Become a better designer by stealing

Early on in my design journey, I thought design was an aha driven process. I would sit down in front of a blank Figma page, thinking really hard about what my design would look like. Hoping for that aha moment.

But design doesn't magically appear out of thin air.

This was something I learnt only after I had gathered a handful of partially watched design courses. They all started the same way.

Steal ideas to become a better designer.

A design is made up of past experiences, likes and dislikes, trends, elements that others have created. By practicing combining ideas from others, we start to understand what works, and why it works.

But to get to that point we need to build a collection of ideas. It all starts with curation.

Become a curator

Start collecting visual cues that inspire you. For a long time, I thought I should only collect screenshots of websites. Because that's what I was designing.

But you can find inspiration in a variety of visual cues:

• Graphic posters

• Typography

• Artwork that you think is cool

• Physical items like gadgets, toys, knick knacks

Through thoughtful selection you begin to understand what you like, and why you like it.

There's no wrong way to curate. I have a mixture of bookmarks in Raindrop and screenshots that I've saved in Figma. Once you have a bank of inspiration, now is the time to steal.

How to steal like a designer

Never pass a design off as your own. Don't steal for the sake of stealing. Steal to learn.

One course I watched suggested taking a design and copying it out verbatim. Like tracing an artwork on paper. As you go through the process, note down surprising things like; "They used more fonts than I expected" or "the letter spacing is wider than I thought" or "wow another shade of purple".

Once you've copied the design, start making tweaks to it. See how changing different elements affects the design.

A design becomes yours when it looks nothing like the original.

Similarly, you can achieve this by combining, aka stealing, elements from your curated collection. Having a collection you can take ideas from means you won't start from a blank page. And you'll always have an idea of what your design might look like.

What I'm learning from these courses is design isn't as spur of the moment as I thought. It comes from careful curation, and consistent practice of combining ideas from others.

I felt uncomfortable with the term stealing at first. But it's not about passing a design off as mine. It's about combining ideas in a way that's unique and personal. And in the process, becoming a better designer. Well that's the hope anyway 🤞.

Have any thoughts or comments? I’d love to read them, feel free to DM me on Bluesky!