Who cares about being original?

When designer Christopher Doyle issued a heartfelt plea for designers to ‘try to be new’ on Twitter it prompted an impassioned debate on the role of originality in creative work. CR talks to Doyle about what sparked the debate and his own views on whether it is still possible to be entirely original and, if so, why we should try

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  • kevin Blackburn 11/09/2017 at 11:00 pm

    As a designer, if you’re not striving to create something original and meaningful your really not doing your job. The desire to explore, combine, mix and shift a variety of ideas and styles should be what drives you and get’s you out of bed in the morning.

  • Design Adult 09/09/2017 at 10:09 am

    This is rich coming from a designer who has publicly had his own issues with originality in his work.

  • r z 08/09/2017 at 10:19 pm

    Image 1 under the first question: I had to stop to comment on the periods. There has become a proliferation of periods on titles/headers/subheads recently that don’t belong there. In this case, there’s a period after the person’s name. NO! Please folks, please don’t do this. Our societies and languages and learning of the past are becoming “dummied down” as more people populate the graphics industry. The basics of good design and text punctuation need to be upheld. This is becoming a design style and. it. just. looks. stupid. I see this usage and I shake my head. I don’t consider it progressive, rather, I consider it juvenile. Thanks for letting me comment.

  • Wade Milles 08/09/2017 at 7:28 pm

    When he talks about Airbnb logo ripoff:
    “It always gets me down when designers immediately assume something has been stolen instead of entertaining the idea that perhaps the same, simple line-work logo could be sketched the same way twice.”

    But when it comes to his poster design :
    “a very obvious lift of”

    Sorry but this is just hypocrisy.

    I haven’t seen the lift of but his poster design is very trendy and generic. One could easily say the same thing for his design; simple and basic layout work could be sketched the same way twice.