I wish I had no scruples, then I would be able to use all these images all of the time on all of my projects.

Well, scruples are subjective. ;o)

But Armin thousands of cool images in the LOC database are in the public domain! Your scruples are intact.

Sure, they aren't all available for download on the Internet but most reproductions are less than $20 and all the LOC requests is an attribution in return.

Go to this page and simply type in "advertising" or "art" for some lovely stuff!

See...our goverment is good for something!

But for some reason, most of the cool ones do have copyrights or are only available for "educational" purposes. I always feel iffy and think that the cool-vintage-image cops are going to get me.

I misspoke. The LOC charges fees between $22 and almost $200 depending of format and size for duplication.

Here is their fee schedule.

It's all about the stacks of royalty-free lineart books. I know you are somewhat limited in variety of content but the flexibility is priceless.

*c

I am almost always surprised by how easy it is to get permission to use something. Four out of five times the rights holders grant permission, make no stipulations about how to use the image, and charge only a materials fee. I've done it a million times and every time it's a pleasant surprise.

Still, I'm not crazy about the direction things are headed and think designers are in a position to push the envelope. Rights holders naturally want to cover their bases and would prefer that the law was overprotective; the more we push against that creep, the better.

Here is a quote from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge Alex Kozinski from a recent copyright ruling:

Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Culture is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture.

I read it the other day in this article about copyright in our local alternative weekly.

Copyright and intellectual property are indeed in a messy state right now in America (and elsewhere, too). Sadly, I think things have to get a lot worse before they get better.

Sadly, the constitutionality of the current copyright system was challenged by Lawrence Lessig (I believe the case was Eldred vs. Ashcroft) and the current 70 year term stands.

This is the site with more info: http://eldred.cc/ and, of course, wired has a good writeup.

Armin, I respectfully disagree. There are cool images available—sometimes it takes hours of paging through thousands of images to find the perfect one but it can be done. Really.

The EFF is another excellent public domain and rights 501(c)(3) that's on top of issues pertaining to artists and designers.

Wonderful quote/link, Rebecca.

I have a hangup about originality. I have used public-domain art of this nature at times but have never felt that the final work was really "mine." I always feel like I cheated. Oddly I don't feel this about other designers' work with borrowed imagery (usually). It's a double-standard I hold with myself and the rest of the world.

this is my favorite...

Great Images in Nasa

Darrel, this is an outstanding subject. One that is taboo and loaded with opinions. It's very close to the MP3 debate happening right now. It's a debate of ownership. As graphic designers, the person whose work we incorporate into our design is just as important as we are. Right? And what happens to our work after it leaves the studio? Here's a playful forecasting that revolves around ownership, begging, borrowing, clip-art, the found object, and all of these online image archives designers are swimming through.

When : : The Future?

• With so many people interacting with creative technology (new media), everyone and anyone will become a creative agent. We will no longer have to pull from rights management, but live in a truly public domain because the individual will not matter as much as what they are projecting into the public.
• The proliferation of imagery and visual artifacts by the general public will place more value on those who specialize as creative agents such as artists, illustrators, or graphic designers. Their services will be in demand and costly.
• One archive will own and manage all media created for visual purposes. Such an archive will control recording, imaging, storing, inputting, and outputting. The tool makers, who manufacture the creative media we use, will maintain ownership, not the tool users.
• Technology will manage and itemize the creation of content, in the same way that blogs do. Those who make visual artifacts, will be documented as the author. Any circulation, reproduction, or archiving of their creation will give them credit and compensation through an automated payment system.

Regarding government publications and the public domain: As a curator at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, I am an employee of the Federal Government. I have written half a dozen books or so for the Museum, and they are all in the public domain (although this fact is not commonly known). I enjoy knowing that the content could live new lives some day.

Personally, I'm sick and tired of all this old garbage recycled by art directors and designers who are too cheap to commission work from their peers, ie living, non-anonymous photographers, illustrators, and lettering artists. Or too lazy or talentless to do their illustrations or take their own photos.

And make no mistake, the stuff that gets repurposed is the cliched kitsch of bygone eras.

Digital media, and stock imagery in particular, mean that everyone wants to see it the way it will be, at the comp stage. WYSIWYWG (what you see is what you will get). This removes the opportunity for the commissioner, working with talent, to develop the concept in an open-ended way. With craft and happy accidents. Too much authority with the designer/art director, who abuses the situation, and the result is a lot of nostalgic wanking. Hey look, I can do it all myself! Isn't goofy old commercial culture naif! Wow, am I deconstructing this or what?!

Bring back the future -- and I don't mean some quaint old-fashioned mod 60s thing. Never mind that, just let's pretend we're living in the present, if we can stomach the thought. Bah humbug.

So Armin, did you commission this artwork, or did you draw it yourself?

Why don't more designers make their own stuff? Make their own photography? Is it a lack of time? Is it a lack of energy? Is it because of a rush to build a comp? Perhaps, as Nick points out, it is this WYSIWYWG desire we're so familiar with---perpetuated by the computer. I've found that on assignments allowing me time and effort to take my own photography, the end result is more rewarding.

Sam, to Nick's dismay I got it off the web. Some strange retro/vintage web site had them. They stated it was royalty-free clip art. So I clipped it and used it as art. Free of royalty. Why? You gonna give me crap for it? 'Cause I can sense when you are ready to dish some crap.

Naw, I weren't going to give you any additional crap...Senor Scruples.

But I do wonder if Jason's latest comment : Why don't more designers make their own stuff? extends to typefaces? Is this also the kind of cheating Marian is talking about, or the recycling that Nick is talking about? Isn't the logical extension of calling for designers to make their own tools (Bruce Mau's phrase) to call for designers to design their own type? And then isn't it leaning on someone else's (let's call him "Francesco") Renaissance notion of legibility and proportion to use an existing typeface like, say, Bembo? Why are we recycling that garbage anyway?

For my (devalued) money, the question of originality is long expired. We live in a postmodern age (characterized by eye-rolling at the term "postmodern," mining of the past, and hand-wringing about originality). Originality, if there even is such a thing--which I strongly doubt--is kind of a quaint historical debate by now. At least, that's what De La Soul tells me.

It's ironic that The Walt Disney Company was the instigator in the creation of the "Copyright Term Extension Act" (CTEA).

Disney has made its fortune using works by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Lewis Carroll and others before and under the previous copyright laws that it wants to change to inordinately, further protect its own creations.

Yes, it is legal commentary, but THIS is a good read.

But I do wonder if Jason's latest comment (Why don't more designers make their own stuff?) extends to typefaces?

Sam, you pose a very good follow up. I've wondered the same thing myself each and every time I see the dropdown menu with hundreds of fonts, and choose one to use out of the myriad. In the end, I remind myself that it takes a unique individual to design type. It's a specialized trade. And how many fonts do we need after all?

When it comes to photography in our assignments, I say designers need to take it upon themselves more often. Granted, this can't be done all of the time because money, time, and/or media get in the way. Sometimes, we're delivered a set of "givens" : copy and image. We organize them into a cohesive visual solution. But when the opportunity exists for "total" design, we should leap at it. When designers create their own photography for assignments, it places us into the work. It's a chance for authentic activity, instead of choosing. It's hard to be original when you're selecting from givens at Corbis, Getty, or Google.

I'm not totally against sampling the past, after all it's one thing our new media does very well, so obviously it's something we should explore. (You're off the hook, Armin.) However, it's not the only thing, and there's so much original stuff that software can do that never gets explored, or it's marginalized as Photoshop tricks.

As for people doing their own typefaces, sure, (and I also accept commissions), but more widely relevant would be if they just used their own scrawl for the "handwritten" look, rather than a font which is obviously bogus. Handwork adds value.

But when the opportunity exists for "total" design, we should leap at it. Absolutely, Jason. And there's always self-initiated projects. I made one typeface for a book I designed from an existing drawn alphabet and it's so time-consuming that I am way better off leaving it to the pros, like Nick.

I never really understood what Mau meant by making your own tools. I mean, software? A new kind of pencil or camera? A new form of printing? A new language?

oops, my parents just arrived--gotta go.

In the book Citizen Designer edited by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne, there is an essay by Gunnar Swanson titled What's Wrong with Plagiarism which really examines this subject in detail and from a few different perspectives.

One of the things Swanson observes is that a good part of the evolution of art and music was based on the appropriation of past images and themes. Popular subjects and even poses hae been copied over and over by various painters. And then there's the referencing of a popular melody within a jazz song. (This example is mentioned by Swanson, although anyone with a moderate knowledge of jazz can think of songs where there are little familiar riffs tossed into an improvisation.)

But with design, I feel that the use of either original or stock/public domain artwork is fine given its aesthetic and pragmatic relevance. If you need something quickly and cheaply, and it's readily available on a stock image site, I have absolutely no problem with using them. Some stuff is pretty good, actually. On the other hand, I've used some of my own photography and humble illustrations for projects when I thought they would work well. It usually boils down to time and money (like a lot of things).

I do feel a little different when it comes to type. It's one thing to make some groovy headline text, but designing a real complete font is hard. It's very meticulous work to put together a cohesive, well-crafted, and fairly original typeface. I've tried it a couple of times, but I usually start getting burnt out half way into it. I now think that using fonts designed by others is a great way of celebrating that type designer's creativity and craft.

Using vintage or antique illustrations can be fun when you subvert or twist around their original meaning. It brings up interesting historical contexts and dicotomies.

I say: Use anything and everything you can as long as your not calling someone else's work your own.

Jason wrote:

Why don't more designers make their own stuff? Make their own photography? Is it a lack of time? Is it a lack of energy? Is it because of a rush to build a comp? Perhaps, as Nick points out, it is this WYSIWYWG desire we're so familiar with---perpetuated by the computer. I've found that on assignments allowing me time and effort to take my own photography, the end result is more rewarding.

For us, if a client says, "I need an image of the Atlantic City boardwalk circa 1930 [for a chapter on Monopoly]," the only place I'm going to turn to the LOC or New Jersey's State Archives.

Public domain fine art and photography is not the solution for every designer's needs but for some of us, at times, it's ideal.

I agree that there are times when the historical context of the borrowed work is what is required for the message. But some designers become dependent on it as a foil.

I particularly like this comment from Nick:

(what you see is what you will get). This removes the opportunity for the commissioner, working with talent, to develop the concept in an open-ended way. With craft and happy accidents.

I think there's so much to be gained from working with others, and as I mentioned once before in another post, we should be careful of thinking we can do everything. I have often used my own photography, but I've usually felt slightly guilty about it, as I was aware that each time I did so I took work away from a real photographer (time, circumstances and convenience led me down that path).

I have never worked with an illustrator (probably because I am one), but I really want to. There are concepts I've envisioned for clients I don't have that would require a style of work I don't do. Rather than struggle through, say, learning how to do a good scratchboard drawing, I'd be delighted to hire someone and work with them.

Creating a typeface, especially a robust text face, is a huge task which ideally takes a great deal of knowledge and skill that I certainly don't have. I wouldn't consider making my own typeface (unless it was part of the scope of work, and then I'd partner with a pro), but when it comes to a headline or wordmark, I will often draw custom characters.

When I left my company I left behind a lot of fonts, and now I'm a little font deprived and kindof liking it. All those character faces ... so overwhelming.

(I started to write this on Logo Graveyard, but decided to put it here, instead.)

Actually, what I've always wanted is an online database of all logos categorized by name and image-type. Like, what if you want to do a cat logo, or a bird logo, or a house logo but want to make sure you're not inadvertently infringing on someone else's copyright? Or the circle? Is it even possible to make a circular logo that hasn't been done already? how do you find out?

Marian,

Check out LogoLounge. It's the online companion of the book. BTW- The site is the better of the two as a resource.

Yes, it costs $100 to be a member, but it seems worth it if you are trying to avoid infringing on someone else's copyright.

To date they have 9801 marks online which are available via a searchable database.

You can also submit your marks to the site and they might even print them in the second volume.

Why don't more designers make their own stuff? Make their own photography? Is it a lack of time? Is it a lack of energy?

The practice of graphic design can be undestood in many ways, but my favorite definition is "visual editing" -- that is, a designer's job is to shape disparate elements (images, text) into a visual whole. By that definition, the provenance of the "manuscript" is not really important: it could be commissioned, borrowed, repurposed, or created. What matters is that the final product holds together, that it adds value to the content. A designer who chooses to create his own illustrations, photography, (or text, for that matter) for any other reason besides how it benefits the final product (and what is possible within the available budget), is doing a disservice to his/her client, IMHO.

Though, as Steven puts it, it usually boils down to time and money (like a lot of things).

On the copyright issue, I think it's good to keep in mind that most of Shakespeare's work could not have been created under our current law. Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet were adapted without permission from existing works, the history plays were "borrowed" from Hollingshed's Chronicles, etc.

Gotta go...

Appropriation and/or re-appropriation is an art form as much as anything else. Just because it wasn't "drawn' should not discredit it. Some of the finest art in the wordl in the last century is reappropriation and/or 'collage'. I expect that thinking from every-day-scmucks but not trained creative-folk.

I think appropriation/reappropriation and collage are a weapon in a design arsenal as much as tracing, drawing, 3D rendering, photography, what-have-you. Collaging IS creating. Some people have a better eye for compiling torn up xeroxes then for photography - so be it. Some just like the aesthetic of collage. Some like the subversive thrill of reappropriation.

As they say before my son's morning cartoon: IT'S ALL IN HOW YOU LOOK AT IT.

Steven wrote:

But with design, I feel that the use of either original or stock/public domain artwork is fine given its aesthetic and pragmatic relevance. If you need something quickly and cheaply, and it's readily available on a stock image site, I have absolutely no problem with using them. Some stuff is pretty good, actually.

Regrettably, this kind of thinking does not take into consideration our fellow photographers and illustrators. For example, Getty Images has been buying up smaller stock photo companies. With each purchase, the Getty contract with the artist comes into play over the previous company's contract. Of course, the Getty contract allows for smaller percentages to the artist.

This is compounded by Getty's agressive marketing to larger agencies and other end users. They will go into an agency like Grey Advertising and offer a volume discount if Getty becomes the sole image supplier. This great deal for Getty is at the photographers' expense.

Another one of Getty's activities of questionable ethics is the shuffling of "home territories". Their contract allows for, let's say, a New York-based photographer to get a higher percentage from a sale made to a New York end user. Sales in any other territories result in a split commission -- a 50% commission now becomes 25%. In order to get the higher commission, Getty will invoice the New York user from the London office.

I am the first to admit that I use and rely on companies like Getty for those projects which have neither the time, logistics or budget to commission photography or illustration. But, this argument is part of my ammunition when I try convince a client to hire someone rather than pay a usage fee. I pretty much always lose this fight, but at least I know I'm doing an inadequately small part for our compatriots in visual culture.

For a closing quote I leave you with Mark Getty and something he once said at a PhotoExpo: "Content is the oil of the new millennium."

More information can be found at the American">http://www.asmp.org/">American Society of Media Photographers and in copies of Photo">http://www.pdnonline.com/">Photo District News.

Jose Nieto wrote:

The practice of graphic design can be undestood in many ways, but my favorite definition is "visual editing"

I think this is an inadequate description of Design. "Editing" suggests a more passive, production/back-end activity which is the opposite of what much writing here on "Speak Up" calls for: greater involvement in earlier business decisions about direction, content, method, etc.

Editing is what you do after you have the content.

For inadequate, two-word descriptions of Design, I recently have been using "making choices".