The Freelance Issue No. 8 // Legal Aspects

I just wanted to talk about something a little different today and that is 'legal aspects'. By any means, I am no lawyer so of course don't take anything I write as a legal advice like you would from an attorney.  Since we work in a visual field and tend to share lots of visuals there might quite often occur problems concerning copyrights.

Today I was reading a thread in a facebook group where somebody asked what the deal with mood boards and copyrights is since in a mood board designers usually share images they neither own the rights of nor have created them by themselves. That is the main reason why I tend not to share mood boards I create because I always fear that I might get punished and fined for it, even if I just create those mentioned mood boards for personal inspiration and client communication only but presumably most copyright owners and their lawyers won't really care about that if the mood board can be found on the net. Well, I shared two or three mood boards online ever since I started freelancing but I won't post mood boards anymore on social media or my blog from now on because I am just too afraid - even though I try to put down the sources of where I found the photos but very often tracing them down while finding them via pinterest is quite impossible. 

Another hot topic might be my collages - same here, the material I work with, that I turn into digital collages, I try quoting the source but again, when impossible tracing down the original source, I just write down 'pinterest' as the source. Even though I think the collages should not be so problematic since whatever I use, I modify everything so much and create my own creation that for most images used it should be hard to tell where they originally came from - in the end they are turned into something completely new and different from what they were before. Also also I am not making any profit from whatever I create here, I do it for my own inspiration and to stay creative. 

But I think copyright and legal issues, when it comes to our creative work, the work we create and that other creatives create, we should have more open discussions about it just to make sure that we stay on a legal track and don't get into any problems just by doing what everyone else does in the industry. 

So, what are your thoughts about this? 

photos via Pinterest -- all images used are for inspirational purposes only / graphic design by phylleli