Where's Daddy Blog

Protect yourself and your work! November 30, 2009

When you have a skill or trade that you can sell, you need to protect your self. With graphics design, many people think that you have the copyright when you create the image. In a sense you do. However, as I recently found out, you need to protect your rights.

I recently worked on a project where the customer wanted a new sign for his shop. I had just made a contact with someone who could build the sign from my design.  ”Great,” I thought! I began to get quotes and put together some design ideas.  The customer was excited, when he saw the print out I gave him of my concepts.

I gave him a few days to look them over and make a decision. I noticed his mother’s obituary posted in the local paper. I gave  him a call. apologized for his loss.  He told me he wanted to put the project on hold for a while.  No problem, very understandable. I tried to get back in touch with him a little bit later, but he was never at his shop.

A couple weeks went by of me stopping by his shop to find no sign of the guy. Then, one night running to the store, I see a sign hanging with my design. I was furious. He never paid me for the design. It was only about $40, but that would buy a couple christmas presents at my house.

So I started keeping an eye on his shop to try to catch him while he was there. No luck. Finally, I put together an invoice and dropped it by his shop, which he never locks the door on. It has been a week now since I dropped off the invoice. I am hoping to hear from him soon. I still keep my eye out for him to be at the shop.

The unfortunate thing is the copyright law. It was created to protect the designers. However, for small, local projects, it would cost me more money to get my money.  I may have to let this one go and learn from my mistake.

What I learned from my mistake is to create a disclaimer that goes at the bottom of my print outs. This disclaimer will need a clause that awards me damages for my efforts to collect. I will also need to place a watermark on all images before the final art has been exchanged for money.

So like I said, protect yourself and your work!