In design, everything has been done before • Hacker News Board

Re: In design, everything has been done before

#11

Post by italophil » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 2:48 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #6

So 'design' is now a synonym for 'logo'? In such a restricted space it isn't surprising that you can find a lot of similar pictures. One of the highest priorities for anyone designing such a thing is simplicity which reduces the amount of variation available so you end up with collisions.

I see the Medium post titled 'Your logo is copied', which is a better description.

Re: In design, everything has been done before

#12

Post by tylershuster » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 4:30 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #6

So 'design' is now a synonym for 'logo'? In such a restricted space it isn't surprising that you can find a lot of similar pictures. One of the highest priorities for anyone designing such a thing is simplicity which reduces the amount of variation available so you end up with collisions.

Logos are the easiest to compare — by convention they are simple, composed of basic shapes. There's still a lot of variation in how they can be combined. Comparing layout designs introduces a lot of permutations.

Re: In design, everything has been done before

#13

Post by basseq » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 5:12 PM UTC

The article focuses on stealing vs. copying, but both of those terms imply awareness of the source material. There's a grey area of "copying" where you design something while being unintentionally influenced by something else.

But I suspect most of the derivative logos in the article are instead examples of similar outputs from complete unique, separate, and unrelated processes. In other words, DesignStudio may have never seen or encountered the Azuma Drive-In logo when developing the AirBnb logo. That's not copying: that's happenstance.

With logos in particular, there's a finite universe of picograms and shapes, particularly when you're building off a letterform. There's bound to be collisions that are due to neither stealing nor copying.