It's funny that you actually say that "Exclusivity is the currency of design", while living in a well designed non-inclusive world (Well designed Signs, Roads, Cars, Mobile devices, etc).

Good Design will and always strives to be universal. It's funny that the recent Flat-design trend was triggered by Microsoft's Metro UI, which is inspired by Modern Cities' signage (universal design).

Also, isn't the point of icons to be iconic? How can one seek exclusivity over an icon, the Settings Cog, which is almost universally used.

LayerVault and the people behind it jumped at this for cheap publicity and to assert themselves over a new and upcoming design firm.

> Good Design will and always strives to be universal

Good Design doesn't sell. Great Design does. Great design will achieve exclusivity by iteratively attempting (and failing) to become universal.

> It's funny that the recent Flat-design trend was triggered by Microsoft's Metro UI, which is inspired by Modern Cities' signage

Which was probably inspired by Mondrian's experiments in exclusivity.

What would you say about a typeface like Helvetica? I'd say its greatness largely is derived from universality, not exclusivity.

It's always a combination of universality and exclusivity. The latter creates a "gradient" which causes a particular design to spread. Watch the documentary "Helvetica". At it's peak in the 1960s, Helvetica had high-end "international" aura and small brands everywhere were scrambling to redesign their signage to what they perceived was a new customer-friendly yet high-end image (probably best visualized as a smiling and good-looking Swiss airline flight attendant with a noticeable accent).

> it's a lot like saying that hackers spend their time doing "pointless tweaking"

I'm a hacker and I think most hackers (including myself) often spend too much time pointlessly tweaking things.

Your emacs shortcuts are okay. Promise! Just get to work.

Your linux kernel is fine. Yes all the network drivers are configured well enough. Yes samba shares are working, yes rsyinc is copying stuff around. Just get to work.

Yes, X is perfectly configured and compiz is doing its thing. Yes it is! Just get to work.

I promise your IDE has the perfect amount of widgets in just the right place! Start coding.

And so on :)

Exclusivity is the currency of the mainstream western world. Graphic Design (currently and in the past) is the vehicle through which this desire for exclusivity is encapsulated and pushed to the masses. The old graphic design title of Commercial Artist rings true here. Your point on originality is lost on me also, doesn't the startup world of all places say that even if people have done an idea, that you can add value in other areas?