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The recent Skittles launch, which appropriated Modernista's idea, and the Shepard Fairey law suit, which questions whether or not the artist has a first ammendment right to use images appropriated from an AP photohjournalist, is making me think more and more about the issue of plagiarism vs. inspiration.

I don't know who was involved with the making of the Skittles site, but it reminds me of how BBDO ripped off Spike Jonze's "Full Flared" video for its Skittles commercials. If, for instance, Modernista designed Skittles or Jonze directed the Snickers ad, I wouldn't be bothered. But this just feels like someone is plagiarizing and being lazy. I don't know how a creative agency can be this blatant and not think they're going to get called out for it. What's bothersome in all of this is that credit is not given to the original, permission is not granted I am sure.

I'm a firm believer in finding inspiration from others' work, but only if the concept and design is altered significantly enough that it becomes one's own and only marginally refers to the original. What Fairey does, in my opinion, pales in comparison to what these ad agencies are doing, and it can be debated whether or not his work is too close to the original and falls into the rules for fair use. I think it's pretty close and my opinion on that has been changing pretty regularly on the Fairey issue. What makes the issue sticky is that it is both art and it results in a commercial product. I think it would be less likely to be troublesome if the result was simply some form of communication or a more pure attempt at free speech. But the commercial aspect alters that view of the copy in my opinion.

In any case this is an issue that re-emerges constantly and becomes more and more laborious for me to think about and discuss each time it arises.

I'm guessing many Visio users out there already know about it, but in case you don't, Wireframes Magazine points to Niklas Wolkert's Sketchy UI Shapes (found on Henrik Olsen's GUUUI) and the updated Updated Sketch shapes by Jonathan Abbett.

http://wireframes.linowski.ca/?p=445

uxRefresh has collected a handful of examples of A-Z indexes of titles on large sites. Also useful might be a look at the article I wrote about KWIC/KWOC/A-Z Site Indexes work I did while at Bell Labs, and for a deeper dive, look at the list of links of indexer-designed examples on the Montague Institute's site. Many of the latter are still valid, but there's some link rot there too. James Kalbach also recently wrote on A-Z indexes, and in particular demonstrated the use of indexes in search auto-completion using Elsevier bibliographic database EMBASE.

Exhaustive A-Z indexes of the variety that indexers produce with relationships among terms are rarely seen on larger sites. This is probably for good reason--search engines are often as effective in most cases and indexes requiring human, subject matter expert involvement are expensive. The kinds of places where these A-Z indexes are to be found are largely in bodies of content with some sort of specialized need, e.g. research databases. It's important to keep in mind, when comparing the above, that there is a difference between simply providing an index of titles of content, and providing an index of terms found in the content. The latter, in my opinion, is where the display of relationships and hierarchy can be most relevant and useful.

http://www.uxrefresh.com/2009/02/a-to-z-index-examples/