The problem with using cliché ideas
Every designer I know has a "swipe file" of brochures and posters and business cards and web sites and whatnot that they browse through when they're trying to solve a particularly tricky design problem. The idea isn't that they're going to steal something wholesale (although goodness knows that happens often enough, like the infinite thefts of Rodchenko's shouting woman design). The point is more that looking at interesting ideas sparks more interesting ideas that you then take in a new and different direction.
There's another kind of swipe file, though, that's more dangerous; it's the one that's in our heads all the time. It's where clichés live, which makes it both dangerous and easy to avoid. Easy to avoid, because one can simply look at a design and say "no, I've seen that somewhere before."
Dangerous, because if a designer goes ahead and uses a cliché anyway, unfortunate parallels may turn up. The movie on the left appeared on my Netflix home page and, man, I was sure I had seen it before. After thinking about it for a few days, I remembered the poster for the somewhat different movie on the right.
