Hi!
Let me first start by saying thank you to everyone who has
shown love and support for this campaign #inspirationvsimitation. So many of
you have shared my recent blog post “An Open Letter To The Girl Who Sent Me a DM” on Instagram. It warms my heart to know that this spoke to a lot of people,
and I love in particularly how some of the newbies in lettering have found the
article helpful. The goal has always been to help others and to encourage
people to do better.
Now, it has come to my attention that there are artists out
there who are completely okay with people copying their favorite artist’s work,
or any work for that matter. Some even encourages it. I believe this causes a bit of confusion for some
people, if not a lot.
So you may ask, “What are we supposed to do then? Is it okay
to copy or not?”
If you’ve read my previous blog post than you’d know that I
do not recommend copying people’s artwork. I personally suggest that you focus
on copying techniques and the basics (letterforms, spacing, etc). Study and
learn what makes a good design or a good lettering piece, and then in apply
them to your work. I suggested staying away from outright copying someone’s
artwork to avoid it becoming a habit. Now maybe this is different for
illustrators and painters and other creative fields. If it is, please do
enlighten me, as I’m not in those fields and don’t have much experience in it.
Some of you have shared with me that in the beginning of
your creative journey you did copy others, but you did not post them online.
You’ve kept them to yourselves until you were able to come up with your own
ideas. This, I’m totally cool with! Copy all you want in private, but just make
sure you don’t post it.
Jessica Hische talks about this in her article, “Inspiration versus Imitation.” She brings out a good point on how young designers and
illustrators feel they need to post everything they’ve ever made online,
whether that is practice or original work, and gives the following advice on
the matter:
“It will be really hard to resist showing off the illustration
you created that was inspired heavily by one of your heroes, because in reality
it is probably one of the nicest things you’ve made. But that’s the thing,
every new thing you make will be (should be) the nicest thing you’ve made so
far, because you’re learning and getting better with each and every new
project. Resist posting the practice—the piece that you know is too close to
its inspiration. Let that practice fuel original work and then publish to your
heart’s content.”
So What To Do...
What is the conclusion? To copy or not to copy? You know
what,… I’m letting you decide what’s the right thing to do. All I ask is that
you do this ONE THING…
Since different artists have different opinions about
copying, please be sure that you always ASK PERMISSION FIRST before you copy
someone’s work. This is the polite thing to do, if not the right thing.
If the artist is okay with you copying their work then go ahead.
If they say yes but ask you not to post your practiced or copied work online,
then make sure that you don’t. And if the artist says no, or says that they prefer
that you didn’t (because we try to be polite), then please be respectful of
that too. It may not be the answer you want to hear but you should respect
their wishes regardless.
If you don’t know who the artist behind the artwork is, then I think it’s
pretty clear that you do not post the work anywhere online to avoid getting
yourself into trouble. What people fail to understand sometimes is that
whatever work you post online becomes your portfolio, whether that’s on Behance
or social media (like Instagram). And if I may quote my fellow-lettering
artist and graphic designer, Ngah Muli Ong, “posting copied artwork as one’s own might lead to commercial
benefits and that is wrong.”
I hope this brings a bit more clarity to the topic. If this
helped you and/or if you have any questions related to this, please feel free
to leave me a comment below.
Sincerely,
Vallery.
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