On Copying and Stealing Designs Written by Lala C. Ballatan
The notion on great artist, Pablo Picasso’s quote, "Bad artists copy. Good artists steal" is lost on many. And revolving around graphic designer circles is quote “Good artists copy, great artists steal” known as Picasso’s quote, still. Anyway, it might just be safe to assume that Picasso have not quoted this words exactly but he did have an “expert’s assessment and statement” regarding copying and stealing art styles and techniques.The artistic world was widely influenced by Picasso, being first living artist to be featured in Louvre. Many have their own opinion and interpretation as to what he really meant on quote. With onset of digital technology and digital art, it is understandable that modern Web graphic design also has an interpretation for it. In an article by Cameron Moll, Creative Director for IDI at http://www.sitepoint.com/article/copy-great-designers-steal he had endeavored to uncover a possible explanation in three levels of design. These three levels involves some aspect of copying or stealing, shows increasing design maturity, adapts Picasso’s quote to modern graphic design. The interpretation by Moll was segmented in such a way that do not imply that they are only levels of design. it is but a guide to assist improvement of designers’ design and lead to their maturity with regards to copying and stealing designs. The first level explains a well-imparted principle of starting out by copying other well-created designs. Web designing could relate this principle from advice of Web copywriting guru, Gerry McGovern for writers: having a model for kind of article that they need to do, dissect and analyze them and copy. Copying, not creating have surprising positive effect, too, that of maintaining conventionality. There’s a familiar and intuitive effect for users when most sites have essentially same layout and information architecture by most sites. A Web designing career involve time constraints and budget limitations so much so that copying is almost mandatory.
| | Content Management Systems (CMS): What They Are And Why We Love Them…Written by Maarten Van Ruitenburg
There is a buzz in online community about a technology that empowers average computer user with ability to create and maintain their very own web presence. In past, individuals who took interest in having and operating their own websites were burdened with task of learning HTML, DHTML, and other web-based technologies such as JavaScript and CSS. The only alternative to this was, unfortunately, to pocket expenses and costs required to pay a web developer to build and maintain it for them. This dilemma is one of primary reasons that small to medium-sized businesses did not begin to emerge on worldwide web for several years following corporate dot-com rush. Many business owners were terrified at thought of having to learn complicated programming languages and server languages in order to create ‘do it yourself’ websites. Fortunately, that was then and this is now! Due to evolving demand for businesses to have a presence on web, a new application has emerged in order to help business owners and employees create and sustain a professional-looking site without worries of coding and technical applications. What do we call this innovative technology that lessens gap between IT professionals and ourselves? Content Management Systems (otherwise known as CMS). Simply put, Content Management Systems are applications that implement easy-to-use web-based tools in combination with a database and web templates in order to effortlessly construct, and update a website’s content. Hence name, Content Management System. Content Management System applications are ideal for businesses and sites that require ongoing updates and additions. The simplicity lies in fact that through utilization of web-based tools, Content Management Systems completely separate updating and creation of site’s actual content from site’s design and layout. Therefore allowing a person with no knowledge of HTML to go in and alter/add content to site’s pages without making structural changes to site’s design. What are a few of benefits associated with using a Content Management System over traditional web-design? Well, to begin with, Content Management Systems are developed in a way so that even a novice user has power to maintain and update site. The content input/update areas are designed to offer a very user-friendly interface, appearing much like a common word processing application that so many of us are familiar with. This makes it possible for any person or staff involved in document creation to easily and efficiently maintain content on company’s website.
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