Sunday, May 22, 2011

Journal 08


I chose to focus on the legal issues in design because I feel it’s very important to protect the work that you put so much time and effort in. The lecture briefly touched on contracts, patents, trademark, copyright, and liability. The lecture in general caught my attention because I never really thought about the legal side of design and now that it’s been brought to my attention I realize how important it actually is.


“Intellectual Property”
            The AIGA website defines copyright as “a statutory protection granted to “original works of authorship.” This category includes everything from “published and unpublished fiction and non-fiction” to “drawings and other designs” to “musical performances captured on records, tapes, disks, ect.” to computer programs. It is important to know “titles, names short phrases, facts, anything written or created by the U.S. government and utilitarian works” are not protected by copyrights.
            I think this is a great source since AIGA is a well-known and credible source for designers. It also laid out what was and was not protected under copyright laws.
The article talks about copyright, notice registration, infringement, and fair use. It also discusses trademarks, registration, duration, infringement and trade dress.  


“Legal Issues: Intellectual Property”
            This article discusses more about designers working with clients and how they need to protect themselves in real world situations. The frequently asked questions section I found to be the most interesting. I like that the answers were to the point and easy to understand. Contracts were discussed and helpful hints of what should be included in a contract.


“Copyright Issues in Logo Design”
            The article “Copyright Issues in Logo Design” focuses on what the title states. It’s geared towards font design and copyright issues. For instance, “…we CAN NOT edit a font and sell it to a client as “mere lettering” for the font.” If you did you would be using characters from an already copyrighted font and it would then “exist separately from the typeface itself and therefore make it illegal to sell on as a derivative of the typeface.” Later on the article goes on to give tips on what you could to in order to no violate copyright laws.

http://www.dynamicgraphics.com/dgm/Article/28832/index.html

“Protect Your Legal Rights”
            The article starts off by talking about young designers and how many times they don’t have contracts with their clients. It grabbed my attention in the first sentence because no one wants to put in their time and effort to be ripped off in the end. I like that it was easy to understand and the legal terms that are used are explained fairly well.


“Design Rights, Legal Terms…Learn Everything”
            The beginning of the article discuses the fact that many graphic and web designers don’t pay too much attention to copyrights and legal terms, but it is very necessary. It proceeds to define terms such as copyright, disclaimer, copyleft, royalty-free and may others. The article also discusses the importance of contracts and what to do if someone is using your design. I like that a real world situation where design plagiarism happened. It was really interesting to see the possible design plagiarism in designs. I also found the section on photographing and legal rights to be interesting because prior to I hadn’t really found much about it on the other sites. 

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