I steal other designers’ ideas.

There, I’ve said it.

I look at other designers’ websites. I look at logos, brochures, packaging, advertising, typography and illustration. I notice clever ways of presenting information. I save things I like. I remember ideas that work and, sooner or later, some of them will probably influence something I create.

I’ve been doing it throughout my career.

And I’d argue that pretty much every good designer does the same.

Because there’s an important difference between stealing an idea and copying someone’s work.

And before anyone reaches for the pitchfork: this isn’t an argument for plagiarism, passing somebody else’s work off as your own or making a few cosmetic changes and calling it original.

That’s copying.

And it’s precisely the distinction I’m making.

Nothing is created in a vacuum

There’s a famous line:

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.”

It’s usually attributed to Pablo Picasso, although there’s little evidence that Picasso actually said it. Steve Jobs certainly helped popularise the phrase when talking about Apple’s approach to creativity and the influence of great ideas on its work.

The idea itself goes back further. T. S. Eliot wrote in 1920 that “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal”, before making an important distinction between simply reproducing someone else’s work and taking something and transforming it into something better — or at least something different.

That distinction applies rather nicely to design.

Very little creative work appears from nowhere.

Every designer has influences. We absorb things constantly: a typeface on an old record sleeve, the colours of a 1960s airline poster, the grid in a magazine, a beautifully simple website navigation, the information hierarchy on a piece of packaging or the way another designer has solved a particularly awkward problem.

Some of those influences we remember consciously.

Others disappear into the murky filing cabinet at the back of the brain and turn up five years later when we’re designing something completely unrelated.

The trick isn’t avoiding influence.

It’s knowing what to do with it.

Copying and stealing aren’t the same thing

Let’s say I find a website with a three-column pricing table.

Nothing revolutionary there. Three packages sitting alongside one another, each containing a list of features and a button at the bottom.

I could reproduce the table, use the same proportions, follow the same visual hierarchy, use similar wording and simply change their blue to my red.

Technically I’ve changed it.

Creatively, I’ve copied it.

The problem isn’t that I was influenced by the original. It’s that I haven’t bothered to understand it.

A better designer asks a different question:

Why does this work?

Perhaps the real idea isn’t three columns at all.

Perhaps it’s that presenting three levels side-by-side allows customers to compare them quickly. Maybe the middle option is emphasised because it helps guide the decision. Perhaps reducing a complicated service to a handful of differences removes uncertainty.

That’s the bit worth stealing.

Once I’ve understood that, I don’t need the original solution anymore.

My version might use cards. It might use a comparison matrix. It could be horizontal rather than vertical. It might reveal additional information interactively or abandon the three-column layout altogether.

I’ve taken the thinking rather than the appearance.

And nobody owns the general idea of comparing three services in three columns any more than somebody owns putting a logo in the top-left corner of a website.

Design has conventions.

Using them isn’t plagiarism.

Copy the appearance and you’ve learnt nothing

This is where I think the word steal is actually rather useful.

Copying is easy.

You can look at a finished piece of design and reproduce its surface characteristics: typeface, colours, spacing, shapes, imagery and layout.

But you’re only copying the answer.

You don’t necessarily understand how the designer arrived at it.

Stealing properly requires you to pull the thing apart.

Why does that oversized headline work?

Why does that page feel easy to navigate?

Why does that packaging stand out amongst everything surrounding it?

Why do those two completely different typefaces somehow work beautifully together?

Why does one button immediately attract your attention without the designer needing to make it enormous, bright red and flashing like a fruit machine?

Once you understand the mechanism, you have something useful.

A copier asks, “How can I make mine look like that?”

A designer asks, “Why does that work?”

That’s a much more interesting question.

It’s also fundamental to good graphic design. The finished artwork is only the visible part of the job. Understanding hierarchy, typography, proportion, colour and how people actually consume information is what allows you to make sensible design decisions in the first place.

Steal from more than one place

There’s another fairly reliable way to end up copying somebody: only look at one source.

If I’m working on a website design for an architect and my entire research consists of finding another architect’s website that I like, there’s a fair chance some of it will creep rather too directly into my work.

So broaden the search.

I might like the typography from one website, the restrained colour palette of an old Penguin book cover, the navigation from another, the composition of a Swiss poster and the slightly abrasive attitude of a late-1970s punk record sleeve.

Then there’s everything I’ve already accumulated through years of working as a designer.

Mix those things together and something else starts to happen.

Influences become ingredients rather than instructions.

Steve Jobs’ explanation of creative “stealing” was actually broader than the famous one-liner. When talking about the development of the Macintosh, he spoke about exposing yourself to the best things people had created and then bringing those influences into your own work.

That’s the important bit.

The more things you’re interested in, the more places you have to steal from.

Keep a mental — or actual — swipe file

Designers have always collected things.

Before everything lived on screens, that might literally have meant drawers full of brochures, advertisements, postcards, magazine pages, type specimens and bits of packaging.

Today it might be screenshots, bookmarks, Pinterest boards or folders full of images.

The principle hasn’t really changed.

If something catches your attention, keep it.

But don’t only collect things that look like the work you’re currently doing.

Collect typography. Colour combinations. Illustrations. Photography. Packaging. editorial layouts. Signage. Film titles. Interfaces. Posters. Advertising.

And don’t wait until you have a project that needs them.

By then you’re searching for an answer.

Collecting inspiration when you don’t need an answer gives you a much richer library to draw upon later.

It’s particularly useful when working on logo & brand identity design, because the last place you necessarily want to look for inspiration for a new identity is at dozens of logos belonging to businesses doing exactly the same thing.

That’s how industries end up with ten companies using virtually identical symbols.

Dentists get teeth.

Builders get roofs.

Accountants get graphs.

And apparently every technology company eventually gets some sort of blue geometric thing.

Looking further afield gives you a better chance of producing something distinctive.

Sometimes you won’t even know what you’ve stolen

This is perhaps the strangest part of working creatively for a long time.

You occasionally create something you genuinely believe came entirely from your own head, then stumble across something years later and think:

Ah. That’s where that came from.

Our brains aren’t particularly good at attaching copyright notices to memories.

We absorb visual information constantly.

That’s why originality isn’t necessarily about producing something nobody in human history has ever thought of before. That’s an almost impossible standard.

Originality can come from the combination.

Two designers can be given exactly the same brief and access to exactly the same source material and still produce completely different solutions because each brings a different collection of experiences and influences to the job.

That’s part of the value of experience.

Experience gives you more to steal from

When you hire an experienced designer, you aren’t simply paying for the time spent physically creating your logo, website, brochure or other marketing material.

You’re also hiring everything they’ve absorbed before they started working on it.

Every project that worked.

Every project that didn’t.

Every awkward layout they’ve eventually solved.

Every terrible typeface they’ve learnt never to use again.

Every design movement they’ve watched disappear and subsequently come back twenty years later with a new name.

Over time, those experiences become a visual vocabulary.

That’s difficult to reproduce simply by learning how to operate some software.

The tools matter, of course, but knowing why you’re doing something matters rather more.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve previously argued that good design is about considerably more than making something look attractive. Design has a job to do, whether that’s explaining something, creating recognition, helping someone navigate information or persuading them to act.

Stealing isn’t about hiding the evidence

There’s an important distinction here.

Creative stealing doesn’t mean copying something and then changing enough details that nobody notices where it came from.

That’s just copying with extra steps.

The objective isn’t to disguise the source.

It’s to understand the principle behind an idea well enough that you no longer need the original solution.

Take someone’s bespoke illustration and modify it slightly: you’re copying.

Recreate a distinctive logo: you’re copying.

Lift someone’s carefully written website content and change a few words: you’re copying.

Reproduce an unusual website design and change the colours: you’re still copying.

Calling something “inspiration” doesn’t magically make plagiarism disappear.

Instead, deconstruct the original.

Understand what was useful about it.

Combine that understanding with other influences, your own experience and the particular problem you’re trying to solve.

Then build something appropriate for that problem.

The original may have started the thought process, but it shouldn’t dictate the finished result.

Not every design idea belongs to somebody

It’s also important to distinguish original creative work from established design conventions.

Not every familiar solution belongs to the first designer we happen to see using it.

A grid isn’t yours.

A three-column pricing table isn’t yours.

Putting a big photograph behind a headline isn’t yours.

Cards, hamburger menus, sticky navigation, oversized typography, serif-and-sans-serif combinations and big coloured buttons have all been used countless times.

These things are part of a shared visual language.

What can be distinctive is the way somebody combines familiar elements into a particular piece of work.

That’s the part worth respecting.

There’s a considerable difference between seeing somebody solve a problem and thinking that’s clever and simply recreating their solution.

The first is how creative disciplines evolve.

The second is lazy.

So, yes, steal my ideas

I’m certain I’ve stolen ideas from other designers throughout my career.

I’m equally certain other designers have looked at things I’ve created and taken something from them.

Good.

If you see something I’ve designed and it makes you reconsider how you could solve a problem, take the idea.

Work out why it works.

Pull it apart.

Mix it with everything else you’ve seen, everything you’ve learnt and everything you can bring to it yourself.

Then make something I wouldn’t have thought of.

Perhaps even make it better.

Steal it.

Just don’t copy it.