Designers and professional art directors know there are plenty of career opportunities to take the easy road to complete jobs. It's littered with Google images, online download sites and image banks where one might find a photograph or illustration suitable for a comprehensive or research material for an illustration. It is much easier to ask permission than to use material illegally. Why risk it when you might get famous in the process and end up surrendering half of all your earnings plus punitive damages due the originator of the work you "borrowed"? My advice is don't even think about it. Jeff Koons makes a very good living selling stuff he calls art; though taking a postcard of a group of dogs shot by professional photographer Art Rogers and shipping it off to Italian artisans to have it reproduced as sculpture is not art. That pseudo art sold 3 sculptures at $367,000 each. Rogers, who owned the rights to the photograph used on the postcard, sued and won. The court found "substantial similarity" and that Koons had easy access to the picture; as a result, the sculpture was judged a copy of Rogers' work. Koons attempted to use Fair Use laws as a defense but lost anyway.