, through a good complex vehicle information with visual elements well expressed.
Mario š imić493 was based on the original work, re-designed the layout and information processing according to the original design concept. The new work is also very good, the two have the same concept, but they are both good works.
ElenaCrnković ‘s smart design is very, very cool. It knows the weather and personal information of the day on the mirror.
In addition, inspired by this mirror, the designer created a scene in the gym, where users can know their current physical state through the gym mirror.
Slava Kornilov a web design, actually elegant font and circular use, creative combination is very good.
The re-creation of other designers based on this circular idea can be clearly seen as stealing from the original circular and large font magazine design, but at the same time, it has its own distinct characteristics.
Steal color texture
Color and style are very important elements in design, because when our eyes come to the interface, they are most easily attracted by color and texture.
A very good Indonesian designer works, style characteristics are very obvious, the whole color and texture is very unique.
Designer Ghani Pradita took color and texture lessons from the original, reapplied them to the project, and used the style to create illustrations and modify the color scheme.
EePublic is the style of a group of figures with no design features, sharp contrast in color, and their lines have their own characteristics.
Andrii Bezvershenko also learned the color collocation of the original work and the design style of the figures without facial features, which continued particularly well.
One of Herić ‘s web designs uses the texture and color of vegetables. The whole page is very harmonious and the layout is elegant.
Michal Kulesza learned the design philosophy of the original and applied it to his own projects, surpassing the original.
Steal the layout
Layout and interaction are close habits of usability and functionality in the interface. Layout includes the layout of some functional modules, content layout, and interactive operations. How to learn from good cases and layout can help us do better in the project.
Designers have created this appealing recipe widget.
Andy integrated environmental protection elements on this basis, while the interface picture processing is more reasonable.
Paul Flavius Nechita designed the layout of the personal page, which is complemented by several large digital fonts.
Andrei Velicu has optimized the image area to steal the essence of the original while retaining the large frame layout.
Soundcloud is a great music app, especially when it comes to music playback. It’s very smooth and interactive.
Anthony Tipay studied this form of layout and interaction, recombining their own product features with new layout forms to form a new design style.
Total knot
Remember the quote I quoted at the beginning of this article, Picasso once said: Good artists copy, great artists steal. I’d like to make some adjustments based on this: bad artists copy, great artists steal.
When we see some good design, inspired by, should be brave to steal, and don’t be afraid to be labeled as imitation, any good innovation and design must be standing on a giant’s shoulders to think, but it is important to note that we must pay attention to, if we put too many elements for reference, it’s plagiarism, The rules I mentioned above need to be well understood.
Edit: Thousand front UI design
Author: skys