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.

Dear Jean,

I am a web designer. Recently, the brand/company I worked for was purchased by another company, and I was “sold” along with the brand. The new company treated me very poorly, and my new boss was verbally abusive. I was forced to quit for my own health and well-being. They were very upset when I quit and have threatened legal action. They recently sent me a letter saying they were going to sue me for using their logo in my portfolio on my personal website. To clarify, everything on my site was created long before the brand was sold. I have taken the images down to be safe.

So my question is this: is it legal to display examples of your own work on your personal website portfolio if you produced it for a company?

Thank you so much,
Mitch

Dear Mitch,

If you are an employee of a company, all the work you create while employed belong to the company. If the company is sold, the purchaser acquires all rights, including the rights to the work you created while working for the prior organization.

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As Clement Mok observed in 2003, designers are the only professionals who describe their work in media-specific terms. A surgeon says, “I heal people;” he doesn’t say, “I make cuts.” A lawyer says, “I prosecute people;” he doesn’t say, “I make legal documents.” And yet, designers say, “I make websites. I do print work. I’m in video.” We are so focused on the medium that we often lose sight of the conceptual goals that inform our overall design practice.

There was a time when graduate art programs defined themselves in terms of media. Painters attended a painting program, ceramicists a ceramics program, and so on. With the rise of integrated, multimedia art, that time is passing. A contemporary artist may now work in video, sculpture, drawing, and performance simultaneously. The focus is not the media but rather the artist’s conceptual goals.

As designers, we should be willing and able to move fluidly from medium to medium. In order to do this, however, we must first identify the overarching conceptual goals of our design practice. Every artist has a “practice”: a career-spanning continuum of visionary making that drives the creation of each individual piece of work. An artist’s career isn’t simply a series of unrelated pieces that have no conceptual cohesion. Instead, her goals inform her practice which, in turn, informs the creation of her artwork over time.

Should a design practice be any different? Master designers (from William Morris to Stefan Sagmeister) have always pursued something more meaningful than the next job. A singular, evolving vision informs their choices with regards to clients and projects. Although their work varies depending on the particular needs of each job, it nevertheless follows a conceptual trajectory consistent with the goals of their practice.

Case Study: Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci is a poet, artist, and architect. His career has been defined by his conceptual goals rather than the media he uses to achieve those goals. (more…)

I recently attended the Future of Web Design conference in New York, which featured speakers from many disciplines within the web design field. The most futuristic seminar by far was Jina Bolton’s about CSS3.

CSS2 (or 2.1 to be exact) is the version of CSS supported by current browsers, and it’s used by most of today’s designers. Despite some browser inconsistencies with CSS2 rendering, today’s designers benefit from it’s rich positioning features, along with the many design and formatting properties which were introduced in CSS1.

According to Jina, CSS3 will go much further with positioning, letting web designers work in a more flexible, print-like design environment. CSS3 is still in the development phase, so you can’t start testing new features in your favorite browsers just yet. However, css3.info has excellent previews of the new features.

Opacity, like many other new CSS3 features give the designer tons more control. That increased power will have to be used wisely, for it could lead to chaos. Regardless, it’s what most designers have been clamoring for and should be a huge leap forward for web design overall.

css3.info has some of the best previews of CSS3 features and easy to use code samples.

Here are a few of my favorite features, which will be explored in depth in future posts:

1) Multi-column layout. When I said print-like, I meant it. CSS3 includes a special module that allows you to place content in columns, (more…)

So, you’ve created a site for a client (or yourself), and the site is live on the internet. What do you do now? Well, if you want people to find your site, you submit it to Google. Then, you wait. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to find out if your site was in Google and how it was showing up (other than running google searches obsessively)?

There is a way: Google’s webmaster tools. I learned about them when a client was having problems with Google; her site had been blocked for spreading malware (a long story for another post). While researching that problem, I discovered Google’s webmaster tools, a free service from Google that lets you track how Google sees and ranks your site.

In this post, I’ll show you how to sign up for Google’s webmaster tools and how to add sites to your dashboard. In future posts, we’ll discuss what you can do with the various tools.

Sign Up

To sign up for Google’s webmaster tools, go to this page, and log in using your Google Account name and password.

Add a Site

When you log in, you’ll see your dashboard. Once you’ve added sites, they’ll all be listed here. Let’s add a site now:

Type a url into the text box, and click the Add Site button. You should get some interesting information right away. (more…)

The Internet has made it okay (even cool) to be a nerd, and web designers should be thanked for making it happen. Don’t get your web designer friends the latest Dreamweaver guide or a new mouse; there are much better gifts out there that speak directly to the nerdy sensibilities of most web designers.

Start with your friends who work in-house. It’s no fun wearing a tie every day, but perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if they had an 8-bit tie from ThinkGeek. The design is jagged and totally GIF-like, and best of all, it’s a polyester clip-on. (Also suitable for the video gaming geeks on your list.)

Nothing says corporate web designer like the ThinkGeek 8-bit tie.

If your web designer friends are of a more stylish variety, perhaps a swankier gift is in order. Laptop bags have gotten a whole heck of a lot better looking over the past few years, and quirky fabric choices let designers make a personal statement. (more…)

Much has already been written about the marketing of Radiohead’s new album, In Rainbows. Bypassing major labels and a fixed pricing scheme, Radiohead invites customers to purchase the album for whatever amount they like (including nothing). The music is purchased and downloaded via inrainbows.com, an e-commerce web site designed by Radiohead’s graphic design mastermind, Stanley Donwood. Just as Radiohead’s distribution scheme is a critique of capitalism and major record labels, the interface design of inrainbows.com is a critique of the rigorous usability guidelines that have become all but ubiquitous on the corporate web.

The traditional goal of an e-commerce site is to separate the customer from her money as quickly and painlessly as possible. Disorienting and thought-provoking interface design has no place in the checkout line of amazon.com. But what if you are a rich band like Radiohead, with little interest in money but a strong desire to tweak culture, provoke thought, and establish a meaningful relationship with your audience? What if you decide to spend the popularity you have earned on a kind of experimental art project? Suddenly e-commerce design becomes less a means of extracting money and more a means of disrupt the customer’s expectations.

Donwood’s design for inrainbows.com is so minimal it’s disorienting. The copy is cheeky and terse, dry and ironic.

inrainbows.com welcome text

Although the FAQ section addresses a number of logistical issues regarding product shipping, it never explains that the album can be had for free. Only when you arrive at the payment do you realize that something is amiss. (more…)

These days, just about every print, web, or multimedia designer you encounter can rattle off a domain name for you. Visit the site, and you’ll probably find dozens of work samples, a resume in PDF format, contact info, etc. You know the drill.

Most designers create these portfolios because they hope to engage clients. But how do clients find these sites? Networking and search engines work, but for many job seekers, there’s a better way to attract the attention of potential clients: portfolio services.

Creative Hotlist and Portfolios.com are the most popular portfolio services, but others can be found via designers’ guilds and specialty websites.

Portfolio services serve two main purposes: they play host to your portfolio images and personal information and allow potential clients to search for and contact designers.

In general, clients prefer to use these services than wade through dozens of independent sites. (more…)

Despite my own advice, I did it again. I just couldn’t help but pick up Mac OS X Leopard (a.k.a. 10.5) within a few days of its release. (Hey, what else was I going to do with my iPhone credit?)

Who else is relieved that there’s no tacky leopard print on the box?

Some of the new features were just too hard to resist, and I’ll start with the one that I think benefits designers most.

Spaces. The Spaces feature immediately increased my productivity, as it allows you to create up to four separate desktops. You assign applications to spaces in System Preferences. Right now, I’ve got Safari, Firefox, and Mail in Space #1 and design programs, like Photoshop and Dreamweaver, in Space #2. I’ve made iTunes available in every Space, so I can see what’s playing at any time.

Pressing F8 allows me to quickly move between my email/browsing Space and my design Space.

It’s easy to move an application from its default Space to the current Space. I usually keep Word in Space #1. Sometimes however, I need to see a Word file while working in Dreamweaver, which I keep in Space #2. In these situations, I just pull up all my Spaces using the F8 key, and drag the Word window from Space #1 to Space #2. It’s really easy!

Cover Flow: The Cover Flow Finder option is another feature designers will appreciate. You have probably seen Cover Flow before in iTunes or on your iPhone. It’s the app that generates the thumbnail album covers (more…)

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 freelance web and graphic designer. I do logos, photography, graphics, and web design. I have never protected any of my art pieces with a copyright, and I am not quite sure whether I need to or just should?

Do I have to register every single graphic I create? It seems like a very annoying and time consuming task.

Can I instead protect all my artwork by registering once and then submitting pictures of every piece? Or, is there some other process that will make the task easier and faster?

Thanks,
Susana E.

Dear Susana,

You don’t need to register a copyrighted work to own a copyrighted work. Once you create it you own it, and it’s always protected. Registration is useful in that it provides you with a lot of legal ammunition and qualifies you for such things as statutory damages the reimbursement of attorney’s fees. However, as you point out,

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The regular deadline for the 12th Annual Webby Awards is December 14, 2007, so if you’ve created one of the year’s best websites, you should be filling out entry forms and preparing a five word acceptance speech now.

The Webbys honor work in four categories: Website, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile, and there are two different types of prizes: The Webby Award and The People’s Choice Award. Members of The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences select the nominees, as well as the winners of the Webby Award. The international online community votes to determine The People’s Voice Award winners.

Entry forms are available here. You can check out past winners here.