A Free Designer

2006.05.19

Came across this interview of Issara Willenskomer in the RedHat magazine.

From Issara’s website:

It is my firm belief that when information is shared, everybody wins. In the design world, people often tend to practice the opposite. People hoard their design tricks and secrets like a dragon hoards treasure, often getting indignant when someone else copies his or her ’style’ or ‘look.’ I call bullshit on that. Humanity learns through imitation and repetition. We all have built in systems that allow us to imitate others at an early age, and this paves the way for language development which in turn leads to everything else.

I must admit that I’ve been such a dragon on several occasions. Shame on me.

Permanent Link | Filed under: Design, Notes, FOSS

6 Comments

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  1. Mahangu

    May 19th, 2006 at 6:44 pm

    +1 to that. Projects like OSWD should be applauded and supported as much as FOSS.

    Is closed design one of the reasons why many FOSS projects have sucky UIs?

  2. chamira

    May 19th, 2006 at 10:30 pm

    Probably the reason why FOSS projects have ’sucky’ UIs is that they may not have very good or indeed any graphic/interface designers involved.

    Most of these projects are driven by developers (quite rightly) but aesthetic aspects seem never to be given any consideration, probably because they think only hardcore geeks (like themselves) will be using such products & will not be concerned with how ‘pretty’ it looks. There seems to be a perverse pleasure in making anything FOSS to look as sh*t as possible - why is that?
    “To keep it real”? Only commercial interest will necessitate a useable, pleasing and well designed interface?

    I am sure there are many designers who would quite gladly donate their time and skills to a worthy cause; it is just a matter of inviting them in.

  3. Lakshan

    May 20th, 2006 at 12:38 pm

    This is some sought of a cognative issue. Look at the old-skool days, where you are proud to share the way and technique how to do a math but can u teach a creative aspect of a drawing ? All you want is others to admire it.

  4. Asela

    May 20th, 2006 at 4:04 pm

    I must admit that I’ve been such a dragon on several occasions.

    You’ve got anotherone here

  5. chamira

    May 24th, 2006 at 1:22 pm

    Yesterday a colleague (lets call him A) complained that he hated working with another one of our colleagues (B) as B always tried to copy A and at times never gave acknowledged A as a source of ideas and knowledge. “It forces me to be a better employee, having to come up with better ideas just to keep ahead” he said. I didn’t see this as a negative thing (as he did) at all, instead of forcing him be a ‘better employee’ I asked him to think of it as forcing him to be more creative.

    Recently I read a small book by Paul Arden, there is a chapter called ‘Don’t covet your ideas’: “The problem with hoarding is you end up living off your reserves. Eventually you’ll become stale. If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish. Somehow the more you give away the more comes back to you.”

    I would add, if you are really that worried about not being given credit for your ideas, make sure you give away generously and extravagantly and obviously!

    I recently read a job vacancy for a web designer/developer asking the applicants to send, as well as CV &etc, 3 good ideas in how they would improve the company’s website. I’m sure the person who gave them 15 decent ones would have got an interview, at least!

  6. Prabhath

    May 24th, 2006 at 2:44 pm

    Some great insights there, Chamira. Thanks for sharing it with us.