Imitation or Inspiration
My Calvert End Table, inspired by a picture on Pintrest and designs by Chris from FourEyes Furniture
I’ve seen in the maker space an uptick of people being upset their style is being imitated, or stolen. Style of woodwork, style of video, style of content.
What is style but an iteration on a previous generation with tweaks, improvements, and personalities integrated to create a similar, but different version of what fell before. When something works, don’t change it. Modify, make it your own. Look at a 1995 Chevrolet Tahoe and compare it against each generation. You can distinctly see how the designers kept the car what it was while updating and modernizing every new instance of the vehicle.
Maybe cars aren’t the best example, after all, the design is owned by a single entity, General Motors. So let’s look at something more personal.
It takes time for an author to develop their voice. They have to write and write and write, but writing alone will not establish it. An author also has to read, experience another’s voice, expand their vocabulary, and create what is distinctly their own. An author’s work is a combination of what they read, heard, and seen. It’s inevitable and starts from a very young age with what you read as a kid. J. K. Rowling said the magical platform 9 and 3/4 would have never existed had she not read the The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe as a child. Would Stephen King be the horror writer he is today without Frankenstein or Dracula?
We are all iterations of those before us. We learn, we take, and we make it our own. There’s not a single piece of furniture designed in a vacuum. That is impossible. Every designer and maker has seen furniture and knows what a table is supposed to look. They use that previous knowledge to pull design elements together, creating a unique piece, but rooted in history.
Same with YouTube videos. I have a style, which I feel is distinctly mine, but I have watched videos for years. I have seen what works and what does not. As I decided to try to make videos I started watching for things like transitions and music use, pacing, story telling, and I created my own style based on many, many videos from different creators. Did I steal?
I don’t think so.
If that is stealing then my writing is stolen, my furniture designs are stolen, my ideas are stolen. And those whining about their styles being stolen are doing nothing but gatekeeping. Driving “unoriginal” people away, but even they are not truly original. They developed their style the same way the rest of us do.
And how disheartening for those trying to make it, being inspired by the greats only to be told they need to stop. That they aren’t good enough because they are a copy. But they aren’t a copy, they are an iteration.
As a creator, I expect to see iterations on my work. If someone sees my work and is so inspired they want to make what I have made, in their own way, then by all means I encourage it. To me, that’s an honor.