No one ever came out of the womb an amazing designer. Hell, no one even ever taught themselves design. We all have teachers. We all have mentors. They could have died a hundred years ago—or we might not know their name. Someone designed everything you see. So any influence on your work comes from a mentor.
Don’t be afraid to copy your mentors.
Here’s an example of my latest poster (left), inspiration #1 (center, Princeton University Press), and inspiration #1 (right, Wikipedia) :
There’s an entire book on this: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. If you’re having hang-ups about copying, I recommend reading it.
P.S. There is a difference between copying and stealing—at least to me. I would suggest creating everything from scratch—like painting a still-life, you can look at your inspiration, but don’t literally use its pixels or whatever.
