Pablo Picasso, the first living artist to be featured in the Louvre, influenced the artistic world in a uniquely original way. And yet he once said "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

I'm all for being as original as possible, but a beginner-designer should start out by copying other well-created designs. It's the perfect way to learn to create designs that work.

Gerry McGovern, web copywriting guru, makes the same argument for writers:

"One of the simplest tricks that professional writers learn can greatly ease the process of getting ready to write: look for a model of the kind of article you need to do, then dissect it, analyse it and copy it. . . . Novice writers often make two mistakes: they think they need to be entirely original, and they think they need to wait for 'inspiration.' Take it from the pros: for most kinds of writing, originality and inspiration are overrated."

There are two great benefits in copying other designs, the first being functionality. All my work is for the commercial world, so it can't be just art. It has to get a message across. There is a delicate balance between substance and style. You know what I mean! Think of those expensive sheeny brochures that are beautiful to look at but a pain to follow. They are what my first mentor called 'over-designed'. The cosmetics have obscured the point of the entire exercise, which has become even more obvious in these days of "minimalism revisited". Spot the newby designer!

My second design mentor had a phrase... 'No circus posters!' This meant simply that he refused to produce anything that looked like Barnum & Bailey unless there were actually clowns and elephants involved.

It takes a few years of graphic designing to achieve a level of design-maturity (if you like) that understands the balance between the art and the content. As in most fields, it takes a true professional to make it look simple. I'm working my way there slowly. I know this because every so often a customer asks me to revisit an old job and when I open it I cringe! How could I have put THAT together? What was I THINKING!

I have been told that my work is very direct. Art is what I would do if I had the time to splash paint around. Work is producing art that has to earn its keep. And I suppose that's most of the fun - working within the constraints of a client's brief. Sometimes the tighter the brief is, the more exquisite and satisfying the result... when it works. And it has to work. It has to be functional or my clients lose sales and I eventually lose the client.

The second benefit is FAMILIARITY. I try to keep an eye on current trends in graphic design, in magazines, books, newspaper lift outs and even television ads. Stealing covers everything from outright copying the look of something I like down to using only particular elements of it or reinterpreting what I have seen. It means my clients look up-to-date and their prospects or clients feel at home when they see things that are not necessarily identical to other materials, but remind them of the feelings inspired by those materials. And I think I still manage to maintain a personal design style as well.

Once again, it takes a little design-maturity to pull this off. For instance, two companies have copied the iMac look developed by Apple over the past few years, one simply furthering the inspiration behind the original design, and the other ripping it off wholesale and not doing a very good job of it either.

In this sense, I suppose good design is like good music. It takes practice to be able to sense the X factor hidden in other work and use it appropriately in your own. The end result is still original, as original as Picasso, but you have developed the history of its elements a little further and created something that admittedly has roots, but also a life of its own.

Perhaps what Picasso meant was that this:
1 Great artists rummage through the great junk heap of lost, bypassed, and forgotten ideas to find the rare jewels, and then incorporate such languishing gems into their own personal artistic legacy.
2 Great artists don't get caught stealing because what they appropriate they transform so thoroughly into their own persona, that everyone ends up thinking the great idea was theirs in the first place.

Albert Einstein said, "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." A good graphic designer takes the time to make the design their own, or they'll get a reputation as a design thief. A great designer copies the inspiration, not the outcome.