How I became Copycat in Graphic design

In graphic designing, there are many ways to approach the design process. But for me, it is to copy others' work, styles & to implement it in my own way. No need to think from the scratch. Just google about an idea and you will definitely get what you are looking for, save it & you are good to go.

Pablo Picasso is widely quoted as having said that :

“good artists borrow, great artists steal.”

Earlier I thought it’s not a good idea to steal/copy anybody’s work but as time went by and my mentor observed me and said to me : “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel again, for success you should focus on what you’re good at & work in that direction”. At that time he recognized that talent of mine

Why became copy cat:

It’s easy, it’s fast & you will learn more, the more exposure you have the more you know about different styles or methods & it takes 75–80% less time than usual from scratch learning. Trust me I did this on a daily basis.

The real meaning of stealing:

The word “stealing” directly means for any person as a creator to always look around for better enhancements, which he can do in his work & be always curious to know more. Stealing doesn’t mean to take something without acknowledgement but it is directly said as “explore what the other person did & make a better version of it, taking as that a base/level” with better enhancement.

History:

For me, it’s never been so easy to stick with one style of graphic design. I will have to keep engaging to get new ideas every day, so for this, I did so many experiments which enhanced my skills. The Pareto principle (80/20 rule) works for me, 20% of my work or experiments which gave me 80% of results. Just because of those experiments, I get many approaches every day, people love to see or even sometimes tell me how I did so much in less time & the answer is always the same.

How it works :

Let’s take as an example, Client wants a monkey mascot/character & you have had very less time to deliver the project, so instead of doing sketches from scratch. it’s always better to show him some references from the internet & get his taste of choice. After getting it, you will easily make it in a given time.

So basically, what you do is that you save your time & client gets what he wants without any time-consuming scratch efforts, Selected character figures act as inspiration for you. Which means you took another person's work & made something out of it with enhancement acc. to suggestion on it.

How it works for me as a designer :

As soon as I got to know the requirements, I started creating rough sketches for ideation. I also tried to get something like the sketches I made on the internet collect all the stuff I wanted. Then I share all of my sort of research with authority. The Client gets to know how it’s gonna look like in between that 15–30 minutes of healthy discussion, as soon as he reverts back with some suggestions & I set out to go for the project. It saves me a lot of my brainstorming time because I get direct suggestions & I implement it.

Right methods or the right approaches.

My mentor told me some methods to get maximum outputs without giving so much of efforts are :

1. Have an idea first, Next campaign or next product launch having slighter ideas about the graphic will help you out to save lots of time.

2. Think from another person’s perspective also. Drawing rough sketch Ideas is best for generalizing what the other person or party wants.

3. Take references as reference only, they are for helping you not for copying as it is.

4. Choose the style/ theme first then start exploring.

5. Don’t take a shortcut, go as per layer by layer.

6. Know the difference, whether you want to convey a message or want to show the only graphic.

7. Recreate/Modify graphics, but not too much, so that It can have the original message intact.

8. Know the Composition, Right things as the right place create an immediate impact.

9. Representation is the key, beware before where your artwork will go or publish.

10. Hiccups are always there, try not to worry. Graphic designing is a creative process sometimes it takes some extra time.

I will share above all points each as an individual in the next few days till then Thank You & have a nice day ahead.