Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then, if you are great, you will steal not from one thing but from everything
This sounds like the manifesto of an Andy Warhol LLM.
wE aRe aLl tHe aNdY wArHoL LlM
Stealing Is a Skill
91–100 of 159 posts
Re: Stealing Is a Skill
#92 When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took - the same as me!
The market-girls an' fishermen,
The shepherds an' the sailors, too,
They 'eard old songs turn up again,
But kep' it quiet - same as you!
They knew 'e stole; 'e knew they knowed.
They didn't tell, nor make a fuss,
But winked at 'Omer down the road,
An' 'e winked back - the same as us!
- Rudyard KiplingRe: Stealing Is a Skill
#93Copywork is an exercise where writers just copy verbatim another writers work. If you haven’t done it, it is an extraordinary way to see how the greats work. It also tends to improve your own writing skills - at least as long as you are copying from your betters. This seems like the web design version of this.
Jazz musicians also copy each other's solos for learning and practice purposes, but they would never actually perform more than a couple well placed quotes or licks from another player.
Re: Stealing Is a Skill
#94Copywork is an exercise where writers just copy verbatim another writers work. If you haven’t done it, it is an extraordinary way to see how the greats work. It also tends to improve your own writing skills - at least as long as you are copying from your betters. This seems like the web design version of this.
Related, Raymond Chandler says in his letters that he taught himself to write a novelette by copying one (by Erle Stanley Gardner). He took the original story and wrote a detailed synopsis, then wrote a novelette from the synopsis, compared it to the original, did rewrites, and so on until he understood what tricks Gardner had used to make the scenes work.
Ben Franklin did this as well. He writes about this exercise in his autobiography.
Re: Stealing Is a Skill
#95Copywork is an exercise where writers just copy verbatim another writers work. If you haven’t done it, it is an extraordinary way to see how the greats work. It also tends to improve your own writing skills - at least as long as you are copying from your betters. This seems like the web design version of this.
Also connected: many composers would write out previous great works, to learn them more deeply. Bach as I recall would do this.
Re: Stealing Is a Skill
#96> At the beginning of my career, I believed I’d be rewarded for the originality of my ideas. The truth is that you’re rewarded for identifying and solving problems efficiently.
The "I'll be original and get directly rewarded" vision is indeed naive.
However, sometimes you get to a point in which you design original ideas precisely so they will be stolen, and making that work for you is part of the design.
Re: Stealing Is a Skill
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it also well-documented that Virgil Abloh stole more in the ~100% range from up-and-coming designers who then saw nothing for their work?
If it is, I'm sure that you can easily produce that documentation.
https://kunekuneyokai.home.blog/2019/01/18/virgil-abloh-stea... from a quick look.
Re: Stealing Is a Skill
#98Don't do this. It's really a terrible idea. He's comparing Virgil Abloh being asked to create an evolution of the Air Force 1 and blatantly ripping off an already boring website (and in the same product category, no less). The two have nothing in common, obviously. You should build your own identity, and you do this by understanding your customers. If you want to create a boring copy of already existing work, well that's what we have LLMs for.
That said, we all take influence from the work of others who we admire. If you're going to steal, take the parts you like best from 10 different projects, improve every single one, and recombine them in a new way. That's how artists "steal".
Re: Stealing Is a Skill
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it also well-documented that Virgil Abloh stole more in the ~100% range from up-and-coming designers who then saw nothing for their work?
If it is, I'm sure that you can easily produce that documentation.
It is true and it is trivial to go find it yourself, it's been widely and repeatedly documented for the better part of a decade
Re: Stealing Is a Skill
#100Copywork is an exercise where writers just copy verbatim another writers work. If you haven’t done it, it is an extraordinary way to see how the greats work. It also tends to improve your own writing skills - at least as long as you are copying from your betters. This seems like the web design version of this.
I too wanted to make this point. In art and designing, copying is how you learn and how you kick start your creativity and innovativeness.