Inspiration Guidelines for Design Templates GUIDELINES FOR Adobe Stock Contributors

Design Inspiration vs. Imitation

Seeking inspiration is an important part of the beginning of the creative process. However, close copying or imitating someone else's designs is disrespectful. Additionally, such behavior increases the risk to violate other artists’ intellectual property rights.

Keeping your content original is the best way to assure customers that your content was created with integrity and originality. Customers want fresh, unique content.

On this Page:

Sustainable Design Inspiration vs. Imitation: General Guidelines: Do's and Don'ts | Examples of Imitation

Return to Contributor Homepage

General Guidelines: Do's and Don'ts

Here are some guidelines to follow when using inspiration for your CC design templates :

  • Do: Get inspired by different color palette combinations and general use of placeholder images for previews and thumbnails to make your design templates stand out in the marketplace.
  • Do: Get inspired by multiple different design compositions and layouts for various template types from a variety of sources.
  • Do: Use standard 'lorem ipsum' as a placeholder copy or create original placeholder copy that best showcases the unique flexibility of your template.
  • Do: Get inspiration for typographic scale, font choices and combinations (i.e. mixing a script w/ a sans serif), and typographic arrangements and orientations.
  • Do: Create original graphic elements in your designs. Unique details in your templates that are part of the design make your templates stand out in the market.
  • Don’t: Copy the exact color palette or the same placeholder image(s) used in other design templates (not submitted by you) in the exact same type of template and/or layout.
  • Don’t: Closely redraw, impersonate, or imitate exact compositions and layouts for templates, thumbnails or preview files seen on Adobe Stock.
  • Don’t: Copy the placeholder copy from other design templates or sources word for word.
  • Don’t: Copy, redraw, or impersonate exact graphic elements from other design templates you did not originally create.
  • Don’t: Focus on one contributor or designer for your inspiration. Systematic inspiration may reach the level of similarity in portfolios that pose harmful multiplications of their design styles and cause understandable frustration.

By following these guidelines, you can safely be inspired by other designers and keep your content original and unique in the marketplace.

Examples of Imitation

The following examples are illustrations of what not to do

We consider Example B to be an overt imitation of Example A. Using the same copy, similar starfield background, and the same repetitive cascading text effect is very closely copying the original design, which Adobe will not tolerate moving forward.
Example B is another close imitation of Example A. Example B is imitating Example A by using the same quote, similar background and the same circular text/font around a similar sun icon.

Last Published: June 27th, 2024

Return to Contributor Homepage