Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

All creative endeavors come with a learning curve. And similar to how it aids in our development as human beings, imitation has long been a critical learning tactic for designers looking to develop and mature their craft from understanding to execution.

Even Aristotle observed that it was human nature starting from childhood; to learn new things quickly by watching others and what’s around us. Today, psychologists refer to this as “imitative learning.” It plays a necessary role in our cultural, social, and emotional development.

For designers, the practice of imitation:

• Plays a positive role in developing a foundational understanding of design,
• Helps us hone our visual perception skills,
• And helps us bridge the gap between taste and execution through iterative analysis and practice.

Why it’s ok to copy—a little

Anytime you’re faced with solving a problem, you need to know that you aren’t alone. Someone else has likely faced that same—or a similar—problem. And you should want to know how they tackled it.

There’s no need to approach every design problem in a vacuum when you could be learning from the way other people solved similar problems. The process of analyzing someone else’s work by asking yourself, “what was this person trying to do?” will only make it easier for you to answer: “What am I trying to do?”

Plus, we’re more prone to imitate what we deem to be successful. So trying on other people’s forms, styles, and processes is a great way to tackle the learning curve. This is likely the closest thing we have to the master-apprentice model that dominated most learned professions well before the birth of design.

When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to draw well. But a skilled drawing hand is a challenging practice for most children. So my mom would buy me tracing paper, and I’d copy artwork from comics or coloring books line for line. I technically didn’t draw it, but it was an original piece of artwork in my young mind even though everyone (including me) knew it was just a copy.

And anyone who can relate to this practice should know: No matter how much you cherish those copies, eventually, you have to evolve beyond the copying phase.

Be active with your observation

You know what you like, but have you ever stopped to wonder why you like it? That’s a big part of elevating your skills to the level of your taste: Moving beyond the identification of successful work and really analyzing it.

So what better way to learn how someone created something than by copying it (aside from asking them, that is).

How many times have you visited an art museum and noticed someone with an easel set up in front of a painting, copying it to match the style of the artist perfectly?

Imitating the work of masters continues to be an essential principle of both Western and Eastern art theory. Hell, if it was good enough for van Gogh, it’s probably good enough for you.

Even writers learn by dissecting the styles of other authors; authors that imitated the ones they admired before finding their own voice, reading and re-reading a novel before writing it in their own language.

Why should it be any less true for designers?

By practicing active observation skills, you become more sensitive to what works and what doesn’t. And an understanding of how to use simple structural things in your designs — layout ideas, typeface combinations, and so on — that you’ve seen work time and again can help lead to instant improvements in your work and help build your personal visual language.

That comes in especially handy if you are developing these skills without access to university design programs or other instructor-led courses.

Just don’t forget that you’re copying to learn, so be very careful where you share that imitated work. It most likely won’t be a fit for your portfolio. Remember, the goal of this practice is to influence future, original work. Not to spend your whole life at the easel copying others’ styles.

When I was a design student, I wanted to be a digital illustrator for a time. To build those skills, I went back to that primary tactic of my youth with the tracing paper. I spent hours on my second-gen iMac tracing over artwork that I admired. I’d scan in specific pages or frames that I liked, and I’d copy them stroke for stroke, color for color in Adobe Illustrator.

When I felt like I truly understood what the artist was doing, I knew it was time to move on. My style needed to be more than just a copy of theirs.

First imitate, then separate

A decade ago, type designer Erik Spiekermann was interviewed by Gestalten.tv for a piece called “Putting Back the Face into Typeface.” During that interview, he shared his approach to designing a typeface inspired by another—a common practice in typeface design—as an exercise in “adding the sound” to letterforms.

On “adding the sound,” Spiekermann says “A tune is a tune. But whether you play the tune on a banjo, or the piano… makes it sound different.”

He said, “If I find something that I really like, I look at it for a long time. I draw it, and I sketch over it. And then I put it away. The next day I sit down, and I draw it from memory.”

The result will inevitably be different. The new typeface will be influenced by the original, but not a copy. Spiekermann developed this method through years of practice by seeking to understand what has and hasn’t worked throughout the history of type design.

First imitating to prepare, and then separating to execute.

Have the courage to be inconsistent

Things like variety, diversity, and experimentation are essential parts of your education. So don’t just look to the same old sources for opportunities to copy, analyze, and remix.

I’m not saying that everything you make should be wholly different from the last. It’s just important, as a designer, that you don’t develop a visual style of your own, because every solution — and every client — deserves an individual approach.

So be inconsistent with the sources from which you draw inspiration. Be inconsistent with the way you copy things. Work toward finding inspiration and making it your own.

The process is the journey, as they say.

Find solace in the unfamiliar and push yourself to keep learning. The more diverse your inspirations, the less any one source will dominate your future creative choices.

The difference between imitation and plagiarism

In the 1980s, Barbara Kruger developed a visual style of tightly cropped black-and-white images paired with short, declarative words. Phrases like “I shop, therefore I am” emblazoned in white Futura Bold Oblique on a red rectangle.

The result was art — made to look like advertisements — questioning the relationship between consumption and identity. Her style was particular, born out of a previous life in advertising; the industry she was (at the time) reacting against.

For many, the name Barbara Kruger was synonymous with Futura Bold Oblique on a red rectangle until Shepard Fairey hit the streets with his Obey Giant experiment in the 90s. While the latter enterprise has proved more enduring than the former, Shepherd Fairey eventually diversified and found a way to evolve that style into a modern-day empire that flows like water to wine and back again between the worlds of art and design.

There’s no argument that his early work imitated Kruger, until he separated from her templated representation of language and image.

When I made my Obey logo, it was 100 percent an homage to Barbara Kruger’s work and 0 percent had anything to do with Supreme. —Shepard Fairey

The Kruger/Fairey connection shows us there’s a fine line between imitation (or even coincidence) and plagiarism.

Copying someone else’s work and passing it off on your own — in the design world — isn’t water you want to test. Many times I’ve seen people try to pass off work that I knew wasn’t their own, and a quick Google search often assured my suspicions.

That’s just stealing.

Your goal is to find the space between all the work you research. Experiment and probe the gaps. Keep at it until the work becomes your own, or you’re able to put a spin on that inspiration that takes it in a new direction.

Treat copying as an exercise to find your voice, like Shepard Fairey. Or your way of adding the sound, Erik Spiekermann. And, once you find it, maybe someone will copy you one day.