No, the title doesn’t refer to stealing other people’s creative property – while that hasn’t happened to me, I’ve seen it happen to a friend, and it’s horrible when it happens. No amount of watermarking will ever stop someone who doesn’t value the creative output of another.
What I’m referring to in this case is using the final output of someone else’s design, with their permission – and the issues that raises. My current portfolio uses a beautiful template by Pexato that I discovered off of Theme Forest. I tend to love the use of templates especially as tools to help optimize the design process rather than recreate the wheel. That said, I’ve always felt a little queasy about using a graphic design layout created by someone else, especially when it’s done so well, as is the case with Pexato’s work. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it – I very much do. I love that a great design on top of software like WordPress makes using it as a CMS fairly easy to use and straightforward. And I remind myself that the more time I spend in WordPress, the more I can appreciate the work that goes into it as well as reminding myself of the limitations and possibilities that go into developing great software. The ease of designing within a template like this means the things that I do know how to do (like futz a little with the code) become easier through the use of shortcuts like short codes and predefined design and typographic elements. By having those elements pre-established, it’s like a styleguide come to life; you remain consistent visually, which lets you concentrate on the content of what you’re saying instead of how you’re saying it on the site – which is what good design should always facilitate.
The problem is that for some reason, when it comes to my designs, often I come to a blank. I can rev myself up well for clients, but for myself, the inspiration isn’t always as fresh or inspiring to me. Or something worse – I start out with a design I love, and grow bored of it by the time I’ve finished implementing it completely, because the current design philosophy I’ve gotten into just doesn’t motivate me any more. I do see other design types paying someone else to create a design for them, but something about the practice doesn’t feel right to me. I fully accept that ‘to each, his abilities’ – that something that might take me 3 hours to do properly in code will take an experienced developer a third of that time. Similarly, someone might look at problems with a product and not know where to begin to fix it – whereas I have plenty of ideas on where to start, depending on the needs and requirements.
Still, at this point I’d eventually like to implement my own design on WordPress; while all I can do at this point for the sake of good time management is work within someone else’s framework (or template), I think it’s important to have something that one has built, ideally from scratch (visually at least) to have in one’s box of treasures. It’s also important to balance what one wants with what resources they have and the priority of that ‘want’, versus the true ‘need’. At this point, I have a good rough design done in Fireworks of something I’d like to port into to WordPress – which means having to actually code it in PHP. While I’m always interested in little side projects, it’s something to put on the back burner; luckily every time I view the design I still remember it’s something I want to do after a few more pressing priorities have been resolved. Like designing itself, it’s often as much about balance as it is about implementation.
About that photo – it’s a fav of mine I found on Flickr ironically enough of Bay Street in my hometown in Toronto. I like it not only because it captures the sun on one individual in a darkened group, but it’s a reminder that while we may be individuals in a spotlight, we’ve always got a group around us, be they other designers or just our fellow human. John Donne said it best – ‘no man is an island’.
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