farfromfearless
The benefits of sharing creative source-files with your peers
Many of you have probably downloaded my WordPress Theme - Lemon Lime - in the recent past, and there has been no shortage of e-mails from each of you expressing your appreciation for including the source-files. By "source-files" I mean the WordPress theme itself along with the Photoshop files I created for the design.
For the most part designers, me included, have a tendency to be very protective of their production files, which include everything from Photoshop to Illustrator and anything else that might fall between. This is not without merit as there continues to be a history of plagiarism in this industry. I target no one in particular, though we have all encountered them on one occasion or another; however, I came to the realization that no matter how hard a designer or developer might try, there are too many ways to have your work misappropriated (read: stolen).
In terms of design work, all it takes these days is a screenshot or two and there goes weeks if not months worth of work. Not only that, but the results of the misappropriated (read: stolen and terribly reproduced) work, are beyond insult. I have seen layouts and templates that I’ve designed show up on forums along with a handful of websites of international design or development “agencies”. Each one looking like the low-resolution screenshot was blown up or jpg artifacting being used as some bizarre “design technique”.
About the same time I came to a second conclusion: I’ve been looking at this dilemma all wrong. I figure, hell, why bother wasting energy and time trying to protect work that for the most part will never see the light of day?
Here’s another way of looking at it: If you intend on publishing work for the world to see - and chances are you’re going to be ripped off at some point - why not take a pre-emptive step and share it with the community?
Risky? Certainly.
With the exception of client-work, it is contrary to my nature to share my production files. The thought of it makes me cringe a little. The idea that some other designer out there in the world butchering my work and doing things to it that I would never want to consider, makes me want to curl up inside and resort to being a source-miser. My Photoshop files, the color schemes or vector work being torn apart and remade into some Frankenstein monstrosity - I could go on, but I think you get the point.
In any case, it comes down to a matter of perspective. There are designers out there who are going to butcher my work. There are hacks out there that are going to do nasty things to my files and repurpose them for ungodly means. But I accept that because there is also a designer out there trying to become a better designer. There is someone out there who wants to see how another designer might build a file. Perhaps they only want to peruse the PSD’s layers in order to understand how a button was built, or how a template might better be constructed for production.
The best part is that without knowing what or if they handled my files, I might very well meet that designer down the road. “That designer” - may well be a very talented individual with some great ideas and excellent work. My source-files might not have totally influenced him or her; however, it is nice to think that I might have possibly served as inspiration.
I know this all must sound little pretentious, but it really isn’t. I am not about to share source-files for everything, but I will share what I think other designers can build upon and learn from.
On a side note: While I do not condone plagiarism to any degree, if you have every intention of ripping off work that is shared (by me or any other designer who has shared work in the past), at least have the courtesy to faithfully reproduce the work so it looks professionally designed. If imitation really is the height of flattery, please do it well.
7 people have left comments
Matt Wilcox said:
I think this is a great move. I’ve done similar before, but not to this level or extent. I’ve shard the PSD document is use as a template, and I’ve shared techniques and files for things like colour pallets on my site, but taking that extra step and including _finished work_ is something that would have been a complete no-no before I started contributing to Open Source projects.
I do think it’s the right choice though, and it really is a good feeling to think you might be helping someone out. Next time I do a design I think people will be interested in, I will follow your example and include source files in my write-ups.
Kudos to you!
Chris Murphy said:
Hi Matt, glad to hear from you again, and thank you for your comments. While I have yet to release this latest theme to the public - I will be releasing the complete package of Photoshop files the theme was built from.
I have a few other projects for which source files will be released. In fact I’m thinking of building a repository of this sort of material. Who knows 
David Kappa said:
I found this post to be incredibly interesting from a couple of perspectives.
The first angle I look at things is from the perspective of the aesthetics of the designer. What designer can honestly say they havent at some point in their career (and I feel it is actually a regular event) seen someone else work and said to themselves “damn, thats really good” and elements of said site have inspired them to create their own, yet similar, elements for their own projects?
I some sphere’s of psychology it is taught that there is no such thing as an original idea, concept, design, or anythingelse.
You place the life experiences, things seen, heard & felt into the blender that is a persons mind, hit the button and what comes out is the “New Idea”.
The other avenue is that of which I in my talent am more geared towards and that is the view of me as a coder, I am happy with my coding abilities, have been for a while. I am fortunate enough that when I set my mind to it I pick up new or reinvented coding techniques fairly quickly, however I am not much of an artist, creating new visually pleasing, effecient items is not something that comes easily. However taking something that exists and replicating, cutting, cropping, nipping, tucking something so that it results in something which appears new and original is something I have managed to become efficient at, is that still plagerism? I don’t know that is for each person to judge for themselves, personally I feel that if the end result is something that fits into your own style and not that of someone elses then you havent broken any unwritten laws of design.
As for the quickly growing arena that is open source design I find this to be a much greater boon for all designers out there than any of the drawbacks associated with it. For those still learning and climbing their way up in their skills it gives access to knowledge, inspiration and what should only be an occasional shortcut (note on that last one, by shortcut I mean copying maybe a line of code from a whole page). And for the very experienced it gives an arena outside of their clients, who tend to play it safe, where they can push the boundaries of current design and help shape the web of tommorow as the use of these open source templates makes these newer ideas saturate faster and therefore become a mainstay faster so the whole web improves in look, feel and quality at a greatly increased rate.
Well that turned into more of a ramble than I intended, Amazing job you have done with this design, I am intrigued how the other colour schemes you mentioned in another post are going to turn out.
zane matthew said:
very well said
im new to the word press community and viewing others php files is a big help
Chris Murphy said:
From my perspective, the only practical way — we as an industry — are going to improve the quality of work that appears online, is to ensure that designers and developers learn from our mistakes, capitalize on our advances and build on what we leave behind.
Ben said:
Well, I for one have benefited greatly from your willingness to release your work. I’m using your files on my blog right now and working with your sources has been a lot of help to me as a learning Wordpress hack.
Having the original psd’s has been awesome too. Very helpful and generous of you.
Thanks!
2clicks said:
Hi!
I read your article after downloading the Lime material (php, psd, and all) and have to say thank u for your generosity. Im a web/graphic designer and blogger. But im trying to develope my own theme for my blog.
I do not know so much about PHP and integrating it to the graphic interfase but I love to investigate, and try, and try, and try. ^_^
So thanks for the material, it will be very useful for learning pourposes. May the source be with you, Chris! 
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