When Does Inspiration Become Plagiarism With Website Design? Why The Webflail Website Is About To Change

Before we dig in to this, let’s define what inspiration and plagiarism mean:

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Inspiration is ‘someone or something that gives you ideas for doing something.’ (Cambridge Dictionary)

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Plagiarism is ‘The process or practice of using another person's ideas or work and pretending that it is your own.’ (Cambridge Dictionary)

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During the website design process for Webflail, I looked at a variety of websites for inspiration but the one that I really loved was this website by SomeFolk Agency. It had a characterful serif font, a earthy colour palette and fun animations. I wanted to have the same feeling on the Webflail website that I did on the SomeFolk website.

While designing the website in Figma, I altered the colours, fonts and overall website layout to something I thought was unique. However, there were elements of the SomeFolk website that I used in the Webflail site like the oval buttons, the marquee scroll at the top of the website and a similar dark green body colour.

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I certainly did not intend to plagiarise the SomeFolk website and I genuinely felt I had made Webflail different enough to be unique but I clearly hadn’t - the founder of SomeFolk reached out to me telling me that the Webflail website was plagiarised. I felt ashamed and sorry for making someone see their own ideas used in my website.

We had an email conversation about the websites and he was gracious to gave me some great advice:

‘We're in the creative industry - we're all here for a reason, to be creative! All I hope is that this might encourage you to go and create something unique and fresh. Please feel free to use SomeFolk and any other website you find as a reference, but it would be better to use it as inspiration for creating something new.’

So when does inspiration become plagiarism? When not enough different sources are brought together to create something unique and fresh. As the founder mentions, using websites as references are totally fine. However, it should only be used as a part of a bunch of references to create something different.

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What Am I Doing About Webflail Website Now?

Since there were website elements that were recognisably from the SomeFolk website, I realise it is totally unjustifiable to keep the Webflail website as it is. I am totally re-branding Webflail and rebuilding the website. There is no way I can justify keeping the website the same. I aim to have the new website launched by the middle of November.

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8 Lessons From From This Failure

1) Shame

This incident is the worst failure I have ever had so far in my Webflow journey. If you have read previous article, you know I have had some failures but none have made me feel as terrible as this one. I want you to avoid this throughout your Webflow career (or any career you choose to follow).

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2) Research Depth

In addition, I have learnt that my research process needs to be far deeper, more eclectic and longer. If you are influenced from multiple resources, that mixture of ingredients makes something unique and fresh. To make something unique and fresh, plenty of resources need to be collected and ideas need time to percolate. They will subconsciously knock together and create something that has your unique voice and blend of influences.

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3) Website Inspiration Sources

I’ve realised I have focussed too heavily on getting website inspiration from other websites. This helps to create an incestuous pool of inspiration that a lot of other web-designers are using. I believe for the future Webflail redesign and other website designs I do, I will need to look outside of just my laptop. Here are some places/sources I’m going to start with to gather inspiration:

Magazines - Fashion and music magazines have really experimental styles and may offer tonnes of cool layout ideas

Museums - Experimental museums have all sorts of displays that affect all senses. How can I potentially bring these in to the website?

Advertising - Attention grabbing and fast paced, interesting to look at billboards but also TV ads.

Poster Design - Layout design inspiration in abundance

Architecture - Out of the box thinking to create fascinating shapes and spaces

Books - Loads of inspiration available from books on logo design, colour theory and more.

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By looking at fashion magazines, poster artwork, architecture and more, I think it’s safe to assume more unique and fresh designs will come to me.

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4) Separate Research From Design

I have also learnt that separating the research process from the design process is necessary to allow ideas to have time to interact. If you have a figma file with your inspiration and your design, you are far more likely to copy elements lazily rather than create something with your own voice.

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5) Understand Why Something Works

Rather than looking at a website and thinking ‘oooooh yes, I love that and that type of thing would be good for my project,’ I have realised I need to ask myself ‘why does that look and feel so appealing?’ By trying to understand the design thinking behind it, it forces you to think more creatively about how this could apply to your project (and understand if it’s even relevant or appropriate or not).

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6) Don’t Rush

Rushing the website design process lends itself to overly focussing on fewer resources for the design. I have learnt that I need to allocate time to JUST research during the website creation process (I am allocating a week to Webflail redesign research). If you force yourself to not to start designing until you have dedicated time to research, you will have gathered tonnes of different resources and knocked ideas together subconsciously which will make better ideas.

Nb. For client projects and agency work, you may not be afforded a lot of time for research. However, trying to juice research time or have as long in the research before design phase as possible will likely make more unique and fresh designs.

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7) Don’t Fall In Love With Your Designs

I think looking back at the Webflail design process when I first did it, I really liked the initial design I did and went with it. This is probably because I used too many elements from the SomeFolk website that I already liked but either way, I didn’t stress test the designs enough. What I now plan on doing with designs is do multiple versions of different website sections to tease out new design ideas. It’s easy to become narrow-minded and blinded with your own designs - especially after designing a full, high fidelity home page. Now, I think I will try taking elements away and see if the section is improved with less clutter. Change the colours and fonts completely. Play around with animation ideas using the prototyping tool in figma. etc.

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8) Push The Design Process

If your website recognisably has someone else’s webdesign elements, likelihood is haven’t pushed the design far enough! One interesting way of pushing a design I have tried out is deleting your favourite idea, and starting again without reusing any elements you had before. You are forced to think again about the design which leads to new ideas and creative concepts.

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Huge thanks to the founder of SomeFolk agency for helping me to realise that the Webflail website was not unique and fresh. More work needs to be done.