How to Take Inspiration Without Copying

tools strategy
Braden East

Where is the line between taking inspiration and being a copycat?

There’s a legal answer, but that’s not always helpful when it comes to doing something original.

I’ll briefly mention trademark infringements with a recent example from the corporate world, but then I’ll come back to the simple, common sense principle I follow to avoid unintended likenesses.

The Legal Threshold

According to US copyright law, changing 25% of an original work is enough to avoid infringement… most of the time.

There are cases like this Bucc-ees lawsuit where some changes and tweaks aren’t enough.

But if I had to guess, you’re probably not interested in toeing the line and copying as much as possible from other organizations without getting in trouble.

You probably want to know, “How do I extract the best ideas from someone else’s branding, without letting it influence ours too much?”

The Common Sense Answer

Take inspiration from more than one place.

It sounds simple, but this is really all there is to it. This is the approach I use when designing anything:

  1. Gather inspiration from at least five different sources.
  2. List the features of each that stand out as relevant to the project
  3. Start creating and see how those features interact

Take inspiration from more than one source, and you’ll never have to worry about copying someone else.


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