DO DESIGNERS MISUSE VIRGIL'S 3% RULE TO JUSTIFY UNORIGINAL DESIGNS?

Are designers justifying lazy design with Virgil’s 3% rule?

Another follow up post , this time from last weeks post on the fine line between copying and taking inspiration. A few of you expressed your opinion around the 3% rule. Shouts out to the community for giving great input always and continuing to help me create great content ideas. all of you are goats.

Anyways, this is nothing against Virgil but more so about the brands owners today who have seemed to flip its narrative as an excuse to defend their copied designs. Virgil’s intention was for us to chanel creativity in the sense of reinterpreting culture and keeping it going as opposed to taking design shortcuts and creating derivative, surface level work.

The 3% rule has lowered the bar to entry in an industry where craftsmanship, innovation and boundary pushing is championed. A lower bar to entry democratises creativity allowing people of all backgrounds to have a shot at chasing industry dreams. But it’s also come at a cost. The cost being people taking advantage of this privilege by being lazy and often not adding much value to anything at all.

This begs the question…

Has this rule been taken out of context to fit people’s narratives and justify unoriginal designs?

let’s talk about it 👇🏾