So this weekend I spent a good deal of time catching up on blogs that I read… gotta keep up with the latest and greatest. I came across a couple of design kits and tutorials in my reader that were of particular interest to me and did some brushing up on my Photoshop skills and CSS. As I was going through these tutorials I started thinking about how the designers and coders benefited from the freebie things they offered on their site. Not that I think they aren’t doing it to give back to the community, for all I know they learned a lot of what they know from other people’s kits and tutorials and were paying it forward, but how they earned respect, prestige and gratitude from their community which ultimately can positively effect their income. Definately a win win situation.

Programmers and designers have a unique opportunity in that they can contribute back to their community without really spending any money or time. Working on the internet prepares you in that when you take a creative role you are placing your goods for the whole world to see/steal/create variations of. Things like Creative Commons licensing can limit the use of your work directly, but with things like art there is no way to protect the use of a color combination or the combination of Photoshop filter or effects. A designer/coder has to have trust in their own talent that they can continue to be creative and think fresh to carry them on with future work. This means sharing what you learned today doesn’t create competition for your future income. You aren’t competing for “who is the best person to use yellow”, you are competing with “who can bring something new to the table”.

Working under the assumption that you are talented and creative, you probably spend a lot of time researching and experimenting. Now I am not saying that all these discoveries are ground breaking, but even the act of taking someone’s work and improving on it 1% is a feat. Taking that one step further and documenting how you do it or even providing code samples/design kits for your new creation and sharing that with the world can earn you the respect of your fellow designer/coders, follows a open idea ethic and probably gets your name out there so that customers will find out. This isn’t a if or maybe, this is a science. Putting information out on the internet, on a blog for example, and getting people to link to you will raise your rankings in search engines, cross reference you from sources and perhaps even earn you the reputation of a guru in your field, providing you speaking opportunities. The more you are out there, the easier it is is for a customer to find you. The more positive your reputation is, it is more likely that a customer will discover that. This is natural PR, reputation that you can’t buy for any dollar amount.

One thing I have noticed in open idea or open source examples is sometimes how the creators don’t reward themselves with proper credits. Don’t be afraid to use your name in your creation. Many great wallpapers I use contain the names or logos of their designers right on them. Beautiful works for art that I gladly use as my desktop contain logos and advertising right there. Do I mind? Not at all!

A great example of this is designer Wolfgang Bartelme, who creates gorgeous CMS themes, wallpapers and not only gives them away free, but provides many devkits containing his source material for alterations. He features his logo and/or name on all his works in a tasteful manner, sometimes as a component of his art. All those who use his work are reminded how great he is every time they see it.

Ordered List’s author Steve Smith created the original Wordpress Feedburner Plugin that is commonly referenced as the “Steve Smith Feedburner Plugin” even after Feedburner took over the development. His name is now brought to mind by probably thousands of Wordpress users daily as they are working with their blogs. Can’t beat that with a stick.

Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. Treat others as you would want to be treated. What goes around comes around. Yeah, you have heard it a million times, but it is absolutely true. Most likely you are already paying for the blog space, and probably if you are like me you want to be up good content but find it hard to come up with something original that is not just commentary about something else. Put it to good use! The next time you come up with that time saving method, code/recode that sharable component or create that really cool new piece of art, spent 10 minutes, document it, stick it up on your blog and let the world see your talent. Slap a Creative Commons license on it so that others will share too!

So time to put my Photoshop where my mouth is. I have created a devkit for a very simple and elegant wallpaper that I use. The kit contains a Photoshop PSD file containing layers for colors, design and icons. All you need to do is download the devkit and using Photoshop alter the text to include your name or whatever you want to say and have a custom wallpaper for use at the office, home, give it to your customers… whatever you want.

Here are a couple of samples of wallpapers I made with the devkit, and also the files for the devkit itself. Feel free to download, modify and if you make something cool post it up and let me know

Note: I did not create the icons used in this devkit, however they were all taken from shared/public collections with different licenses. To protect the rights of those authors I am also licensing this Devkit under the Creative Commons. Unfortunately I do not have the links to the collections those icons came from, I downloaded them a long time ago, however if I come across them or if anyone can tell me, I would love to include links to them.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.