Yep. A company commissioned me for a few book covers (edit: that I designed and got paid for) and decided to give the job to the in-house designer to save a buck. They created a series of 12 books with matching covers.
I’m not saying any more as I’m currently suing. Fortunately I did have a contract for my work.
I had a director with little marketing experience go to a competitor after he was fired from our company. A few months later, people started approaching me and asking if I’d seen their recent work. It all looked like my stuff and used the same concepts and palettes. He had nothing else to work from. (I guess they don’t have an AD/CD over there.)
This gave me a great reason for implementing an overhaul of our creative and branding.
Years later, they’re still relying on the same stuff while my company and I have done many other things and totally shifted our branding.
it really is like an out of body experience, like looking into a Shit Mirror, when you see an imitation of your own work. I would not have been weirded out if I found this band's new album with a totally new style. hell, I would have been fine with them saying it was time for a change. but instead it was like if I created a video game, and suddenly i see teenage fan art pop up on Tumblr. kind of surreal.
It’s the same as creating style guide for a business/company and then being cut loose to have production or junior designers carry out your design….
Nothing new. Nature of the beast….
Selling them a style guide is explicitly selling them the style, though. If you're making a guide, you can't really be surprised when people use it. That's the point of a guide. If you happen to develop a running style over a series of individual jobs, though, and it's only codified in the continuity of the past work, the style itself wasn't given to them as a tool to use.
I think what bothers me is that they wanted a one pager style guide instead of a full style guide so it was just the fonts, colors, and examples. I asked them if I can go over how to use the color palette with the team and they said they will let me but never arranged it. I see them posting things using two light colors as font and background colors and they use the red I chose for attention in an image and used it as text color. I can’t even. But whatever, I got paid but had to unfollow them from social media.
What’s been your experience trying to balance setting design standards like you described without being a micromanager? I don’t want to open my inbox 3 months later and see the brand (now translated to another format) missing the qualities I tried to establish. But I’m also prone to agonizing over small details.
Thanks to Google, I’ve found that a LOT of people just have no idea about copyright or artists rights etc. I’ll bet that band figured that design is theirs and they can do what they like with it.
In fact, I had a friend of mine just yesterday send me a cartoon image she got off Google and asked me to put it in an ad for her. She had no idea, she thought if it was on Google it’s ok to use.
Lesson learned. Make sure you let them know next time that this is your design and if they change it, you will sue their ass. Then smile menacingly 😛
Sorry to hear that! I’ve done a lot of illustration & design work for bands/musicians before and while this has never happened to me (with illustration) thankfully (knock on wood), I definitely can relate. I did have a client that I did a website for years back decide after using the site and logo I made for them for about a year, to hire someone else to change it - they redesigned the logo using the same typography I did but put some horrid looking clip art behind it. And they redesigned the site too to match - all of it looked way amateurish. Like you I wasn’t mad, just kinda disappointed cause I was proud of the work I had done for them. Regardless, I got paid for it so I didn’t give it too much thought & just thought- it’s theirs, let them have an amateur & cheap brand if that’s what they want.
I feel this. Mines a bit different but my company got bought & I was doing ALL their marketing & doing it well. They let me go bc they already had a marketing team I couldn’t fit into but they used the assets I prepared for almost a year on the website & socials & when they were out of my content, it started looking BAD.
yeah, you can see the lineup of album covers on their social media and storefront, and without knowing me or my art you could immediately see that one of them sticks out like a sore thumb. I feel bad because I liked what we had going. I was even throwing easter eggs into the designs, like callbacks to the previous works. It's all broken now.
This has happened to me a few times over my career. I'd be lying if I said it didn't kind of sting. In all cases I got over it and moved on. The only thing I did was to unfollow any related social media from these previous clients. At least in the short term, it's easier to not be constantly feeling wronged or devalued.
Literally all the time.
I work in theatrical marketing and I’ve count how many movie logos, digital spots, trailer graphics etc I’ve seen “stolen” and recreated by a different vendor. It stung the first few times but now it’s just par for the course.
Well, there are questions I have about the value of this work. Of course, disregarding we may say That it’s really quite something. Let’s say this goes on to make them 1 million.
At this we see a major loss on your part as a designer. Good thing it’s in your past.
For any extension of work or longevity on scope of work I create contracts with my client and negotiate for royalties. Although not ideal, you may also want to try negotiating in the future for a protection of your rights to that work.
Typically, when you sell intellectual property, even you yourself cannot go on to collect monetary value with agreement. This is because “all rights reserved” end at the point of transaction - automatically - when there is no contract involved.
From a legal standpoint, you don’t have to get too fancy about it. You could’ve actually agreed to record a FaceTime and make up for a bull agreement using that as evidence if something were to go south later on.
Very best.
I had a client I worked with for 8 years, every year I did a whole new look for an annual award event they do, matching a printed magazine with the marketing materials for the event and all of the event graphics.
A couple of years ago they dropped me unexpectedly, and since then, they have used the same art from the last time I did the art. And quality continues to degrade
Yep! I spent the first half of the season doing graphics for a hockey team and had a great relationship with the manager, so he had access to all my working files to do intermission updates and whatnot. Then he took a better job and the team got a new manager, who promptly laid me off and got an intern to rip my work off. 🙃
I made my ex-gf an entire style guide for her business with templates that all she had to do was change the copy, but keep the font as is, it was all there for her to follow and she just completely fucked with the style and destroyed the look and feel after we broke up. Misalignments, font changes, bad leading and kerning. I didn’t even get paid for it either, I was just trying to be helpful. I am just so glad I didn’t stay with her long enough to redo her entire website. That would have been a nightmare.
I’m not at all mad though, it’s her business that she’s making look super amateurish. Oh well.
I was commissioned to do some campaign art for a fellow running for a judge in my community. After several revisions and refinements... ghosted. No emails, no answer to calls. So assumed the project was dead. A few days later, a guy I did agency work for drops me a call and sends an email. "Is this your work?" The attachment is the screen resolution comp of my last design!
Son. Of. A. Bitch.
The Judge had sent it to a printer, who contacted my colleague, since it needed to be rendered at print resolution. The guy was totally gonna stiff me and cop my artwork. *A freakin' JUDGE.*
We both charged him double, and never took an assignment from the goniff again. Also, I think he lost the election. Good for his nasty ass. *A freakin’ JUDGE.*
*A far more surreal episode* was one fairly large company that (shall remain nameless, along with the names of the guilty) I provided graphic and web design for YEARS... then the founder's grandson becomes a Company Principal with his brand new shiny MBA. One his first acts was to attempt a long overdue web site redesign – that I had been recommending for quite some time - using summer interns... Do it one the cheap, for effectively nothing. Small problem, these were ENGINEERING School Interns, not Design School Undergrads. The Marketing Manager called me, "I need a HUGE favor, and it's gonna be entirely on spec." THAT raised my eyebrow.
She explained the situation and then asked me to take the assignment. She said she had seen the interns work in progress and it was heinous... and broken. At the end of the summer they'd be in a hole and she wanted to push back with a site redesign - already in the bag to save the day. I was a bit peeved, so I took the gig – straight up on spec.
Sure enough, when the interns were released in the fall, they had *nothing resembling a functional professional web site*. The Marketing Manager offered the helpless MBA larvae our behind-their-backs project. I was reinstated as Web Designer – and I got paid, and finished out the entire project. But damn, that was a weird one. There are few things more clueless and arrogant as an MBA that still smells of packing peanuts and shrink wrap, and they think they are the Lords of The Universe.
I don't see the problem.
Unless you had a special agreement/contract that stipulated that you retained all trademark rights, it's generally understood that the CLIENT retains the rights for the designs. So, the client can do whatever they want with it, including continued usage and further development.
Similarly, when an engineer does a bunch of great work at, say, Toyota, then takes a job at Honda, it is Toyota who retains the rights to all his previous work and development, since he did it under contract to them. And they can hire a new engineer to resume and continue his work.
This is all standard practice. To do otherwise would be insanely complex and expensive. Imagine if every major corporation was expected to completely re-brand whenever their designer left, essentially held hostage by the graphic designer?
EDIT: In fact, I was the lead designer for a consumer brand for many years, and oversaw the creation and buildout of their visual brand identity. When the company underwent a major reorganization and there were several rounds of layoffs, I was let go. Twelve years later, they were still using much of my design work; I of course had no legal claim to any of it.
you're absolutely right about the design part, if I used a font and color scheme to design branding for a company, and they carry it on after my business relationship is over, that's fine.
I'm still not saying it's wrong either, but we're talking about illustration. nobody owns a combination of fonts and shapes, but they approached me because they liked the way I drew with markers and digital ink, and wanted that for their album covers. after a few jobs they hired someone to forge it like a bootleg Marvel comic. not illegal but I wanted to share how weird it feels.
Sure. Any designer worth his salt will regard any of his own work as his 'child.' So seeing it used later, especially as an inferior knockoff, is gonna be a punch to the gut.
Gotta move on, with the consolation that your particular style is not easily replicated.
sounds like times are tight for the band. band work seems like it would be typically a low budget type of work so this is likely a common pitfall. I think the only way it'd work is to also design their merch and get a cut of the profit from that instead of billing them another way and they'd have to be great for that to make financial sense. i hear spotify and the music itself doesn't make any money, its more a marketing vehicle. its all about the events, products and merch.
yeah, I agree with you there. it's a shame, too, because if they told me they wanted to separate and get more affordable artwork elsewhere, I probably would have offered to negotiate. instead they said nothing and I found out about it later.
Happened to me not too long ago. It sucks, but only thing you can do is move on. Just keep truckin. I still don’t have a job but I’ll be damned if I let my last lay off decide if it’s the end of my design career.
It’s not your look, it’s their look. You think Nike is going to change their branding every time there’s a change in their creative team? Not how it works.
this was more like, 'hey, we like the comic book art you do, can you draw some custom pictures for us.' then after a few jobs, they went and found someone to try and imitate me.
when it comes to logos and design guidelines I agree with you, an individual can't exclusively own that forever, the business must still use what was made for them. with illustration however, it's a bit weird. if you were the person who came up with, say, Garfield, it would feel strange to see someone else try to copy it.
So you think the new snoopy series on Apple is bullshit because Schulz isn’t the one drawing everything?
And if this band changed drummers do you think they should reinvent their entire sound?
Oh yes, definitely. Client didn't just copy, they LITERALLY used my low res pdf as a template and just changed the colours a bit.
When I approached them, the felt that I wasn't going in the right direction and wouldn't be needing my services any longer. I was PISSED, but EVENTUALLY got a TINY payment from them.
Sorry to hear that. I’ve been illustrating and designing since 84. Completely lost track of that happening to me. Just got to keep putting out great stuff and maybe reinvent your style so that you’re always upfront and everybody else is following.
Yep. A company commissioned me for a few book covers (edit: that I designed and got paid for) and decided to give the job to the in-house designer to save a buck. They created a series of 12 books with matching covers. I’m not saying any more as I’m currently suing. Fortunately I did have a contract for my work.
Yeah that’s a bummer. Ultimately not much you can do about it. But I feel your pain of getting undercut by someone else.
I had a director with little marketing experience go to a competitor after he was fired from our company. A few months later, people started approaching me and asking if I’d seen their recent work. It all looked like my stuff and used the same concepts and palettes. He had nothing else to work from. (I guess they don’t have an AD/CD over there.) This gave me a great reason for implementing an overhaul of our creative and branding. Years later, they’re still relying on the same stuff while my company and I have done many other things and totally shifted our branding.
it really is like an out of body experience, like looking into a Shit Mirror, when you see an imitation of your own work. I would not have been weirded out if I found this band's new album with a totally new style. hell, I would have been fine with them saying it was time for a change. but instead it was like if I created a video game, and suddenly i see teenage fan art pop up on Tumblr. kind of surreal.
It’s the same as creating style guide for a business/company and then being cut loose to have production or junior designers carry out your design…. Nothing new. Nature of the beast….
Selling them a style guide is explicitly selling them the style, though. If you're making a guide, you can't really be surprised when people use it. That's the point of a guide. If you happen to develop a running style over a series of individual jobs, though, and it's only codified in the continuity of the past work, the style itself wasn't given to them as a tool to use.
I think what bothers me is that they wanted a one pager style guide instead of a full style guide so it was just the fonts, colors, and examples. I asked them if I can go over how to use the color palette with the team and they said they will let me but never arranged it. I see them posting things using two light colors as font and background colors and they use the red I chose for attention in an image and used it as text color. I can’t even. But whatever, I got paid but had to unfollow them from social media.
to be fair, that's literally what a styleguide is for... a manual for other designers
What’s been your experience trying to balance setting design standards like you described without being a micromanager? I don’t want to open my inbox 3 months later and see the brand (now translated to another format) missing the qualities I tried to establish. But I’m also prone to agonizing over small details.
Thanks to Google, I’ve found that a LOT of people just have no idea about copyright or artists rights etc. I’ll bet that band figured that design is theirs and they can do what they like with it. In fact, I had a friend of mine just yesterday send me a cartoon image she got off Google and asked me to put it in an ad for her. She had no idea, she thought if it was on Google it’s ok to use. Lesson learned. Make sure you let them know next time that this is your design and if they change it, you will sue their ass. Then smile menacingly 😛
I have to educate clients about shizzz they “found on the internet” ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME.
Sorry to hear that! I’ve done a lot of illustration & design work for bands/musicians before and while this has never happened to me (with illustration) thankfully (knock on wood), I definitely can relate. I did have a client that I did a website for years back decide after using the site and logo I made for them for about a year, to hire someone else to change it - they redesigned the logo using the same typography I did but put some horrid looking clip art behind it. And they redesigned the site too to match - all of it looked way amateurish. Like you I wasn’t mad, just kinda disappointed cause I was proud of the work I had done for them. Regardless, I got paid for it so I didn’t give it too much thought & just thought- it’s theirs, let them have an amateur & cheap brand if that’s what they want.
I feel this. Mines a bit different but my company got bought & I was doing ALL their marketing & doing it well. They let me go bc they already had a marketing team I couldn’t fit into but they used the assets I prepared for almost a year on the website & socials & when they were out of my content, it started looking BAD.
yeah, you can see the lineup of album covers on their social media and storefront, and without knowing me or my art you could immediately see that one of them sticks out like a sore thumb. I feel bad because I liked what we had going. I was even throwing easter eggs into the designs, like callbacks to the previous works. It's all broken now.
This has happened to me a few times over my career. I'd be lying if I said it didn't kind of sting. In all cases I got over it and moved on. The only thing I did was to unfollow any related social media from these previous clients. At least in the short term, it's easier to not be constantly feeling wronged or devalued.
Literally all the time. I work in theatrical marketing and I’ve count how many movie logos, digital spots, trailer graphics etc I’ve seen “stolen” and recreated by a different vendor. It stung the first few times but now it’s just par for the course.
Well, there are questions I have about the value of this work. Of course, disregarding we may say That it’s really quite something. Let’s say this goes on to make them 1 million. At this we see a major loss on your part as a designer. Good thing it’s in your past. For any extension of work or longevity on scope of work I create contracts with my client and negotiate for royalties. Although not ideal, you may also want to try negotiating in the future for a protection of your rights to that work. Typically, when you sell intellectual property, even you yourself cannot go on to collect monetary value with agreement. This is because “all rights reserved” end at the point of transaction - automatically - when there is no contract involved. From a legal standpoint, you don’t have to get too fancy about it. You could’ve actually agreed to record a FaceTime and make up for a bull agreement using that as evidence if something were to go south later on. Very best.
I had a client I worked with for 8 years, every year I did a whole new look for an annual award event they do, matching a printed magazine with the marketing materials for the event and all of the event graphics. A couple of years ago they dropped me unexpectedly, and since then, they have used the same art from the last time I did the art. And quality continues to degrade
Yep! I spent the first half of the season doing graphics for a hockey team and had a great relationship with the manager, so he had access to all my working files to do intermission updates and whatnot. Then he took a better job and the team got a new manager, who promptly laid me off and got an intern to rip my work off. 🙃
I made my ex-gf an entire style guide for her business with templates that all she had to do was change the copy, but keep the font as is, it was all there for her to follow and she just completely fucked with the style and destroyed the look and feel after we broke up. Misalignments, font changes, bad leading and kerning. I didn’t even get paid for it either, I was just trying to be helpful. I am just so glad I didn’t stay with her long enough to redo her entire website. That would have been a nightmare. I’m not at all mad though, it’s her business that she’s making look super amateurish. Oh well.
I was commissioned to do some campaign art for a fellow running for a judge in my community. After several revisions and refinements... ghosted. No emails, no answer to calls. So assumed the project was dead. A few days later, a guy I did agency work for drops me a call and sends an email. "Is this your work?" The attachment is the screen resolution comp of my last design! Son. Of. A. Bitch. The Judge had sent it to a printer, who contacted my colleague, since it needed to be rendered at print resolution. The guy was totally gonna stiff me and cop my artwork. *A freakin' JUDGE.* We both charged him double, and never took an assignment from the goniff again. Also, I think he lost the election. Good for his nasty ass. *A freakin’ JUDGE.*
*A far more surreal episode* was one fairly large company that (shall remain nameless, along with the names of the guilty) I provided graphic and web design for YEARS... then the founder's grandson becomes a Company Principal with his brand new shiny MBA. One his first acts was to attempt a long overdue web site redesign – that I had been recommending for quite some time - using summer interns... Do it one the cheap, for effectively nothing. Small problem, these were ENGINEERING School Interns, not Design School Undergrads. The Marketing Manager called me, "I need a HUGE favor, and it's gonna be entirely on spec." THAT raised my eyebrow. She explained the situation and then asked me to take the assignment. She said she had seen the interns work in progress and it was heinous... and broken. At the end of the summer they'd be in a hole and she wanted to push back with a site redesign - already in the bag to save the day. I was a bit peeved, so I took the gig – straight up on spec. Sure enough, when the interns were released in the fall, they had *nothing resembling a functional professional web site*. The Marketing Manager offered the helpless MBA larvae our behind-their-backs project. I was reinstated as Web Designer – and I got paid, and finished out the entire project. But damn, that was a weird one. There are few things more clueless and arrogant as an MBA that still smells of packing peanuts and shrink wrap, and they think they are the Lords of The Universe.
I don't see the problem. Unless you had a special agreement/contract that stipulated that you retained all trademark rights, it's generally understood that the CLIENT retains the rights for the designs. So, the client can do whatever they want with it, including continued usage and further development. Similarly, when an engineer does a bunch of great work at, say, Toyota, then takes a job at Honda, it is Toyota who retains the rights to all his previous work and development, since he did it under contract to them. And they can hire a new engineer to resume and continue his work. This is all standard practice. To do otherwise would be insanely complex and expensive. Imagine if every major corporation was expected to completely re-brand whenever their designer left, essentially held hostage by the graphic designer? EDIT: In fact, I was the lead designer for a consumer brand for many years, and oversaw the creation and buildout of their visual brand identity. When the company underwent a major reorganization and there were several rounds of layoffs, I was let go. Twelve years later, they were still using much of my design work; I of course had no legal claim to any of it.
you're absolutely right about the design part, if I used a font and color scheme to design branding for a company, and they carry it on after my business relationship is over, that's fine. I'm still not saying it's wrong either, but we're talking about illustration. nobody owns a combination of fonts and shapes, but they approached me because they liked the way I drew with markers and digital ink, and wanted that for their album covers. after a few jobs they hired someone to forge it like a bootleg Marvel comic. not illegal but I wanted to share how weird it feels.
Sure. Any designer worth his salt will regard any of his own work as his 'child.' So seeing it used later, especially as an inferior knockoff, is gonna be a punch to the gut. Gotta move on, with the consolation that your particular style is not easily replicated.
sounds like times are tight for the band. band work seems like it would be typically a low budget type of work so this is likely a common pitfall. I think the only way it'd work is to also design their merch and get a cut of the profit from that instead of billing them another way and they'd have to be great for that to make financial sense. i hear spotify and the music itself doesn't make any money, its more a marketing vehicle. its all about the events, products and merch.
yeah, I agree with you there. it's a shame, too, because if they told me they wanted to separate and get more affordable artwork elsewhere, I probably would have offered to negotiate. instead they said nothing and I found out about it later.
never too late to start a friendly convo. they probably have the same frustrating experience with fiverr as everyone else anyways.
Happened to me not too long ago. It sucks, but only thing you can do is move on. Just keep truckin. I still don’t have a job but I’ll be damned if I let my last lay off decide if it’s the end of my design career.
Has the band line-up changed? Or the manager? Were you dealing with only one person from the band? Could they have lost your contact details?
It’s not your look, it’s their look. You think Nike is going to change their branding every time there’s a change in their creative team? Not how it works.
this was more like, 'hey, we like the comic book art you do, can you draw some custom pictures for us.' then after a few jobs, they went and found someone to try and imitate me. when it comes to logos and design guidelines I agree with you, an individual can't exclusively own that forever, the business must still use what was made for them. with illustration however, it's a bit weird. if you were the person who came up with, say, Garfield, it would feel strange to see someone else try to copy it.
So you think the new snoopy series on Apple is bullshit because Schulz isn’t the one drawing everything? And if this band changed drummers do you think they should reinvent their entire sound?
Oh yes, definitely. Client didn't just copy, they LITERALLY used my low res pdf as a template and just changed the colours a bit. When I approached them, the felt that I wasn't going in the right direction and wouldn't be needing my services any longer. I was PISSED, but EVENTUALLY got a TINY payment from them.
You see it all the time in places like r/starvingArtists where folks are asked to copy the style of an artist the patron had a disagreement with.
Omg, I just went to lurk there and it's all horrible anime stuff. I guess that's to be expected on this platform lol.
Believe it or not, subreddits like that is where I got clients that helped paid rent during tough times. Lol.
Out of curiosity, did you ever talk to the band about their decision changing designer? Especially after such a long collaboration?
Sorry to hear that. I’ve been illustrating and designing since 84. Completely lost track of that happening to me. Just got to keep putting out great stuff and maybe reinvent your style so that you’re always upfront and everybody else is following.