You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Hi Jean,

I am a graphic designer, and I recently designed some stationery, cards, and invitations based on royalty-free artwork. It has come to my attention that other designers are also using the same royalty-free artwork. Some of our pieces are similar, though none are exactly the same. What can I do to protect my work? I can forsee a scenario in which five designers all use the same royalty- free piece of artwork, place the graphic at the center and top of a card, and set the invitation text near the bottom. If you place them side-by-side, they would look the same, but no one really copied anyone else. What do we as designers do in such a situation? How do we protect ourselves and our work?

Jennie

Dear Jennie,

If substantially similar work is created independently, there is no infringement. This is true according to the concept of independent origination. In the situation you describe, you’re not at risk,

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Are you doing something interesting with an everyday material, such as wire, felt, molded plastic, or velcro? If so, you might want to consider submitting your work for possible inclusion in Designing with Materials, a new book by product designer Inna Alesina and design writer Ellen Lupton.

A sample spread from Designing with Materials

Inna and Ellen are looking for “student projects and professional work that celebrates a hands-on approach to three-dimensional design.” and they’re especially “interested in documenting the design process.” If you’d like to submit your work, contact Inna Alesina.

Her contact info and more information about the project is available via Lupton’s blog, Design Writing Research.

I admit it. I almost forgot it was time for Macworld. The weeks leading up to the event were relatively quiet, almost devoid of the speculation we typically see.

Even when Apple’s news at Macworld isn’t big, the conference is huge and full of new hardware and software temptations for Mac enthusiasts.

Before the annual Macworld Expo http://www.macworldexpo.com, “rumors” sites are usually buzzing with ideas about what Steve Jobs might announce. The speculations range from the fairly obvious to the incredibly bizarre. Last year, forecasters were right on the money when they predicted the iPhone, but this year there just wasn’t the same sort of pre-expo excitement.

The day before Macworld 2008, Apple hinted at its announcements with a banner that read, “2008. There’s something in the air.” This prompted some silliness; A few people wondered if Phil Collins or Air Supply might play the event. (I, for one, can assure you, this is the first and last time I will ever mention Phil Collins or Air Supply in a post). Others wondered about a new AirPort device or iPhone wireless sync. A few people even correctly predicted the new iTunes movie rentals, but all-in-all, nothing major was expected.

In fact, Steve Jobs made pretty big announcements in his keynote, a couple of which may be important to design professionals.

MacBook Air. It’s the thinnest laptop ever. (And yes, I know they want me to call it a “notebook,” but I just can’t do it). Once I got over the whole “thin enough to fit in an envelope” thing, I started to think about how this new model would work for a designer. (more…)

Art supply stores are both inspiring and intimidating. Within every brush and tube of paint lies great potential, and yet, unless you’re able to skillfully wield these tools, you may quickly be discouraged.

Margaret Krug’s An Artist’s Handbook: Materials and Techniques wants to make the art supply store an exciting and encouraging place to be. It’s a surprisingly comprehensive little volume, in which a wide range of dry (drawing) and wet (painting) media are explored. Readers new to the fine arts will quickly discover that there is more in the artist’s toolbox than just paint and paintbrushes; Have you ever heard of Bologna chalk, or used a crow-quill pen?

The book contains the elements you’d hope to find in a guide to art materials. The descriptions of paints, pencils, chalks and pastels, and surfaces are abundant, and even unusual supplies that you may have been afraid to try, like egg tempera, are covered. These descriptions, and the logical arrangement of the chapters, make the book a handy reference, but really, it’s the content associated with the various materials that makes An Artist’s Handbook unique.

Each section is replete with inspiring historical examples, and high-quality photographs, by Pamelia Markwood, show the materials in action. Techniques associated with many of the supplies are clearly explained. These tutorials will help beginners get started (more…)

The One Club for Art and Copy, a nonprofit organization, is seeking submissions for it’s One Show Design Awards. Below is a blurb from the site.

The One Show, the premiere international advertising award show, sets the industry standard for creative excellence with categories including print, television radio, outdoor, innovative media and marketing, and integrated branding. Each year, a wide variety of work — from multinational advertising giants to small regional shops — is judged by an international jury of award-winning art directors, copywriters and creative directors.

Winners are announced at the awards show and party in New York City. From there, the work becomes part of our international traveling exhibition… .

More importantly, and perhaps the single biggest reason people enter the One Show is the prospect of having your work immortalized in The One Show: Advertising’s Best Print, Radio and TV, one of the industry’s most respected advertising annuals.

The entry fees are not nominal, but if your work is awesome and you can afford it, this might be worth a shot. To download a Call for Entries PDF, including the full list of categories with detailed instructions for entering online and preparing your entries, go to www.enteroneshow.org.

You asked your legal, copyright, and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are culled from the comments section attached to the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Hello Jean,

I am a partner in a small market research company. We are currently developing a new website and that’s raised two legal questions: 1) Is it legal to use a client’s logo on our site if we’ve done business with them in the past? If permission is required, who grants that permission? 2) Can we legally put pictures taken inside a retail store on our site? There are no identifiable brands/labels in the photos, but it is obvious where the photo was taken.

Thanks!

Luke

Dear Luke,

You can always use a company’s trademark to identify that company. No permission is required. Just be careful about using someone else’s trademark to promote your own work. For example,

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I recently saw a magazine ad for a hair product in which words were “written” on the model’s hair in “liquid text.” Text effects like this have been around for as long as Photoshop has existed. There’s liquid, fire, glass, metal, and so many others. Often, these effects are cheesy. They often appear devoid of context: metal simply because it looks masculine, for example, and they’re usually created in one of two ways: the long way that involves channels and displacement maps, or the short way using ugly default layer styles. What I liked about the liquid text I saw in the magazine was that it seemed totally appropriate given the message, and the design was custom enough to look good. I wanted to find a simple way to reproduce it.

I started with a photo of my own hair, but you can use any interesting background, such as wood, tile, skin, or concrete.

Try to use an even texture because if your background is really wavy, you’ll have to do this the long way, with displacement maps.

Begin by duplicating the layer. This new layer is the one we’ll use to create our liquid text area. But before we do that, I want to bulge and warp the layer a bit, since the liquid would magnify the surface below it. Start with the Wave filter (Filter > Distort > Wave) and create a very large, soft wave. Then add a bulge using the Spherize filter (Filter > Distort > Spherize).

A little distortion makes a big difference. The text we cut from this layer will be magnified and will look a little distorted.

Now, we can cut the text from this layer. Use the Type Mask tool. If you have trouble deciding on a font or character settings when using the Type Mask tool, use the regular Type tool to set the letters. (more…)

In Michael Beirut’s book, Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design, each essay is set in a different typeface. He tells us why in this video interview with Atlantic.com, and also discusses some other aspects of typography and design. It’s interesting stuff.

via typographica

Lose weight, get organized, save money… millions of people make resolutions like these at the start of the new year. They’re hard to keep, but some of these same resolutions can improve your personal website or your web design work for clients.

Slim down. You’ve heard this one since you started designing websites years ago, but it still applies today. Your traget audience’s work and home computers may have super high-speed connections, but many mobile devices, like the iPhone, can be slowpokes. Sites often visited on-the-go need to keep the weight off.

Banish clutter. Many frequently updated sites are victims of “content creep.” Your once-minimal homepage suddenly has a news box, added by the PR department. A month later, there are some banner ads you never saw before. Then, some extra SEO terms appear. None of these are necessarily bad things, but with all this additional content, you need to reevaluate the design. See if you can rearrange these things on the page so as to maintain the integrity of the original design, or just redesign to accommodate the new features. Every feature on the page will be more valuable when it doesn’t have to compete with clutter.

Get a new job. Okay, maybe not a new job, but how about finding your niche? What can you do to stand out among all those other web designers? While working on your “usual” jobs, consider the parts you’re really good at and those you really love. Maybe it’s Flash character animations or e-commerce. Over time, build a portfolio that showcasing this specialty. You’ll make yourself more appealing to a specific types of clients, be able to charge more because of your expertise, and enjoy your work.

Be secure. If you haven’t backed up your site or all your great custom actions and plug-ins recently, do it now. Right now. Done? Good. Now, talk to your hosting company about other security measures, like ways to protect your site from hackers. This is particularly important (more…)

So the end of year is here. Hopefully, you had a great year, or you were at least able to get what I call another sandbox pass. That means you made enough to stay in business and play in the sandbox another day. What to do now? I recommend taking a few minutes to reflect and clean off your sand toys before digging into another year.

In 2003, the bottom fell out for us. We lost a bunch of work due to budget cuts. So when 2004 started, I was concerned about what the future held. I wanted to make a change, or at least, do all I could to rally the troops and get them to enjoy the year as much as possible. Based on the advice of a couple trusted friends, I did a few things that literally changed the way I now do business. I recommend incorporating the following ideas into your plan for the new year:

Take a full day (and a couple nights) to reflect on the year, look at your books, and think about your employees, office, and clients. Even if the company is just you, take the time.

- Make a Keynote presentation of the projects you are most proud of, and show it to the team. Talk about each project for a few minutes, reminisce about clients, tell funny stories, and share some things you learned. Also, make sure to choose at least one project per designer or team member to complement.

- Talk constructively about the mistakes you made, what you learned from them, and how to ensure they won’t happen again. Present new systems and/or checks and balances.

- Give each team member a chance to talk about their favorite moments. In fact, this year I distributed a pre-meeting questionnaire and asked everyone to write down their favorite moments, things they (more…)