We’re often victims of design piracy. Roughly once a week someone emails us with an anonymous tip that someone has ripped off our “UI look and feel” and is using it for their own site or their own app. It’s amazing what people and businesses think they can get away with.
We send the violators an email letting them know they can’t take our work, our words, our code, or our design. 98% of the time the violators respond favorably and take the design down or alter it sufficiently that it’s no longer recognizable as our design. 1% of the time it takes a few emails before they acquiesce. And 1% of the time it requires legal intervention.
A blank canvas
They usually apologize by saying they didn’t know it was wrong or that their hired design firm did it. But then sometimes they say “Come on, how many different ways are there to design a web page or a web app?” That infuriates me. The web browser is a blank canvas. A big empty box that can hold almost anything. Fill it with something original, something you can call your own.
Inspiration in time
Whenever I run into designer’s block or just need visual design inspiration I turn to the world of wrist watches. I’ve posted on this topic before, but it comes up again often so I figured I’d hit it again.
A tiny canvas with endless possibilities
A wrist watch is a tiny canvas with something to keep that canvas tied to your wrist. It’s just a couple inches round or square or triangular. It has a fixed, common purpose: Tell time. The rules of time are understood. 24 hours in a day, usually displayed as 12. Your brain can tell if it’s AM or PM.
And yet somehow, with these physical and practical constraints, watch design flourishes. From analog to digital to a combination of the two, tens of thousands of designs are born. Different type, different proportions, different shapes, different perspectives, different indicators, different buttons, different bezels, etc. Fresh new designs hit the market all the time. Here are about a hundred different interpretations of the same question: “What time is it right now?”
If watch designers can do it, web designers can do it
So if someone can make a 2” circle look unique, you can make a million pixels look unique. Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t think there’s only a few ways to display content. Don’t think there’s only a couple ways to style a sidebar. Don’t think there’s only a couple different designs for a header with tabs. Don’t think a list always has to look the same or there’s only one way to distinguish time-sensitive information. Don’t think there’s only a couple ways to call something out as important or high priority.
As a web designer you have a lot more options and variables and possibilities than a watch designer. Build something that’s yours. Make something you can call your own. Make your own mark. Cut the excuses and be a designer.
Darrel
on 22 Aug 07Part of being a good designer is knowing what works and when not to reinvent the wheel.
The line between pragmatic re-use and aesthetic plagiarism is admittedly a fine one, of course. ;o)
Anonymous Coward
on 22 Aug 07Yes, Darrel, but taking someone else’s wheel isn’t justified just because you think it works. Original works must be respected by law unless the originator decides to make his/her designs, words, or code open to anyone.
I don’t think Jason is talking about not using a pulldown menu or a button or a link: Those things are HTML and free for everyone to use to build their own products. Those are widgets. What you do with those widgets is what makes an overall design unique.
But when you take someone’s look and feel, their proportions, their styles, the things that make everything look good together, that’s design piracy.
And as far as “knowing what works”—that’s a copout. What works today will not necessarily be what works 3, 5, 10 years from now. And that’s not always just because of time, it’s because someone tried something new and innovated. And then there’s something new that works because that person didn’t just copy everyone else’s “what works.”
Josh Walsh
on 22 Aug 07What a great new word – “acquiesce”.
ac·qui·esce [ak-wee-es] Pronunciation Key
–verb (used without object), -esced, -esc·ing.
to assent tacitly; submit or comply silently or without protest; agree; consent: to acquiesce halfheartedly in a business plan.
Anonymous
on 22 Aug 07RE: the watches. Depends on how you look at them. True, there is a lot of variety, but I think it’s interesting how many of them actually contain similar elements and structures…take a closer look.
David S
on 22 Aug 07Sure, there is a lot of variety in watch design, but there is also a lot of stealing. How many difference watch companies have a model with a black band, round white face, and black hands? All of them. Should they all be sending each other emails saying, “You can’t steal our design! Acquiesce now!”?
As for code, if you broke open all those watches to get at the motors, how much variation do you suppose you would find there? I’d bet that all the watches have similar gear layouts inside.
BradM
on 22 Aug 07It’s my own fault, but I had done some mockups for a local News site. Long story short, I didn’t end up doing the project, but they decided to use the design anyways! Nature of the business …
Joe
on 22 Aug 07I think it’s possible you might be looking at things more negatively than required. Speaking as a web developer, and a user of your products, you’ve made a really big impact on our industry. A lot of your interface design ideas, and organization have become the de-facto standard. That’s a great thing for you guys.
I bet if you look at our app, Jumpchart, (jumpchart.com) you see a ton of similarities to Basecamp. That’s not a knock-off. We enjoy using Basecamp all day, and would like to think that our application will be familiar, and easy to understand for any Basecamp user.
There is a logic to a lot of your underlying ideas that just makes sense for many applications. Not all of it started with you guys, but you may have exhibited some of the most un-arguable versions of it in recent history.
As a reader of several of your books, – I agree with most of what you’re saying about application development… Not because I’m a mindless sheep without creativity. We do all sorts of creative designs at my company Entermotion. (entermotion.com)
Anyway. I don’t blame you if someone is stealing actual code, or directly knocking off form and function. It would hurt to see your marketshare erode from copycats… But maybe imitation can be flattery in some cases.
UBE
on 22 Aug 07Since I just received an Unsolicited Builk Email, I find it amusing that you are upset with someone’s ethics. Doctor, heal thyself.
And you really don’t want to know how I feel about spammers and the pond scum that facilitates their activities. Check with your relationship with Lyro.
Value added above.
george
on 22 Aug 07Jason: Building on what David S said, what do you consider “inspired design” and “ripped off design?” I mean, obviously if someone directly copies and pastes a page from a 37signals website into their html editor and changes the logo and body text, then that is blatant piracy… But what if someone uses a similar top blue gradient found in all 37signals websites on his website, and uses other similar colors just because they look so good and are very legible? Is that piracy?
I mean, there is piracy, inspiration, and good design. Your original blog post (from what I read) seems to lump all three together. Where is the line drawn between the three?
Michael Long
on 22 Aug 07Yes, there are many possible designs, but as Jakob Nielsen demonstrated in Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed, there’s also a “design language” for the web that uses certain locations, words, and styles to convey meaning to the user.
Deviate from that language too much, and you risk creating a site that’s confusing to your users. Make the design “too” different, and you risk sending them away to a site that’s more comfortable and which doesn’t require them to relearn everything they think they know about the web.
While the logo-top-left-as-home-button paradigm may be staid, it’s also, to a large extent, expected.
Ryan Schroeder
on 22 Aug 07Good post, much better than the reactionary stuff we usually get around this topic. The line between piracy, inspiration and good design is a continuous one with individual design falling anywhere along that line.
I’d like to hear thoughts on a specific example. I’m working on a web app right now and I’m using the | Save | or Cancel pattern I attribute directly to 37s. The aesthetic of the site as a whole doesn’t look like as 37s app much at all but this individual element is “stolen” directly. Not because I’m lazy, or couldn’t think of another way to do it, but because it’s currently the best way to implement this type of functionality in a web app.
Random8r
on 22 Aug 07I don’t really think that’s appropriate.
If they blatently rip the design off, then that’s fair enough, but if they take good design principles from your designs – I’m talking timeless principles – the principles YOU have learnt from someone else, as well, and they re-use those, I don’t think that’s terribly wrong in ANY way (otherwise, you’d be in the wrong).
Part of your blog is about telling people how to design. And then, it seems part of your blog is now about telling people off for when they use your ideas.
Of course, there’s ‘use’ and there’s ‘copying’. I’m talking about ‘use’.
Yeah, there are 5 billion watches, but isn’t it interesting how many people seem to go for similar ones? hehe…
I guess I’m attempting here to play the devil’s advocate. Pastel colours and using “tahoma” at a certain weight really can’t be copyrighted now, can they? :)
beth
on 22 Aug 07I really like the watch analogy.
Anonymous Coward
on 22 Aug 07Man, whoever is taking the watch examples absolutely literally (“look, some look the same!!!”) needs to chill out. They are provided as an approximated example to illustrate a point.
Wolf
on 22 Aug 07Indeed, there’s only a few ways to do something right on the web. Just because you have a blank canvas doesn’t mean you need to freewheel and paint whatever comes up in your mind.
Just because watches have thousands of different looks doesn’t mean they’re good watches. Most of them probably suck if you need to know the time – some are purely for added aesthetics, others are both beautiful and usable.
The same counts for websites. However, on the web you don’t want people to figure out how to use your website.
Ed Knittel
on 22 Aug 07That’s an impressive list of watches! Unfortunately, I can’t read some of them so I immediately eliminated them because they aren’t usable. Then there were others that use some very odd typefaces which not everyone has so I had to eliminate those as well. And since I’m not a woman or a child so I eliminated all of those watches.
The point is that there are of course hundreds of ways to design a watch. And just like websites, the majority of them do not take the user into account and are basically useless.
I bet if you chose only the watches that YOU would use a lot of other people would choose the same watches for the same reasons.
Aaron
on 22 Aug 07Clearly all those watches weren’t designed with usability in mind. I’d argue that when you try and design a usable UI, your design options/techniques become much more slim.
brad
on 22 Aug 07I had English teacher once who used to say ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’. So, as a side note to a company already known for excellence, this can be viewed as a compliment. Kind of funny that my English teacher had this view, though, since he was extremely punitive of any semblance of plagiarism…
Mike Trotzke
on 22 Aug 07I’m am one of your biggest fans. Normally I feel like you guys are writing so I don’t have to… I can just send my friends and employees the URL and the book and say this is my philosophy.
This is the first post in years of reading that I’ve ever truly been disappointed in. Your designs have influenced the industry… Good for you and good for all. Your ire about this is a waste of your capability. Does tracking these guys down make your product any better?
Imitation is big part of the web’s success, and why we as designers must continue to innovate to be successful. If someone is imitating you, you are doing something right—Keep doing it. Don’t get distracted.
Ryan Schroeder
on 22 Aug 07Aaron, good point. The “most readable” all have a standard hour and minute hand. or a standard clearly readable digital display.
Darrel
on 22 Aug 07“Yes, Darrel, but taking someone else’s wheel isn’t justified just because you think it works. Original works must be respected by law”
American IP laws were ORIGINALLY created so that we, as a society, DID take other’s wheels when they made sense to build on the collective knowledge of society. In exchange, the creator of said wheel was to be fairly compensated.
What seems to have changes is a huge shift towards ‘MINE! ALL MINE! YOU CAN NEVER HAVE IT!’ in our legal system…perpetuated mainly by large companies with large lawyer budgets.
But, yes, I’m going way beyond simple UI design.
Stealing code/visual design verbatim is wrong. Reinventing the wheel every time is wrong. The solution is always somewhere in the middle and where it crosses the line from ‘stealing’ to ‘pragmatic re-use’ is muddy, moving, and often highly subjective.
I need a delete icon for my web app. Should I cut and paste the trash can from Windows? No, probably not. That’s stealing. Should I create some unique never thought of before icon to represent deleting? No, probably not, that’s bad design. I probably should do something in the middle…draw a recognizable trash can on my own.
“But when you take someone’s look and feel, their proportions, their styles, the things that make everything look good together, that’s design piracy.”
Let’s use specific terms. That’s aesthetic/visual design piracy. I agree. No need to steel another’s color pallet and icon set verbatim. That’s just being lazy/cheap.
Tony
on 22 Aug 07No offense (cause your products are cool), but there really isn’t anything exciting or unique about the visual design of a site like basecamp. The js behavior and subtle things you’ve done to ease the user experience are great. But all there is to the actual design are a set of really boring square tabs – not much flavor. It’s the equivilent of the watch in the top left corner – not really styling but it gets the job done.
Anindya
on 22 Aug 07Awesome post! So inspiring!
Anonymous Coward
on 22 Aug 07Isn’t this just a “Fear, uncertainty and doubt” (FUD) article? Its hard to grasp what exactly is considered “design piracy” and it would be great if examples would be posted, eg such which required “legal intervention”.
Do we need to be careful to add drag handles to draggables or embed an object icon in a window title if we don’t want to get sued? What exactly is the original thing in the 37signals design?
Seth
on 22 Aug 07So, who are the offenders? :)
Martin Ringlein
on 22 Aug 07Your wrist watch example seems to negate your point. I only see three or four ways of actually telling time on all of those images. A digital rendering and an hour hand (which may or may not have a second hand) being the most popular.
While the fashion of the device can vary, the technique by which its function works has only a few possibilities—seemingly, from your example.
If we were to apply your example to something like the web—it would reason that a website could look a thousand different ways but only function in a few particular ways; what sort of shitty experience would that be if our options were really that limited.
Anonymous Coward
on 22 Aug 07Did 37signals invent the 2 column fluid layout?
Stacy
on 22 Aug 07You cannot protect “look and feel” on the Internet. It’s 100% open with view source, etc. In fact, that’s exactly how we all learned this stuff and made the Internet grow without bounds.
When you come up with a new and exciting “look and feel”, you should take a leadership position and get PR if you can. That will help your bottom line more than hiring lawyers to go after copycats.
However, you should protect, via copyright law, your words and SEO literals bigtime. Not doing so can harm your search engine ratings, and thus your business economics.
But making a big deal out of someone “stealing” your 2.56783 column design that looks very cool and it took you a year to do, is a waste of time, IMHO.
When I see a site that looks like Basecamp, what do I immediately think? Hey that looks like Basecamp! So 37signals can extend their marketing beyond this site by taking a proactive leadership role in “look and feel.”
diskgrinder
on 22 Aug 07yeah, but you missed the Omega Chrono-quartz caliber 1611 off your gallery, how can you expect any nascent designer to be inspired if you don’t include that piece of wonder, hey? Tell me that then.
Jeff
on 22 Aug 07There is more to the design of the average watch than every page in a 37signals app combined.
Ethan Poole
on 22 Aug 07Maybe these copies aren’t rubbish markup under the hood.
Brian
on 22 Aug 07I think any techniques spotlighted on this weblog or in your books are “fair game” at least; why would you give a detailed explanation of how you did something unless you wanted people to imitate what you did? imagine publishing a book on C++ programming, and then placing a restrictive license on the code examples so that nobody could copy them.
Also, any application that wants to integrate with your applications-using the API’s you explicitly built for that purpose-probably SHOULD copy a lot of design elements from you, shouldn’t they? Doing otherwise would be a significant failure.
Anyway, it isn’t clear to me if you are advocating a higher code of ethics than what is enforced by law, or if you are merely asking people to follow the law. I believe that the letter of the law is almost always going to be on the side of the “infringer” in these situations, because it is so easy to find prior art. Legally, there is a big difference between doing something first and doing something first on the web or even first on a computer. If you’ve done something truly new, then you should be able to get a patent on that invention. Failing to get a patent is akin to saying that the invention is free for all to implement. You could try claiming copyright infringement on the look and feel of a particular device, but Vegas would be betting heavily against you.
As software professionals, we should respect each others’ rights beyond what the letter of the law requires. But, also, we should respect each other enough to avoid thinly-veiled threats against each other.
Brian
on 22 Aug 07BradM,
See http://www.no-spec.com/articles/just-say-no/ and http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/position-spec-work
m~
on 22 Aug 07How is this http://www.joobs.ro/it/ ?
I hate the sob’s for: ripping off your design, ripping off the ‘future of’ design in one little site. To be honest, the thought that you could do something about it didn’t event cross my mind up until now.
I would be grateful if you would let me know about the outcome.
Jack Shedd
on 22 Aug 07“There are only so many ways to design a web page” is a very lazy statement. There are millions upon millions of ways to design anything.
However.
“There are only so many good ways to layout a web page” is a wholly accurate statement.
Henk Kleynhans
on 22 Aug 07Well, I was talking to a friend of mine who started using Highrise after I told her about it a few weeks ago. (The conversation was along the likes of ‘We’re so cool and awesome’ because we use Highrise).
She then pointed me to www.freshbooks.com which she uses for time tracking. The first thing that struck me was how similar their homepage was to 37signals product sites. Now, although I have no need for Freshbooks, because it felt familiar and reminded me of some great products, I definitely would use it if I needed something like it.
My next thought was that maybe I should build my own website in a similar way, rather than the traditional Home | About | News | Contact style.
I’d like to think though that my new design would be “inspired” by 37signals design, just as our development methodology is inspired by Getting Real, and wouldn’t be a simple rip-off…
Keep up the good work and sue the bastards who copy your work without attribution.
Drew Pickard
on 22 Aug 07Man, I really wish you could get away with abtracting a website to some of the points that those watches are abstracted . . .
KevinB
on 22 Aug 07I regularly look at 37s – I don’t like everything you do, but I always find the decision making process surrounding why a certain design was arrived at intriguing. Quite honestly I borrow – not an entire site design, but I try something out – sometimes it works, sometimes not. I don’t see a problem with it.
So besides flickr, who do you owe a debt of gratitude to for popularizing a web design metaphor that you think moved 37s or web design as whole forward?
Cheers.
Adrian
on 22 Aug 07I’m intrigued.
Assuming that this isn’t just a gratuitously snotty post, how about posting some anonymised screenshots of supposedly offending apps alongside the corresponding 37signals screens?
There may well be ten million ways to make a watch, but there probably aren’t many ways to make a “classic” gents watch with a black leather strap, round face, gold bezel, roman numerals, white face and thin, elegant black hands.
Likewise, what MySpace tells us isn’t that there are millions of skilled latent web designers out there innovating like crazy. It tells us that there are millions of ways of making a mess and considerably fewer ways of making something practical, elegant and usable.
Isn’t that the whole point of design patterns?
Wolf
on 22 Aug 07@Jack Shedd: thank you for stating my point in a clearer way :).
Stephen
on 22 Aug 07“Roughly once a week…. 1% of the time it requires legal intervention.” This means you’ve taken legal actions one time in the last two years? How many times in all? Twice? Is “legal intervention” just a vaguely threatening letter from your attorney?
Because I find it hard to believe that you could actually win in a court of law just because someone mimics your web site. Do you have design patents like Apple? Because copyright don’t protect “useful articles,” and trademark/trade dress only applies to the same narrow vertical. Publish the complaints you’ve filed, the docket numbers. Of course, if someone in your same exact field copied your design precisely, you might win, but I assume that’s not what you’re talking about.
How many of those bizarre watches you show would someone actually wear? Give us a matrix of normal watches, say, watches photographed off the wrists of the first 100 males who pass you by standing on a street corner.
Jake
on 22 Aug 07Have you sent a strongly worded e-mail to http://38thsignal.blogspot.com/ yet?
Max Ivory
on 22 Aug 07I can see the point of the article, but Im not sure the watch analogy really helps that much in the context of web design…
Apart from being a time keeping device, the primary function of a watch is a fashion accessory which indicates something (supposedly) unique about the wearers personality. Hence the infinite range on the market.
A web site on the other hand, is not primarily a tool to express the uniqueness of the designers / or indeed the users personality. (Hmm.. Newsflash! Perhaps this is the problem with the web!)
It may be a matter of opinion, but for me the web is not in fact a giant canvas for graphic designers to express their uniqueness. If uniqueness of expression is so important, perhaps a purer medium like Graphic design would offer greater rewards.
Dont get me wrong, this is not to say I dont appreciate or strive to add creativity in my work; Im a designer too. But in reality successul web design operates within pretty narrow margins – it has to.
Web designers should be more honest. Every time we use the web we subconsciously soak up the and mentally bookmark the best techniques (hmm nice bevelling / I like what they done with that photo effect) soon to be recycled, tweaked and adapted into successful elements of our own pages.
The web remains a fantastically stimulating medium to work with, but really its not Art. Its good to differentiate of course, but in the grand scheme of measuring the success of your web site the end user places little value on uniqueness of your design. And if someone copies your work – you should be flattered! (whilst remembering that all property is theft ;-)
Perhaps the Picasso quote is a little hackneyed, but it does fit the discussion.. “Good artists copy, great artists steal” More on that theme for those who are interested here
Jeff
on 22 Aug 07I think the products made by Active Reload are a perfect example of design inspired by but not stealing from 37s. I’d be interested to know what your thoughts on those are.
Andy Kant
on 22 Aug 07Hate to burst your bubble, but the look of the 37s UI is fairly generic and could easily be reproduced knowing nothing of your work. The value of the 37s UI is in the flow and theory behind its organization, but the inspiration for that is sort of hard to separate from the design.
matt lyon
on 22 Aug 07funny, consistency of ui design is one of the reasons people i know prefer desktop apps (at least, mac ones) over web apps. every website, there’s a new vernacular of ui style and conventions to learn.
I know a lot of people who have trouble with sites that are renown for their ‘simplicity’, including 37signals products, flickr, and so forth primarily because of this. These people speak “desktop”, and the web is still for reading and browsing, not using.
So are we to take our cue from watch designers, make things look gaudy, and hamper usability even more? This kind of styling works in watch design because there’s only so much we expect a watch to do, and usually what’s what is pretty obvious. Not generally so with web design.
I must also agree with Andy K, the 37s UI look is pretty generic. In a way that’s good, because it’s easier to figure out than something that is less generic.
Mimo
on 22 Aug 07Well. If you
1. publish a book “Getting Real”
2. build successfull applications
you have to know that you will have impact on people. Many of those who design web pages or applications are not as long in the web business as you are. So they will lern from you. I have learned a lot from your apps. And i like your simplistic approach to design. But i like Audi, too. And Japanese Design. And Bauhaus. And Mies van der Rohe. And Edward Tufte. I see how you have solved certain problems and have learned from it. But i am still figuiring out that not all your solutions work for me and i have to find new ways. Man, the human beeing is a copy-paste creature. This is how life works. So don’t mind if somebody learn from you by copying. Especially if you preach a certain design/work philosophy.
Des Traynor
on 22 Aug 07I guess many people would like to see an example of what’s right and whats wrong in your eyes.
Take BoxCloud for example…http://www.boxcloud.com/tour.html To me that just screams basecamp, but you’ve linked it before, so seem to be ok with it.
Steve O
on 22 Aug 07BoxCloud, WOW, what a total rip. Shameless.
troll
on 23 Aug 07Oh noes! Someone’s using Interstate for their header graphics! Call the design copy police!
timoni
on 23 Aug 07Almost every web app client I’ve ever had has cited your applications as something they want to emulate. “I really like Basecamp; I just want something clean and simple,” etc. I do my best, but Verdana and CSS-styled tabs will look the same in my designs as in yours.
Carl
on 23 Aug 07Just because it’s original doesn’t mean it’s good or appropriate. Indie Rock. David Lynch. Dippin’ Dots. Holler if you hear me.
ALL and I mean ALL of us who have sat down at a computer and done web design have taken SOMETHING from someone or something else. Remember when you first started? View Source was THE. SHIT.
To plagiarize someone more famous than myself: Good artists imitate, great artists steal.
Jason, I’m also using the ”|Save| or Cancel” convention. You should be flattered. I want you to start signing your blog posts “Howard R.”
Whew. I thought these panties would NEVER un-wad. Group hug!
Rossi
on 23 Aug 07Wristwatch example is ridiculous. For every unique design out there, there are 300 that copy said design and brand it with their own name.
Not everyone has to think of web design in abstract, artistic terms. It’s just hypertext and graphics.
When you’re under a deadline and the client is breathing down your neck, it’s much more beneficial to re-use various elements from trendsetting sites than to stay up at nights trying to come up with a paradigm-shifting appearance.
Blatant rip-off is unethical, I agree. But copying of button styles and color schemes are not. Most of the sites associated with 37signals borrow heavily from elsewhere. You just internalized it and convinced yourself that you’re original. What a farce.
Basecamp in itself is not a visually complex piece of art. It looks like most sites that came before it. The magic is in the ease-of-use, so you assume the minimalist interface is somehow unique and your own.
Furthermore, why didn’t you reinvent the tabs on Basecamp? If you place such a high value on originality, why do the navigation tabs look so dated and unoriginal? Why does 37signals logo look like the old TechTV logo?
Get off your high horse.
Shane Vitarana
on 23 Aug 07What about a site like Pastie that has obvious 37signals influence but not a blatant copy. Would you consider it a rip off?
Jack Shedd
on 23 Aug 07I find the amount of self-rationalizing in the above comments amusing and inspiring.
Wolf
on 23 Aug 07The title of this post should be: There’s only so many ways to do something right, right?
Sara
on 23 Aug 07Don’t throw stones over your own roof and try to avoid posts like this.
Should Ludwig Mies van der Rohe sue 37s for using “Less is more”? or better yet, sue all those who design minimalist houses, furniture, ... websites?
I cant see the benefit you can get from suing people who copy your designs when most of them are located out of US. Who would you sue a distributed Open Source project?
You made a great job being the catalyst for a whole generation of entrepreneurs. I can’t imagine Semler suing others for taking the ideas he has advocated for.
What you are asking here is to make web applications more confusing, less is more and you’ve done that, you have not invented white canvases, tabs, animated effects, usability, minimalism, or thorough copyrighting. You’re telling the world about what you do in an open way and you should not intimidate the fan base telling them they can’t use what they’ve learnt from you.
I’m sure the 1% you sue can prove where YOUR sources of inspiration come from. 37s you have not invented anything new, your mixing up your sources of inspiration. From Martin Fowler for Rails to Jakob Nielsen for design and Ricardo Semler for your business philosophy, you as everybody else are what we read, the people reading this blog will eventually mimic you.
They say that copying from one is plagiarism but copying from many is research, and 37s did their research for us and built the most inspiring wheel on usable web applications.
Mimo
on 23 Aug 07Jack. Experienced people influent less experienced people. In nearly every aspect.
An inventer in a certain area is a person that just did one step more in the right direction. If his step is not going to make him fall then the rest will follow. And perhaps next time it will be somebody else from this crowd to do the next great step.
All the great people that we know, were born as babys. They learned 99% from other people. It is the 1% that made them special. But it is a normal habbit of the rest to try to copy that 1%. But the rest will be never known for this copied 1%.
Jack Shedd
on 23 Aug 07“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” - Albert Einstein
flipdoubt
on 23 Aug 07To be reductively on topic, could you add the manufacturer’s name and model number in the ALT element? I love when you post these collections of watches because it is like you’ve done the shopping for me. Now I just pick he one(s) I love and … Wait, I don’t know the name or manufacturer.
Mimo
on 23 Aug 07But why should i hide? What is my purpose in hiding?
Jay
on 23 Aug 07Most of the people on here seem to be arguing that simplicity and original design are mutually exclusive. Just because it is simple does not mean it is not designed and does not mean that it’s ok to copy. If you are a designer and someone is paying you, or you are making your own product, then it is your job to not rip someone off. To say that, for example, “I do my best, but Verdana and CSS-styled tabs will look the same in my designs as in yours.” is lazy and unprofessional.
Tim Goh
on 23 Aug 07Just curious, if someone was to compare 37signals to watch designers, ie “37signals is the Franck Muller of web designers”, which designer would you want to be? (I’m sure it’s not ol’ Franck, but I don’t know many watch-makers).
Mike
on 23 Aug 07I would really love to hear the outcome of the “1% of time involves legal intervention.” I have a very hard time believing that you would win anything in a case of a web page’s “look and feel.”
Prophetess
on 23 Aug 07to timoni: Word! :)
to y’all 37s guys—do you remember the heady days of the mid-to-late-90s? there was a web, and the word of the day was “share and share alike”. it was relatively ad-free. no one had come in with big stompy lawyer boots and IP threats and copyright this-that-and-the-other. if i had a cool graphic, there it was! no watermark, no “mine! don’t you dare touch!” notices. if someone else wanted to use it, so much the better.
now, if someone lifted my entire site, i’d be mad. but copying look and feel was a compliment. i’d done something worth someone else’s time! people borrowed underlying code, altered it to suit themselves, and off they went.
there was no AJAX, no bittorrent, damn little XML, and most web pages used tables as the underlying building block. but we were free.
honestly, i prefer then to now. even with all the new shiny design.
Matt Radel
on 23 Aug 07I like how Hillman Curtis puts it – (to paraphrase) allow yourself to be open and inspired by what’s out there. Breathe it in and put something of your own into the world to inspire someone else.
I think the biggest problem is that web designers (god I hate that term) are only looking at the work of fellow web designers for inspiration. It’s nice to have reminders (like this post) that inspiration can come from anywhere.
Josh A.
on 23 Aug 07This is a truly excellent post. imho, you can be inspired without pirating. But not everyone seems to get that.
Darrel
on 23 Aug 07“Just because it is simple does not mean it is not designed and does not mean that it’s ok to copy.”
Of course not. But just because it’s ‘copied’ doesn’t mean it’s not ‘designed’ either. And it’s often OK to copy.
Design is about thinking. HOW to do something.
I think most folks are confusing visual design plagiarism with the more murky ‘borrowing from accepted interaction standards’.
Of course, Jason hasn’t been able to clarify any of this, so I suppose none of us really know.
“If you are a designer and someone is paying you, or you are making your own product, then it is your job to not rip someone off.”
It’s your job to be a good, efficient designer. Do you think designers at Ford re-think the concept of 4 wheels each time they design a new car? Of course once in a while a prototype does come along that questions that norm, but, for the most part, it’s silly to not work of the base, proven concept of 4 wheels.
Josh
on 23 Aug 07An interesting thing to note is that many of the 3rd-party applications that 37s seem to boast, promote, or honorably mention on their own blogs have striking similarities to their design decisions, elements, verbiage, etc. So, are we to assume that as long as you’re “down” with 37signals, you are in the clear?
Josh
on 23 Aug 07Another thing I’d like to mention is this particular post seems to be completely contradictory to 37signals’ philosophies.
Jason: You have been able to refine and evolve your UI designs, sharing with us those design decisions, and progressing because of the community behind your applications. Many of the people who are borrowing ideas and concepts from your interfaces have done so because they have been involved during the refactoring processes and have learned from you. If you hold yourselves up as industry leaders – enough to write books and blog posts about the topic of design – then don’t get all uppity when your loyal fan base borrows some things.
I’m not for stealing any XHTML or CSS code or markup. I’m not advocating direct, obvious rip-offs. It seems that 37signals has found the “sweet spot” in their apps now and are trying to c**kblock anyone else from benefiting from the evolution that they likely partook in. I guess what aggravates me the most about this post is that a lot of the people using 37signals’ apps are designers. We are paying 37signals for a service. We are part of the constant revisions to their designs. Now they want to insult us for wanting to design interfaces that compliment their own user experience. Did you ever happen to think that perhaps we’re designing similarly-used application so that users of 37signals products would feel at home when they use ours? Again, I’m not talking about the obvious, blatant rip-offs. The community and supporters of 37signals can spot those products and boycott them. But, let’s not get all fired up about concepts and design decisions that you openly share with the community that folks may have decided to put to good use.
That’s my piece.
Kelter
on 23 Aug 07Browser: Variable width, height, colorspace, fonts, OS’s, etc. 2 inch circle: Not so much variation, eh?
Moving targets, like the web and it’s browsers, are always more difficult to design for, so many folks wind up using “tried and true” vs “reinventing the wheel”. Plus the web can be be accessed with so many more agents than simply a web browser.
Curtman
on 23 Aug 07My watch is the Nooka Zoo. www.nookazoo.com One of the most unique time telling pieces out there. Must say though, as slick and unique as it is, the interface is not intuitive. However, they’ve kept it SO simple and unique that any plagiarism would be obvious. Their is strength is being peculiar.
Though I like the simplicity of the 37 Signals design there really is little that makes it very unique – and that in itself creates a problem when it comes to protecting the brand. UI elements like fading yellow highlight backgrounds are more likely going to be copied than a custom illustrated icon. Basecamp etc are so close to being (dare I even say) generic by their simplicity… {Ever notice how even Basecamp is starting to show it’s age with more “extras” being added to the UI?}
Bet the plagiarism started once they read a pirated copy of Getting Real.
Anonymous
on 23 Aug 0772 comments and no response? I noticed the 3 new posts today though, it’s been a while since that’s happened.
steph thirion
on 24 Aug 07The second part of the post is inspiring, but the first one.. pretty scary stuff.. We haven’t seem the examples, but “UI Look and feel” sounds pretty wide. So we can get sued for doing such simple things as doing a simple html page, made of a couple of menu, boxes and the best fonts available on the browsers. Plus users expect a certain set of visual and UI standards (and yes 37s might have set a part of those). There’s not that many possibilities here. It’s not like you’re opening flash and building the most wicked interface ever, sci-fi movie style. In case you copy that for profit, you should have to negociate with the authors. But when you can get sued for copying simplicity, it’s just scary.
Reminds of Apple, that patents everything they can. Some are truly a breakthrough, but so many are really just simple reasonable things. I wish I could remember a better example right now, but the other day I heard of a patent they filed about a technical concept for a handheld interface where you can hear the menu items and states, and in there they simply patented the concept of creating an audio voice file on realtime, and then saving it (or caching it) for later use. So does that mean everybody who wants to use that basic, logic, reasonable, dead simple idea will have to pay Apple? Further in that road and we might one day be sued for using paragraphs.
Anonymous Coward
on 24 Aug 07Seems to me 37signals is not innocent of committing design piracy of their own, namely against Apple. Parts of Backpack’s calendar look awfully similar to iCal. The Highrise contact editing pages look like Address Book, and the new transitions in Backpack (according to a 37signals article) were derived from OS X System Preferences. Jason, how do those cases fit into 37signals’ position on design inspiration?
Anonymous Coward
on 24 Aug 07Here here.
jack
on 24 Aug 07http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Tarantino
“debate has been sparked on when such references cease to be tributes and become plagiarism. Tarantino, for his part, has always been open and unapologetic about appropriating ideas from films he admires. When confronted about stealing ideas from dozens of movies, he stated, “I lift ideas from other great films just like every other great filmmaker.”
37singals themselves have also borrow much design concept from other product. i doubt 37singals can clam all their design are original.
Anonymous Coward
on 24 Aug 07Right… I just don’t get how they can push their viewpoints, albeit solicited, on us for so long and then pull something like this.
Jason: You can’t take such a “our way is the right way” stance and then get pissed off when people follow your way.
Josh A.
on 24 Aug 07I don’t think Jason’s really talking about the Yellow Fade – that’s a part of Rails.
Jonathan Belisle
on 24 Aug 07My Post is about that tagline on the Design of Watch and might sound a bit esoterical but is not.
Time should not supposed to be considered a tangible element :) It can go slower or faster depending on what you focus your attention and wether you are alone or in group.
Sorry for bringing the issue but when I read someone stating that its obvious that Time is composed of 24 hours I must launch the inevitable debate of consensus about time flow.
The rules of time are ….yet… to be understood.
24 hours in a day, usually displayed as 12. Your brain can tell if it’s AM or PM….... Our brain can also tell the almost exact time without watch. Try it for a week and you’ll never wear a watch again :)
Sorry….Social Engineering has done a lot of damage to our perception of time. Time is a concept….. it floats in our mind.
What about the Design of Calendrical Systems ?
Deen
on 24 Aug 07Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal - Pablo Picasso
Mimo
on 24 Aug 07So what is Pablo saying.
If you copy something, then everybody knows that it is a copy and not the original.
If you steal something, nobody knows that it was stolen and praise you for beeing the original
So if you get some inspirtation from somewhere try to hide the source.
But till you reach the original status, you will have to copy a lot.
Scott Meade
on 24 Aug 07I agree that 37s should actively protect copyrighted work. Yet, when design is based on well-known and long accepted best practices for readability, composition, and understanding such as the Swiss Style developed in the 50’s – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Style – the design approach would not seem to be copyrightable.
Jim Krause in one of his books “Design Basics Index”, expresses a good view:
Jim starts by acknowledging that there are, what he calls, “aesthetic axioms”. That is, there are design “truths” that are generally accepted (and owned by no one).
Quoting: “Every layout begins with empty space.”
“But without a proper understanding of effective placement, even the most excellent element of a design is handicapped or doomed.”
He starts by acknowledging that best practices in effective design exists. They make possible books like his and 37s design book and articles. But then, he goes on to challenge designers to – at times – break out of the box.
“Principles of aesthetics, though extremely important to understand, should rarely be preached as commandments. In design, as in politics, rule-followers rarely make history”
I like that part of this post. Jason encourages designers to do something different and make their mark. We should all strive to create new contributions and to have our creations influence our discipline.
The problem is that this post doesn’t stop there. Taken as a whole, it equates designs that do not make a mark – those that do not break out of the design axioms box – as stolen copies. While it is true that “rule followers rarely make history”, they are not committing a crime.
Maybe some examples would help. Any examples of what is considered a design axiom and what is considered a 37s copyrighted effort? Interesting to contrast this with Yahoo’s approach: “We’re thrilled to be sharing patterns and code with the design and development community, hope it’s useful, and look forward to your feedback.” http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/index.phpAnonymous Coward
on 24 Aug 07I agree with the Anonymous Coward above and this seems slightly hypocritical.
“Seems to me 37signals is not innocent of committing design piracy of their own, namely against Apple. Parts of Backpack’s calendar look awfully similar to iCal. The Highrise contact editing pages look like Address Book, and the new transitions in Backpack (according to a 37signals article) were derived from OS X System Preferences. Jason, how do those cases fit into 37signals’ position on design inspiration?”
I just don’t get how you can communicate to 75,000 people best practices in design, charge $895 for seminars, and espouse your stuff in books, and then say,
“Oh BTW, don’t even think about using this stuff or having your site look anything like our products or we’ll sue you, advertisers on the deck, your cool.”
Don’t get me wrong, I am not for copying anyone’s designs, but you just can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Anonymous Coward
on 25 Aug 07“Don’t get me wrong, I am not for copying anyone’s designs, but you just can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
I agree 100%. 37signals preaches the use of conventions and standardized approaches. Rails wouldn’t work without following conventions. Many of the conventions used in Rails seemingly relate to UI patterns used by 37signals’ products. So, those of us building Rails apps seem to follow the same patterns used in 37signals products because they are good examples of how to use the framework appropriately.
37signals: Get Real™. This post makes it sound like you’re changing your mindset from that which you preach to that of the big corporate lawyer-types.
Clide
on 25 Aug 07I find the original post and all those comments quite interesting. It’s a pity that we cannot hear Jason Fried’s feeling about those comments.
Deen
on 26 Aug 07Mimo, what do u say?
Quote: “If you steal something, nobody knows that it was stolen and praise you for beeing the original”
replace “you” by “37 signals”
Benjamin "balupton" Lupton
on 26 Aug 07What about a good feature seen somewhere, a good feature is what it is, a good feature. It will be thought up by other people, not just you.
What about say, having a 2 column layout, bloody obvious, but stolen design? Or expand that a bit more into say a new innovation like… “Digging”, that is now a obvious concept, but not created by Digg alone, and currently not used by Digg alone.
Innovations become more obvious as the scene evolves, and the scene wouldn’t evolve without widespread acceptance of an innovation.
kee
on 26 Aug 07Fortunately watches don’t have content. It’s 100% design. You don’t even need the stereotypical numbers. Content makes design much more complicated.
Sebhelyesfarku
on 27 Aug 07What a retarded post. Nothing is unique in the 37signals sites.
Mimo
on 27 Aug 07Gerry McGovern, Web copywriting guru, makes the same argument for writers:
One of the simplest tricks that professional writers learn can greatly ease the process of getting ready to write: look for a model of the kind of article you need to do, then dissect it, analyze it—and copy it. . . . Novice writers often make two mistakes: they think they need to be entirely original, and they think they need to wait for “inspiration.” Take it from the pros: for most kinds of writing, originality and inspiration are overrated.
Ian Ringrose
on 29 Aug 07The biggest problem that people like my mother has with website today is that they are all different from each other; she can cope with tab controls in a windows application as they are the same in all windows applications. However web sites are a different matter.
Microsoft leant years ago that the best way to get users happy with the office UI, is to not complain when other none completing products copy parts of the UI. Until the same happens on the web a lot of people will not feel comfortable using web sties.
This discussion is closed.