Darn those similarities.

Reflections April 14, 2008

Dancing one of these dances which I really don’t like. All of this only to not be a copy cat or worse, do copyright infringement. How did it come about? Could not have been less innocent: I decided to redesign my mStudios site - especially after I realized how horrendous it looks for anyone punished to know and have only Internet Explorer browser. The concept of how I envisioned the site to be had evolved over the course of a month or so. When I finally decided to go into design phase, I searched a little around because I was not sure how to accomplish a specific custom code call within Wordpress which I would be needing to achieve what I want. With this exact concept in head I browsed in hopes for a simple solution and stumbled right over a Wordpress template which pretty much is EXACTLY what I had envisioned - even the COLORS are the same like I’ve used them since years in combination with my business (orange), so this makes it even more annoyingly similar.. Darn.

Ever since I am trying to do everything that it will NOT become a copy cat look - but what do you do if you envision the wheel and then find that somebody else just build one? Go square?

This path between inspiration, influence and straight rip-off is sometimes a difficult one to go. Sometimes it is really almost impossible to make a clean line. When the first left hand navigation bar came up… basically, everyone after ever using one of those copied. Or the famous Kubrick template for Wordpress. How many similar if not almost identical but still copyrighted as some others designs have washed across the web?

For the above reasons my redesign has slowed down. Still chewing on it with only slow progress. I am not willing to completely throw my original, own idea over board but need to work it long and well enough to feel proud of it.