Designrific

I totally agree. You know? I have a designer friend who had many good designs made. He admitted that he stole some ideas, twisted and modified it to make it a very unique design of his! And it really gave great results!

I'd love to be the bad designer than to be good or great :)

originality is every thing
" Originality makes different$ " this is my quote
it was "Originality makes different" and our CEO just add $ after.

Actually sometimes it takes me too much time to check all the resources i have just to come up with a different and new ideas.

Mosti, you are right!

But being inspired is OK I think.

Car manufacturers don’t invent the wheel in every new car design they make. They can be inspired from another competitor’s car model or technology; they start from it and make better products which stun the minds!

It is like taking the spirit of the design and not COPYING the design as it is.

I will give you one example I made :)
www.mostafamourad.com/cb.jpg vs. www.yahoo.com
I was inspired from yahoo! Yes I was :)
In my presentation to Coldwell Banker I showed them up www.yahoo.com and told them "guys, I was inspired by yahoo! I stole its spirit".

If you saw my design alone you won't think for a moment that this design is similar (sort of) to yahoo! Although you visit it a lot! :)

This is what they are talking about here.

The final design is up here www.coldwellbanker-eg.com view it please using IE only :)
Frankly I don't like the final output because of the AD animation attack which they added!

Mostafa that was a great example!

Thank you for sharing!

But, to how extent does that rule apply? How much inspiration is enough? That is a more important issue to discuss in that matter.

The examples Cameron Moll gave in the article are more obvious! Both designs are not identical but there is a shared spirit in both of them.

yes great design are inspired by another great design, for example when u start a new design, first u will look around for some perfect designs to see how ideas go, then ur mind accidentally inspired by one of those designs u see, like color matching, some effects, fonts, spirit...etc. by the end ur design finished inspired by one of those designs u saw, and u find the result just GREAT.

Great discussion! Thanks for sharing the link to it with the folks over on Defrost Network!

To be inspired by something is totally different than steal
Actually all of us get inspired by something … sometimes we get inspired by nature, sometimes by electronics and maybe dreams! or whatever, but always there is something.

I think we can also improve others components in order to reach the perfect formula, just like most of you guys said.

Here’s something very funny about inspirations, when I was designing FilBalad.com I’ve got inspired by curtains! Yes our new office curtains (the vertical one)… we just bought a new curtains that make the room so nice, I fond of it at first and then I found myself building my concepts using the curtains shape.
this is the room: http://62.139.185.34/mosti/images/con-mosti.jpg
and this is the website: www.FilBalad.com

The More you are inspired by, the more original you are and the more solutions you have to many problems.