Inspiration and Authorship

Our theory tutor gave us a lecture on Monday that looked at the concepts and debates related to authorship. I found myself thinking about how we produce and consume content in a way I hadn’t before. I have never really considered myself an author. A designer, sure; a developer, maybe; but not an author. But when asked to define what an author is I can’t help feeling that we (people who run Tumblogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts, Youtube channels—Internet people, basically) are all authors. “Author” is a very broad term, I defined it in my notes as:

“An author is someone who consumes & then publicly reflects upon texts, through professional work, or otherwise”

The key idea being: you reflect upon something and then put your own twist on it. In other words: the content you consume informs the content you produce.

Which leads me to something that’s been really irritating me for quite a while, a whole category of content that seems to have been growing more and more recently. Inspiration lists. You know what I’m talking about, they’re everywhere, slowly working their way into all the corners of the web. They’ve long been on my list of “things I dislike with a passion”, right between “comic sans on formal documents” and “Apple people”—you know who you are!

If pretty graphics, gradients and Helvetica are all you know, then that’s, essentially, all you’re going to produce. You need to go deeper. You have to start to question purpose in what you’re producing. Design isn’t about typefaces, gradients, or grids; well, it is… but it isn’t. Design is about utilising those things to communicate a message and to, ultimately, trigger an emotional response.

So, I put it to you: inspiration lists are the fast food of the web design industry. They make your brain flabby and you end up hungry again in a couple hours. Sure, they’re easy to eat and they taste great, but don’t mistake them for real food.

Helping You Balance Your Diet:

• A List Apart
• Finch and his blog
• Retinart
• Information Architects – Blog
• Brian Hoff’s Design Cubicle
• Creative Mornings
• Andy Rutledge’s Design View
• UX Myths
• Microcopy Group (flickr)
• The Pipeline (podcast)
• The Big Web Show (podcast)
• 99% Invisible (podcast)