The secret to creativity

I looked at the page, I think a lot of designers take others work, but customize it for themselves.

I mean after all there are only so many possibilities you can create, most which have already been done, so it is inevitable that sooner or later you will stumble upon someones work which is similar to your own.

I would say it is wrong to pass it off as your own of course, ethically you wouldn't appreciate someone stealing your work for "inspiration" :p
 
i was talking about this the other day, one of the major downsides of the information super highway bringing us all alot closer together/connecting us means that it is really hard to be original. Plus there are more and more places like this making it easier to point out ripping/argue inspiration.

I did a tutorial by scott hansen (iso50) from computer arts for a poster design, and yes it looked kinda like his work, but it was bound to. Does that make it bad?
 
I find it interesting. This will always be a point of debate, as long as Design thrives.

I'm currently working on a project, and the layout is very similar to a well known site out there. It was direct inspiration, but it's close to bordering on plagiarism.

I'm not really sure what to do, as the layout is the best that has come to mind. It's really quite a simple header with two column layout below. I guess I'll have to go to the drawing board and come up with an original idea, but it pains me to leave such a suitable layout behind.

Obviously without knowing the specifics, what do you lads/lasses think?
 
I think this has been posted before, but I found it quite relevant for this thread.

nothing-is-original.jpg


 
Thing is I often find myself borrowing elements from other designs, reworking them to fit the needs of my current project and then putting them out there.

These designs don't look the same as the designs which inspired them...but they are using the same design principle (if that makes sense).

I am always looking for inspiration in interesting things I see so I can file these away in my head for later but yes, there can be a fine line between being inspired by something and copying it. Layouts and grid systems are a good example of this...but my argument here is that certain layouts will work for certain types of information and make that information the most accessible to the reader- hence they can be applied to more than once project/context.
 
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