This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
>> Return to the Small Business Branding front page <<
Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal from Cameron Moll is cool. Inherent in the article is the idea that when you’re a new designer, writer or any creative-type, it behooves you to copy the work of others until you develop your own style.
That reminds me of a VH1 "behind the music" thing I saw on Creed a few years ago. Before they were huge rock stars, they were a cover band. They copied the work of other musicians. Copying, combining and integrating the work/ideas of others is a key component of creativity.
Fred, writing on the Qumana blog sums up one version up the creative process really well, although he calls it blogcrafting. Whatever you call it, this is pretty much how it works for me:
"Each
of us goes through a process of receiving and taking in information,
digesting it and adding it together with other pieces of what we know,
think, believe or wonder, and then we look for ways to transmit it out
… to a colleague or a friend or a group or a network … via conversation
or publishing something or leaving messages and other pointers to
useful or potentially interesting information."