Benchmarking, novelty and theft

I often get mad at students and juniors for not doing what is called “benchmarking”, which is the study and comparison of competitors and similar products. Basically: if we are designing a plastic chair, we must study other plastic chairs; if we are designing a book, we must study other books. When I ask them why they had not done benchmarks, they would tell me that they wanted to develop something of their own, without outside influences, they wanted to be original and creative. That’s when I reply, “Now take something you like and copy it, make it identical, steal it”.

I often forced students to redo a logo by stealing someone else’s style, even using the same colors and shapes. Or to redesign an app by tracing the colors and icons of Netflix or Spotify.

When people ask me why, I say, “How do you think we all learned?”

The first time I typeset my own novel, I copied Feltrinelli. I took a book I had at home that I liked (I think it was Lands of Glass by Baricco) and reproduced it on the layout software. But don’t think it was a piece of cake! I spent hours and hours measuring the distances to the millimeter, trying to guess the font used and the line spacing. I did test after test and I … learned. Then I studied an Einaudi book, then an Adelphi book, so my eye became accustomed to the differences, to better understand some of the design choices, even the way I could place the numbers. Gradually I was able to make autonomous choices that I liked.

Every product and piece around us—from the chair to the television, to the remote control, to the book, to the cell phone interface, to the illustration we see on Instagram—are created by skilled professionals, by people who are often more knowledgeable than we are or more talented, from whom we can learn and draw inspiration.

The great artists of the past went to ateliers and for years copied the works of the masters before developing a style of their own, so we should not be afraid of either stealing or losing our originality, in fact the exact opposite: we should absorb as much as possible, store, treasure and humbly take as much as we can. 

It is also important to draw our own personal line between theft and inspiration. Is it so terrible if someone discovered Fabula and decided to develop a similar tool for mail marketing? Would it be blatant copying or simple inspiration? Think of Goethe: if he had been stopped by the fear of being a “thief” we would not have his Faust, only Marlowe’s. And the same goes for Thomas Mann, who came after them. And what about Satispay, a payments app that has taken over a single function of China’s WeChat? What are they? Criminals or talented people who replicated a working system and managed to repurpose it in Italy?

What if we had a chance to freely rewrite Harry Potter, Hunger Games, The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby? It wouldn’t be creative work, some might say. So you say Nolan’s Batmans are not creative? Haha. Do you understand what nonsense and prejudice that is?

Copy, steal, take whatever you want, rework it and don’t be afraid. Get truly inspired.

Excerpt from The Creative Ambush