Plagiarism is Overrated.

A designer colleague of mine asked for my opinion once in regards to showcasing his portfolio online. His simple question bellies a common fear shared by most designers when it comes to the matter of sharing his/her work - "Do you think it's possible to show off my works online, but not allow others to download it?" The answer is an obvious and resounding "No". Even with JavaScript hacks not allowing right-clicks and the likes, there is still such a thing called "Print Screen". And if the other person is even that little bit knowledgeable, he/she won't even need to do that to plagiarize your work. All they need is a sneak peek, a glimpse even, and off they go cloning away your proud babies.

In this day and age of the world wide web, nothing is personal and uniquely owned anymore. For all you know, that amazing illustration you did last month could well be used by another designer for his proposal pitch. And that great idea you had for that French Festival? It's printed already! For a t-shirt design celebrating the French Revolution, thank you. And the best part of it? You don't even know it!

Even in countries that are supposedly 'stricter' in enforcing their laws (like Singapore), rip-offs still happens regularly. Some cases are pretty fricking blatant. An example would be this t-shirt design a friend of mine did for Threadless. It didn't get printed, but instead a local (Sg or M'sia) street-wear brand took the design right out, slapped their brand name in the design and printed the shirt. Note that I'm not even talking about those shady road-side stalls selling trendy youth wears. I'm talking about a proper boutique shop with a known brand with more than 2-3 boutiques over Singapore. They claim to be "Fresh", but now we know better don't we? - hint* -

Personally, I feel that designers are starting to branch themselves out into two different sub-cultures when dealing with plagiarism. There are those who are perfecting their craft to a certain extent that it is no longer just that, it becomes an art in itself. With these guys, the lines differentiating Design and Art has truly blurred, and they have merged with Artists, Scupltors, Illustrators and the likes. These are guys like Joshua Davis , Marian Bantjes , Nik Ainley and the likes who have developed and perfected their own unique style.

To them, protection would be quite irrelevant for the sole reason that the promotion they receive from their sites is such that they are now identified with these unique styles. I don't think they'll mind people copying their work because they know that 'proper' clients will see right away that the person copying is doing sub-standard work, and or not doing it properly.

Another sub-culture of designers are those who thrives on relationship and advice instead of simply the strength of their work. Does this not sound familiar? A company wants a rebranding, reimagining of their corporate identity but the person in charge of the corporate communications are reluctant in injecting new blood/starting a new relationship with a new provider. Instead the keep coming back to their current designer, based on the fact that they are "comfortable" working with them.

I'm not saying these designers are not strong graphically and the likes. I'm just pointing out that the job scope of the designer has evolved to such an extent that we no longer just make things pretty, or communicate a message. It has now expanded into communicating with the client about how their 'message' should be, maintaining a proper working relationship with the client, convincing the client that what we're trying to say with our visuals here is proper and good for their company.

My current company is quite a good example of this "working relationship". It doesn't matter if another company takes our design and copy it, because more than 50% of our clients are repeats. Meaning they come back to us because they are happy with our services in the past, tho I seriously just think that it's because we keep giving in and saying "yes" to whatever shit they ask of us.

Bottom line? Plagiarism is overrated. While it's not cool to have your work copied and all, at this day and age, we'll just have to live with it. Those who are afraid of embracing the internet as a mean for promotional and exposure will probably do just fine, but when I look at the payoff of having my works showcased and available to such a huge (amazingly huge) audience, there is really no way I can say no to that. The potential gain far outweights the risks, by more than a mile, so the best advice I gave to that colleague of mine was a white lie - "Yeah sure you can. There's a JavaScript hack that disables right-clicking".