It’s nice to see someone take an influence and do something with it. Sure, there are some structural similarities that hint toward Golden Mean, but I’m pleased and flattered to find a design which goes out of its way to establish its own identity through completely modified graphics, colors, and type treatments. I’ve seen enough copies of design work to know that Parker actually took the time to deconstruct a CSS file, learn how it was put together and what it was doing, and rebuild a style sheet from scratch for a modified design. I could pass on the idea of lichen as a representation of beauty. But hey, “eye of the beholder” and all that. Well done.
Other entries for SitePoint’s CSS Design Contest are listed here. (grazie a mezzoblue)
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9 comments (Comments closed)
Wow. I wouldn’t have even realized they were the same unless you said something. Parker did a nice job changing it up, but the original Golden Mean is 10 times sweeter graphically… at least in My opinion…. and that’s while thinking that Lichen is one if the better designs in that other contest. He oughta submit that CSS to Dave for the zen garden.
I’m guilty of the same. I too looked at every id, every class, and every note in your code from that very same “zen” piece Doug. You should be flatter. It’s a great design.
I think it was Picasso who said “Artists often learn to paint by imitating the works of others..” I think quality designers expand on those imitations adding their own unique style.
HUm, I have to try to take the chance to say one thing:
Were on earth do you hide your shortcut icon code and shortcut icon?
For Mister Zeldman is easy:
link rel="Shortcut Icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"Some tips would be nice =)
Oh man, I hate to feed the off-topic comment, but alexbuda’s comment is thoght provoking. How do you do that?
I don’t use the <link> element to point to my favicon since I have control over the root of stopdesign.com. Sometimes it’s necessary, but most browsers will look in the root directory of your webserver for “favicon.ico” and use this for the shortcut icon. Place an icon resource (.ico) into the root directory of the webserver, and it works automatically for most browsers. (Note: IE/Win seems notoriously buggy for either not grabbing the icon, or forgetting it after a day or so.)
If you don’t have control over the webserver root, use the <link> element to point to an icon resource within the top-most directory you do have control over.
Much more information at favicon.com.
Also note that the file you point to must be a icon resource, not just a file you’ve saved directly in Photoshop. I use a plug-in for Photoshop called IconBuilder to create my .ico’s.
not completely on topic, but i have to agree w/Jimmy Mack, I first got into designing and doing HTML coding by attempting to mimmick sites or styles i liked. Lots of people learn this way, by posing the question of “how is this site setup” and then taking inspiration from the little tricks and hacks they used to get their desired layout/design/whatever.
i do get pissed sometimes when i see a site blatantly copy my design, and use it on a for-profit endeavor, then at least i’d like some email from the thieves thanking me :-)
I do recognise that decoding your CSS is a hard stuff. I didn’t have time yet to get it all through but the few I’ve already read learned me a lot.
Beside the technical part, like Brian I think you’re kind to support this guy. His design has (for me) none of the points that make me instantly bookmark ‘Golden Mean’ an discover this site.
I hope to see your work on Apple’s pages soon :)
I am guilty of Bowmanism myself, by dissecting your work I have learned a great deal and have borrowed elements here and there and have done the same with other sites. If you surf through our site you will probably see what I borrowed and adapted from who. It usually starts with “How the heck did they do that?” then after hours of dissecting it and figuring out how it works I tweak it and experiment with it and then try to use it somewhere in my own work. I usually then put a comment in my CSS giving the originator credit with their URL, just in case someone else is doing the same thing as me, this way they can go back to the source. Really this is no much different than what graphic designers have done throughout history. Been reading a book on the history of graphic design and found it interesting how many American designs started to mimic Swiss design in the early 1900’s, particularly coming out of Chicago. However I think there is definetly a line to be drawn, when someone steals a design outright I think pirated-sites.com has done a good job of bringing this issue to light.
Just out of curiousity Doug, who has influenced you and your work? Do you find yourself more influenced by other web designers, or print designers?
On a technical note, the Lichen link crashed my IE6 browser.
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