This impulse started in the most unplanned way possible: boredom. I was aimlessly scrolling through YouTube when the original Everything Is a Remix series popped up. I clicked on it just to have something in the background, and then ended up watching the whole thing, plus the 2023 edition right after.
At first, it didn’t seem relevant to my Design & Research work at all. The documentary begins with the music industry, showing how songs recycle melodies and structures. Then it shifts to movies, pointing out how Hollywood endlessly reuses storylines, characters, and visuals. I didn’t expect any of this to spark anything academically useful… but it did.
The more I watched, the more the core message hit me: creativity is combination. Nothing begins as a pure, untouched idea. Designers, musicians, filmmakers, we’re all remixers. We borrow, reshape, merge, distort, and evolve things that already exist. That’s not a flaw of the creative process, it is the creative process.
This came at the perfect moment for me, because I’ve been stressing a lot about finding a unique topic for my Master’s thesis. The fear of “this isn’t original enough” has been in my head for months. But this documentary reminded me that originality is kind of a myth. Every famous movie, interface, or design moment has roots somewhere else. Creativity happens through exposure to many sources, not by inventing something out of thin air.
One part I loved was the reminder that copying is how we learn. Nobody starts out original. Kids copy drawings. Musicians learn by copying songs. Designers remake interfaces, posters, and layouts before they know how to create their own style. Copying gives you understanding, transforming gives you creativity. That’s exactly what the documentary showed again and again.
The most interesting section for me was about interfaces. It showed how early computers developed (especially Apple’s Macintosh) and how much of it came from remixing ideas from Xerox PARC and other pioneers. Even the updated 2023 version keeps those examples, but adds new ones from the 2020s, which makes it even easier to understand today in 2025. Interfaces evolve the same way music and film do: through constant borrowing and refining.
Then came the AI chapter, which was uncomfortable in a good way. The documentary explained diffusion models: how AI takes noise and patterns it into images based on millions of existing pictures. But is that learning? Or copying? It’s a controversial space where remixing meets ethics, and it made me think a lot about how designers work with tools that blur the lines between influence and imitation. Even memes, which get remixed endlessly, raise questions about ownership.
What surprised me most was how directly this documentary ties into the things I maybe want to explore this semester, especially around being a multidisciplinary designer and navigating all the influences, tools, and expectations that come with that. It made me think: How do designers form their identity when everything they create is built from other things? What does “original” even mean in a world where everything is borrowed, remixed, and reinterpreted? And how do generalist designers stay grounded when there are endless directions to pull inspiration from?
The series didn’t answer these questions, but it opened the door to them. It reminded me that having many interests isn’t a weakness or a sign of being unfocused, it’s actually the raw material creativity feeds on. Being a generalist might feel overwhelming at times, but it also gives you a wider palette to work with.
So yes, a random YouTube suggestion ended up calming me down. I don’t need to chase some impossible idea of “pure originality.” I just need to keep remixing, learning, and combining things in my own way.
Stuff Worth Clicking A.K.A. Accompanying Links
- Everything is a Remix (Original Series)
- Everything is a Remix (2023 Edition)
- Everything is a Remix Playlist
Disclaimer: This blog post was written with the help of AI for better grammar and correct spelling.
