The Fine Line Between Inspiration & Stealing – Episode 108 - a podcast by Brandi Sea

This week we are going to talk about the fine line between being inspired by someone else’s work and stealing other creatives’ ideas. It’s going to be an intense conversation, buckle up!



Michelle’s week:

Michelle’s week/weeks have been exhausting and busy. She’s been using the app Headspace and even that is hard because it reminds her that her body hurts. She just finished a huge project for work out in Angel Fire, New Mexico, and ended up working 30ish hours. Bright side she was able to take comp time which was super helpful. With that comp time she took her daughter to the swimming pool, sadly got rained out but they did get an actual real rain check which she used later in the week.  

Brandi’s week:

Brandi also helped with the project that Michelle had for work. She hasn’t gotten to work behind the scenes on a shoot in a very long time so that was really fun for her. She also got to speak to a design group, Coffee and Creatives. Every quarter they have some workshop things and they asked Brandi to speak this time. She spoke on creating ads for social media and she really enjoyed it. Her title for her talk was, “More than just a pretty typeface”. She also partially homeschools her children and this was the year to go through and reorganize her school room. It was a massive overhaul and her mom and sister both came to help her with it. And she also found out that she doesn’t need to buy any new school supplies this year which is very exciting. Then Kenny, Brandi’s husband, turned the part of the attic above the kids bedrooms into a fun attic play area for them. Though that meant there was debris from that all over their rooms which meant cleaning, which turned into cleaning and organizing both of her kid’s rooms. Not super exciting but accomplishing for sure. 

Takeaways from this episode:



* Work from sketches. It’s so important and it’s basically evidence proving how you got your idea. 

* Design and art are your intellectual property. 



If something looks exactly the same, it’s stealing. If the look is the same, but the colors are different, it’s stealing.



* It’s easy to steal and not realize you’re doing it. This is why you need to have multiple references in the same style while you are working so it keeps it differently mixed by you.

* It is okay and can be good to copy when you are learning your techniques, but once you know how to do it, make it your own.



When in doubt, don’t, or ask.



* Always give credit. 

* It’s a fine line between inspiration and stealing.

* If you make something that is too similar to something else, keep it to yourself and chalk it up to experience.



 

Brandi’s song: “Heartbreak Magic” by Riah

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please rate and review our podcast in iTunes and if you want to support our show please go to Patreon.com/designspeaks we would love it! You can give as much as you want. Every little bit goes to helping us keep this podcast going.

Thank you to Vesperteen for allowing us to use his song Shatter in the Night as our intro and outro music for Design Speaks

 

 

This Quarter’s Book:

We are reading and reviewing books on the podcast every quarter!

If you would like to read along, THIS QUARTER, we’ve been reading, The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair.



Want to support us?

Go to Design Speaks

Further podcasts by Brandi Sea

Website of Brandi Sea