Last night when I was painting my craft room a Tiffany blue with Kelly Wearstler-inspired stripes, I got to thinking about a blog post that I wrote back in January 2009. At that time, blogs were still new-ish, and there was no such thing as Pinterest or Tumblr or Instagram. Now that there are so many ways to both inspire and to be inspired by design, I thought it would be a good time to re-visit that blog post. I’ve updated it a bit, but the question is still the same…
Is there such a thing as a truly original design?
Can one person “own” a design?
Last week, I shared my chalk paint pumpkins with you. I created them after seeing pumpkins painted by Landee at Landee See, Landee Do and Shaunna at Perfectly Imperfect. And yesterday, I came across a pretty white bling pumpkin by Heather at Setting for Four.
Who came up with the idea first?
Did we all copy each other?
Can any one person lay claim to the design?
When you think about it, every design is based on another design. We take a design that we see and like, and then create our own interpretation of it, putting our own spin on it and giving it our own personal touches. This is my home office:
I painted the letters on the walls because I’m a glutton for punishment ;-)
No, I painted the letters because I saw this nursery on Rate My Space and loved it! {Unfortunately, I can’t find the original post on RMS, so I can’t give proper credit to the creator of this room.}
The inspiration for the letters on the nursery wall came from this bedding from DwellStudio {it doesn’t seem to be available anymore}:
And this bedding was inspired by… well, I guess the alphabet. The history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt over 4,700 years ago. So does that mean the ancient Egyptians get credit for these three alphabet-inspired designs?
Here's another example. This is our upholstered bed:
My husband and I came up for the plans for it and built it. We based it on the Wallace upholstered bed from Restoration Hardware…
…and this bed that Sarah Richardson designed for a bedroom on Sarah’s House {season 1}:
There are obvious similarities between the three beds, but differences as well. All three have a nail head trim detail. The headboard corner cut-outs and legs on our bed are based on Sarah’s bed. But Sarah used a bold patterned fabric on her bed and we used a solid brown velvet, similar to the Wallace bed.
So who owns this design? I say all of us – and none us. The beds I used as inspiration for our bed were likely inspired by other beds. In fact, Sarah had to change her original headboard design because the original wouldn’t fit up the stairs to the bedroom. Which is an example of how a design evolves as you move through a project.
Nobody can say that a design is 100% {or even 99%} theirs. Every design is a collaboration of people and ideas – from pictures in books and magazines, TV shows, blogs, a friend’s house, stores, hotels, nature… design inspiration is all around us and in all of us.
That’s what I think – what do you think?
I’ll be showing you my new-and-improved craft room walls soon, complete with all my sources of inspiration. I want to put together a little painting tutorial for you to go with it :-)
