Wow, so much to say here is my first reaction to this text.  Two big main points I think of are, how taking elements from other designers’ work is a huge part of the design process, and I also think of how many designers just blatantly copy other designers work and plug it into a different context.  

It’s interesting, there really is a fine line between copying a designer and gathering inspiration from a designer.  Sometimes it’s really debatable whether a designer copied someone else or just used elements of that designer’s signatures.  Sometimes, however, it is absolutely obvious how lazy a designer is because it is so clear that their work is a copy of someone else’s.  

There is an art director I immediately think of, who shall remain nameless, who copied almost every detail of a photograph made many years ago by a renowned British photographer and used it as an album cover for a new recording artist.  What’s interesting to me too is that many young consumers today were born after the original photograph was made, and have no idea that this recording artist’s album cover is an almost exact copy of that photograph.  I guess it’s true that, in a way, there really is nothing new out there.