We ran into a couple of incidents recently where the fine line between being influenced by someone else's idea and copying someone else's work had been crossed. Designers, please, please, please, make sure your work is original. It does not do anyone any favors to intentionally or inadvertenly copy someone elses work. All it does is risk your reputation, the reputation of this site and open up the contest holder to potential copyright/trademark infringement claims.

Here are some good tips to help stay on the right side of the creative process:

1) Don't ever bring in someone else's design element into a design you are working on. Even if it is only to reference it.

2) If someone else's design gives you an idea, think about what you like about that design and then leave the design behind, don't look at it again. Work out your new design using your memory of the aspects of the other design that you liked.

3) Don't rely on clip art for major design aspects of a logo.

If anyone else has some tips as to how to avoid inadvertent design plagerism, please post them to this thread.

On this note I have a question to ask, well rather a statement to make. Since we are sometimes designing for some very specific needs and a client may as for the design with definate perameters it may seem like we are coping an idea when really all that is happening is that we are designing what the client asked. Not that there isn't more than one way to skin a cat but if a client gets specific in what they are asking for sometimes designs may come close and have some similarities w/o being a copy. I don't think I have had this problem with anything I have created but still I have seen it happen to others.

Any comments on this?

There are times when it can be natural to have similar elements. I.e., if you're designing a logo for a shoe store, it would make sense that more than one designer will have the idea to put a show in the logo. That would be acceptable as long as you're not copying any elements from someone else's design (such as exact show shape, placement, style, integration with text, etc.).

Bleys wrote:

There are times when it can be natural to have similar elements. I.e., if you're designing a logo for a shoe store, it would make sense that more than one designer will have the idea to put a show in the logo. That would be acceptable as long as you're not copying any elements from someone else's design (such as exact show shape, placement, style, integration with text, etc.).

I think the most fair situation is if entrants send 2 rounds of work and the client choses what he wants after the two rounds and then work toward perfection of the picked design with his designer . Other wise, this "contest" will be like merely dredging...

sm