When I first saw these pieces by Jordan Puopolo, I stopped everything else I was doing. It seemed appropriate to just sit there, looking at them. You know how some things just feel right? Well, I hope so. Because it’s a great moment, and one I found in this concept. Vibrant colors fuse with an aged beauty, seeming to illustrate an idea that withstood the test of time. I don’t care how young or old you are, there’s a magical quality to flight. It remains a beautiful, striking thing, regardless of how often you experience a takeoff or look out at the clouds. I see this reflected in the powerful streaks of color. They can’t be contained, nor should they be.

I thoroughly enjoy imagining and inventing possible stories behind this and that. But it’s also cool to get to know the minds behind a creative work. While I don’t know Jordan, he seems like the kind of guy I’d get along with. In our brief emails, he came across as an upbeat, friendly guy. I can’t help but think this played into the whimsical character of the project.

Created as a school project, the reasons behind Jordan’s conceptual and aesthetic decisions were pretty straight forward.

“We had to make an annual report and the company and themes and all that was up to us. My solution came about for a few reasons. First of, I was (and still am) really into vintage design and illustration, so I went in hoping to go in that direction. And I decided to do an airline because there is so much great imagery that can come from there. That year happened to be the 70th anniversary of Air Canada, so I was able to justify the aging and the retro style by celebrating the history of the company. The idea was that someone could pick it up and they would immediately start to think about Air Canada’s place in history.”

“Visually, I got my inspiration by doing a lot of research into old airline ads and travel posters. For example the rainbow plane was inspired by an old El Al ad. The other plane illustrations (the cover/inside cover) obviously are meant to emphasize the historical theme again because one is current, and the other is old. And for those I just wanted to do real sparse and simple illustrations.”

And this is the part that really made me smile:

“Basically, it was an opportunity to try and create the kind of design that I love and spend hours each day looking for, and I don’t find that those kind of opportunities come up all that often, so I went for it.”

I’ve spent a lot of time doing things for that very reason. And you know what? It’s always been worthwhile. That being said, I want to leave a few questions for you to ponder.

First, when was the last time you did something just because you love it? My hope is that, on a consistent basis, you either find or create these opportunities.

Second, if it’s been a while, what’s stopping you?

I’m guilty of making excuses. No question there. But when I find that I’m lacking a sense of love for what I create, it becomes a priority. If I can’t get excited about something, I need to create something that excites me. The times that I follow through with this have always been memorable, and always worthwhile.

Meet Matt.

Hey there. My name is Matt, and I like finding the beauty in things. So much, in fact, that I’ve grown to look for them in any situation I can. This has led to a career in design, a hobby of illustration, and more recently, an offer from Refe.

Refe thought that with all the talk about business around here, it might be a good idea to have a regular series that focuses on art. So, he asked me to share some of these beautiful, inspiring things that get me all excited.

I agreed.

While I’m a visual communicator primarily, inspiration comes from much more than graphic design. Music hugely inspires and informs my process, as do video games (believe it, friend) and film. This means we’ll be exploring a variety of media and content in these posts. As the art and business of music grows ever closer to these (and other) disciplines, my hope is that, together, we can share in an excitement and passion for exploring creativity in many forms.

This whole thing will be a process. Bear with me.

If you’d like to submit a piece of art, video, or design, that you’d like to see discussed here, I’d love to hear about it. Toss an email to msauter [at] gmail [dot] com, or drop me a line on twitter. Hopefully we’ll have so much in the queue that I have to disappoint some of you. But that’s okay, it’s not personal. We can still be friends.

Last year guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani filed a lawsuit against Coldplay alleging that ‘Viva La Vida’ contained “substantial, original portions” of a track he put out in 2004 called ‘If I Could Fly.’

Coldplay responded by saying that if the two songs were similar it was purely coincidental. Dozens of video mashups, music theory analyses, and editorials followed. The two songs were revealed to be quite similar indeed – virtually the same melody and chord progression, though in different keys, and with different arrangements and song structure.

The world will likely never know if Chris Martin and Co. did consciously rip off Satriani’s work. The two parties settle out of court last week, and as part of the terms Coldplay will have no obligation to admit wrongdoing.

Members of Coldplay have talked about their philosophy on ‘borrowing’ from other artists’ work in the past, however. “We’re definitely good, but I don’t think you can say we’re that original,” Christ Martin admitted in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I regard us as being incredibly good plagiarists.” In another article guitarist Johnny Buckland notes that the song ‘Fix You’ is a close copy of Elbow’s ‘Grace Under Pressure.’ “We’ve never so directly stolen off anyone before,” he said. “We’ve never paid for our plagiarism.”

For some, that kind of honesty probably comes as a bit of a shock. Especially when the band in question is so high-profile. Shocking that they did it in the first place, and even more shocking that they talked about it. Doesn’t artistic integrity forbid that kind of blatant plagiarism?

Art vs. Law

I was curious to find out what other musicians thought about the practice of using pieces of other peoples’ songs, so I posed the question to a few people on Twitter. Most of the participants in my unscientific survey said that they often borrow a chord progression or groove, but that they rarely, or never lift a melody or lyric. Everyone seemed to agree that subconscious copying was nearly unavoidable.

During the course of the discussion one individual said that while she considered any intentional copying to be unacceptable, she had no problem borrowing from works in the public domain. This turned out to be a common philosophy.

This was a very telling statement! It reveals that artists’ reasons for not copying other artists is not primarily a matter of artistic integrity, but rather a matter of legal integrity. Think about that for a moment – we have no problem absorbing pieces of other people’s creative works into our own, as long as no law prohibits it.

Two possible conclusions could be drawn from this:

1. Most artists lack integrity, because the only thing preventing them from stealing is the law.
2. Building on the works that have come before is a natural part of artistic expression, but the law is artificially restrictive.

So which is it? Is ‘plagarism’ wrong because it goes against the principles of artistic expression, or is it wrong because the law has made it wrong? To put it another way: if copyright law was removed would it still be wrong to copy?

History of Plagiarism

History may have some insight into this philosophical dilemma (as it often does, oddly enough…) First, let’s go way back to the Homeric epics The Iliad and The Odyssey. Who wrote those tales? Homer, obviously. Yet, most modern scholars believe that Homer was not a literal individual, but rather the sum of centuries of oral tradition that produced these two great works. In other words, two of the world’s most beloved pieces of literature were created through a process of iterative plagiarism that lasted hundreds of years.

Pablo Picasso – a decent authority on art – is also famously quoted as saying, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Poet T.S. Elliot later altered the phrase a bit for his own purposes, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

The practice of one artist ‘borrowing’ from another is clearly not new. It also appears that at least a few notable creative figures were ok with it.

Creating in the Void

When I was younger and just beginning to devote time to writing music seriously, I used to think that in order to write something original I had to sequester myself in my room until the song I was working on was finished. I refused to listen to music, watch movies, read books – I was determined to create a sterile environment in which my masterpiece could remain pure.

And you know what? Every song I wrote still managed to sound just like Pedro the Lion – my favorite band at the time. You can’t escape outside influences. And why would you want to? When did sterility ever produce anything?

Every artist borrows both consciously and subconsciously from the artists that came before them. We take what someone else created and we add, subtract and manipulate it until it is transformed into something greater than the sum of its parts. That’s not a bad thing. It’s essential to the progress of artistic expression!

Transformative Works

Which brings us back to T.S. Elliot. When the poet Elliot quoted Picasso it was in the context of a review he was writing about playwright Philip Massinger. Massinger apparently had the tendency to borrow a bit too freely from one of his contemporaries – William Shakespeare. Here’s what Elliot wrote:

One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

The key to the legitimate reuse of creative works is not in what you take or how much, but in the end result. The end justifies the means, in this case. The law calls this end result a ‘transformative work.’

If you can take something that someone else has created and through your own creativity make it better, or give it new meaning, or a new kind of beauty or value, then what reason could there possibly be not to do it? Fear of a smeared reputation? Fear of legal action? If what you create is truly transformative that shouldn’t be an issue.

The bottom line is that art is collaborative. The artists who embrace this fact and treat it as a powerful resource create great art.

What do you think? Do you agree or am I way off base? Looking forward to your comments. Those who don’t probably end up sounding a whole lot like their favorite band anyway.