What do you do when you look at your competitors solution and say “yep, they nailed that one”?
As a designer, you are fighting hard to try to come up with a better way but you keep coming back to your competitors solution, the one that has nailed it.
At what point do you stop pulling your hair out and admit that you are unable to come up with a better way of doing something? Further, what do you do at that point? Do you:
- Reapply with pride – effectively copy what your competition has done
- Deliver a weaker offering – effectively conceed defeat to your competitor in order to ensure you won’t be accused of copying?
The answer is often controversial, as evidenced by the Yahoo! vs. Digg debate from a few weeks ago, but I maintain that there is nothing wrong with accepting the fact that someone else got something right before you did – as long as it doesn’t happen all the time.
Sometimes it is difficult to know whether you are suffering a creative block or whether there really is not a better way. Ask your peers to help, more often than not, they will help spark some creativity but sometimes, all you can do is say “well done Competitor X, the best I can do is mimic”.
