I want to share with you a dirty little secret of all creative people. 1
Every designer, every artist, every inventor, every musician that has ever lived has used this method to 2
achieve mastery in their skill. 3
This method is called The Mimic Method. You see, the beginning steps of learning any new craft is mimicking 4
the experts in that field. 5
So if you want to learn how to cook, you grab Gordon Ramsey's or John Oliver's cookbook and you start 6
practicing some recipes. 7
You don't start by inventing food from scratch. 8
You start mimicking those recipes and then practising them. And once again a little bit of experience 9
and a little bit more confidence in whatever recipes you have been cooking, 10
then you start tweaking them a little bit. And then at some point you start reinventing and creating 11
your new recipes. 12
If you're learning how to play a guitar, you don't start by writing new songs. 13
No, you start by mimicking other musicians, meaning you start playing their songs. 14
And like every other beginner guitar player you start by learning "Wonderwall". Many beginner designers 15
get themselves trapped because they think the moment they start designing, they need to start creating new 16
or an original work. 17
And they get discouraged when this doesn't happen. 18
They think that they don't have talent for it. But they skip the most important step – mimicking the experts. 19
By mimicking expert is not only you get experience and confidence, but you also practice very good habits. 20
Because every good design work is full with all the good design habits that we discussed in this course. 21
Be it typography, and layout, consistency, and all the tricks of whitespace, and tension, and overlapping all 22
that thing is in good design work. And you're basically practising all that work while you're 23
mimicking somebody and sort of copying and replicating their work abd using their work as 24
an inspiration. 25
And once you start creating your own original work, you already have very good design habits ingrained in you. 26
Mimicking has 3 stages. 27
Stage 1 is copying. It's taking someone else's work and just copying it pixel by pixel. 28
It's sort of like playing somebody else's song or you cooking lasagna using a recipe. 29
This is done for practice rather than for real projects. 30
When you are learning by copying, you're learning a lot of hidden design decisions that were made by 31
a pro. 32
This is where every creative person begins, 33
be it Paul McCartney or Picasso. In stage 2 you are remixing. It's taking somebody else's work and giving your 34
own twist to it. Just like food recipes. You start tweaking ingredients little by little. You change 35
the fonts, you use your colors, tweak the shapes a little bit. 36
Now you've created something different. 37
However, if you put two works together, the inspiration is clearly visible. In this stage, you can already 38
practice working with real projects. In the final stage 3 now you are drawing inspiration not from 39
one particular work, but more like several different works, or different styles and maybe even like trends. 40
And here you add even more personal touch. 41
So the final result doesn't resemble any one particular work anymore. 42
And one couldn't say that it's a remix of this particular website or this particular design. 43
Although sometimes you could say that there is clearly an influence of some specific style or some specific trend 44
in design. There is no level beyond this something like truly original work. Because if things aren't 45
really based on reality, and influenced by reality and existing styles, then it just becomes irrelevant 46
and quite confusing for regular audience. 47
Sort of like the bizarre high-end fashion items. Too much originality will lead to products that people 48
don't understand and don't want to use. 49
That doesn't mean that people don't like new things, they do. 50
People do enjoy new websites that look fresh. And new fashion styles that look fresh. 51
But they enjoy these things because, most of the time, they resemble something from the past in something 52
existing. 53
But looking at it from a very new perspective and new outlook. So it's refreshed look of something familiar. 54
So the taste of the audience really matters for a particular work to be appreciated or rejected. 55
The strange-looking jacket, sweater or SpongeBob's pants is unfamiliar to you and me. But it might be drawing 56
inspiration from some other work. And particular audience of that show might be familiar with that inspiration. 57
So they might easily understand and appreciate its beauty. 58
Its hard to say that with a straight face. Also, the stages are like a volume knob. Not clear cut 59
transition from one to another. But more like smooth increase of intensity, with different levels within 60
each stage. 61
We're going to practice all these 3 stages. But before we do that first we need to learn how to find 62
the right inspiration. And base our work on that and mimic that instead of trashy ones. 63
So let's do that. 64
Up next.