Read this if you intend to copy my designs

I frequently get emails like this one:

Hey Zach,
I really like your new homepage design. It’s more or less exactly what I’d like for a homepage and I’ve been quite tempted to just outright thieve it ever since I laid eyes on it. That impulse makes me feel a little dirty, but… I’m in a bind. I can’t think of any way to improve the sparse, aesthetic simplicity of your homepage! So… I’m more or less writing this note to inquire as to how you feel about being blatantly ripped-off. Now, mind you, I make no money on the web, am not a designer in any traditional sense, and am far from ever
running in your same circles. That being said… Just a little what’s up.

In case you’re curious, I’m a post-doctoral research scientist studying visual attention and functional brain imaging at [redacted]. Beyond that, I’m an aspiring mathematician interested in measurement, in general. Lastly, I’m working on writing a book that [redacted] near the turn of the last century.

If there’s anything you want to know about anything you think i may know, please ask. Additionally, if there’s anything you’re willing to accept as trade for your mean design chops… please, please, let me know.

Best Wishes,
[redacted]

If you’re considering writing me a similar letter, to convince me to give you permission to imitate me, I’d like to offer up a response now to save you the trouble:

Sure, please do. Feel welcome to use my design, or copy any other creativity or behavior I exhibit. However, in return, I ask that you do the following things:

1. Don’t install the design without improving it at least once in any way.

2. Email me to tell me about the improvement.

3. Give credit where credit is due, and include a link to me when you make an announcement that you changed up designs. That way, if someone likes it, there’s potentially a new friend in it for me and they’ll know how to find me.

4. Do what [redacted] did and offer me something you’ve created. Some of my most rewarding relationships were founded online serediptiously by people willing to exchange with me.

In the case of [redacted], I requested a copy of his manuscript to proofread, and a tour of his hometown the next time I visit. Fair trade, I think. 

Impact of industrialism on the production of music

A couple of passages I’ve read recently have me thinking about this …

In Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave he explains that during the industrial revolution, “Concert halls began to crop up in London, Vienna, Paris and everywhere. With them came the box office and the impresario—the businessman who financed the production and then sold tickets to culture consumers. The more tickets he could sell, naturally, the more money he could make. Hence more and more seats were added. In turn, however, larger concert halls required louder sounds—music that could be clearly heard in the very last tier. The result was a shift from chamber music to symphonic forms.”

About the same phenomenon, Curt Sach wrote in History of Musical Instruments, “The passage from an aristocratic to a democratic culture, in the eighteenth century, replaced the small salons by more and more gigantic concert halls, which demanded greater volume.” Since no technology existed yet to make this possible, more and more instruments and players were added to produce necessary volume. The result was the modern symphony orchestra, and it was for this industrial institution that Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and Brahms wrote their magnificent symphonies.

Now as the technology and information age sweeps over the world’s industrial societies, what effects will shape music and all art? Of course, we’ve been seeing it for decades, music produced to sound good on car stereos, and compressed to fit on duplicatable media like CDs and MP3s. With low barriers of access to listeners afforded by the Internet, large rock bands thundering into sports arenas are shrinking into geeky solo artists with laptops. In the near future, will audio and video always be linked, given that our portable devices are capable of playing both at once? If so, how will the need for a visual companion influence the music itself?

Just wondering.