In our digital century, there are lots of graphic designers who are working online; most designers have accounts on popular Social Networks. So, it's quite possible to find good graphic designer via your favorite Social Network while sitting home with smartphone or tablet.
Moreover, if you are reading this text - you have already found one good professional designer -
Author of this article -
Practically, it's not difficult at all to find on Twitter a large number of designers offering their services online - you can use Twitter Search with keywords "Graphic Designer", "Logo Designer" or with hashtags #GraphicDesigner, #LogoDesigner, #LogoDesign. There is an even easier way - just make the post including words "need Logo" or "need Designer" - and very soon (in seconds sometimes) there will be lots of comments from designers who want to make design work for you, and quite often for a very small price. You just need to choose... and here there is a risk to make a very big mistake, which may cause problems lots of people don't even think about. These problems are not only wasted time and unsuccessful results. In the worst case, it's possible to lose a very large amount of money, many times more than the money spent on the actual design work (thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands). I'm not joking and now I'll tell you – what the problem is this, and how to avoid it.
The real fact is that, unfortunately, quite many designers who intrusively offering their services on Twitter, are very distant from professional graphic design, and some of them are sleazy fraudsters. Crooked "designers" can simply imitate or copy an image created by someone else and sell it to you as it was their creation. And, ordering design from such “designers”, you can suddenly face a very serious problem — it is an image copyright infringement.
Example from real life: John Doe (name was changed) found via Twitter designer who made logo for new John's business project. Good looking logo was designed very quickly and for a very small price. John made logo door sign at the entrance to the office, printed business cards, ordered t-shirts with the new firm logo, made website, launched advertising company, posted the new logo wherever possible... and one day he received a letter from attorney saying that the image on his logo violates someone's copyright. Cheap “designer” set him up. And here the troubles began... The first demand from the true copyright owner was complete removal of the illegally used image. The result – business cards in the trash can, the door sign is torn off, the site had to be corrected, the advertising campaign stopped, and “wonderful” inexpensive “designer” simply disappeared after receiving money. And these were not the biggest problems. True copyright owner demanded $3,000 compensation for illegal using of the copyrighted image. John had to hire a lawyer to settle the problem and to decrease amount of copyright infringement penalties. But the situation got even worse when it was revealed that John already sold a certain amount of goods with the logo. In the end, John spent almost 6 thousand dollars !!! on paying penalties, court costs, hiring lawyer, and re-branding. Rough start for John’s new business…
But similar situation could be even worse – if the image rights owner is some kind of a large and well-known company, the amount of penalties can turn into a very large amount of money. Not so long ago, one of my clients was going to sell t-shirts with an image which had as its part a crown identical to the crown from the Hallmark Logo . If I hadn't warned him – the amount of the claims from Hallmark could be very, very large!
COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT PENALTIES CAN RUIN A YOUNG BUSINESS.
To prevent copyright problems:
A – Don't rush when choosing a designer. It’s necessary to filter out non-professionals and fraudsters, the main principles of filtering are slightly below.
B – Check the final image for possible matches. Modern technologies make it very easy (and free) to check any image for matches with others. In the great majority of cases, it’s enough to use Google reverse image search – upload an image to Google Images and get not only completely matching images, but also similar ones.
Google Search Help >>> How to find related images with reverse image search (for Android, Computer, iPhone & iPad)
Another reverse image search service is TinEye
This action will not give you an absolutely 100% result, but you'll definitely be protected against the most serious claims.
Simple principles which help you to filter out crooked designers and fraudsters:
1 – Check the age of the designer’s Twitter account.
The first thing you should pay attention to – is to see how long a person blogging on Twitter – that immediately filtered most of the fraudsters. “Designers” responsible for stealing images and plagiarism quickly remove their compromised accounts (and make new ones, under new nicknames). So, if the designer is an active blogger for a long time (over six months), it means that he has nothing to hide and no one to hide from. Recently opened accounts are a suspicious sign.
2 – Check designer’s portfolio outside Twitter.
Looking at finished design examples is a good way to measure the designer's skill level and discover his style, but images posted directly on the microblog on Twitter, unfortunately, can also be stolen. Ask the designer to give you the links to his portfolio outside of Social Networks.
Attention: portfolio on crowdsourcing platforms like Fiverr, Designcrowd and similar gives almost no real guarantees of designs’ true authorship, sad fact, but there are lots of stolen images there.
- It’s good if the designer has a personal website with design and artwork examples.
- Portfolio on image stocks such as Shutterstock, AdobeStock, iStock are almost 100% guarantee that all artworks are true copyrighted. On these resources plagiarizers eliminate quite quickly and irrevocably.
- Good probability of true authorship – portfolio on Behance and Dribbble.
3 – Links to customers.
It is very good if designer can give you the links to some real people, or companies for whom he made the designs. For example like in the picture below (some of my designs with addresses of real Twitter users)
Although this article is not a comprehensive guide to working with designers online, I am sure that the information presented here will be very useful, and simple but effective practical tips will help you not become a victim of fraud and not lose large amount of money.
And, of course, you can order the logo design (or other graphic design work) from the author of the article, with 100% guarantee of high-quality work and protection from claims due to copyright infringement.
Author – Robert Voight – professional graphic designer with wide and long-term experience in graphic design and advertising business (more than 15 years).
- Twitter:
twitter.com/Robert_Voight
twitter.com/Robert_Voight
- Most recent designs and more on Instagram:
instagram.com/robert_voight
instagram.com/robert_voight
- Design works on Behance:
behance.net/RobertVoight
behance.net/RobertVoight
- Royalty free images Portfolio on Shutterstock:
shutterstock.com/g/robertvoight
shutterstock.com/g/robertvoight
- Royalty free images Portfolio on AdobeStock:
stock.adobe.com/contributor/201250254/Robert%20Voight
stock.adobe.com/contributor/201250254/Robert%20Voight
- E-mail:
robertvoightmail@gmail.com
robertvoightmail@gmail.com
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All original content © Robert Voight
All original content © Robert Voight
