swe3t Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 My Dad put me in charge of doing all the graphical work for his company.. Things I will be designing are packaging, the website, and some of the actual merchandise. What are the rules and regulations regarding commercial work? What fonts am I allowed to use, am I allowed to use brushes? Do I have to find brushes that people allow for commercial work? What about pictures from the internet? Say, I'm doing something related to cars, am I allowed to use pictures of the car provided by their companys website? I'm sure other people need help with this stuff too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MVP Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Any font can be used, there shouldn't be any rules to it. Except...Packaging with any types of brushes wouldn't look very attractive. Perhaps a patterned background, but anything more than that would be quite unacceptable, IMO. I'd say creating vector patterns from scratch is a better way to go.Images need to be high quality (300 lpi is a common standard). If you want high quality photographic images, there are plenty of stock photo sites that you will need to pay for. Otherwise, 95% of the images you find on Google will fail, because those have been optimized for web viewing, meaning very low resolution.If you happen to use an image of a car, you will definitely need to manipulate the image to the extent that the brand's logo wouldn't be seen, unless of course, you have their license and permission to use them. However, I don't think using images of other companies would be very professional.I think I'm right on most of this, but there are more experienced members here who probably know more than I do. And to those members, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oddball Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 Whatever you do, do not use things from the internet. I don't know how many times I've heard people just grabbed something off the internet to use and got into huge trouble with not only the person who took the photo, but also the company. It's a great way to screw your father over! If you need a picture, go grab a camera and take the picture you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordie_delini Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 and I disagree with MVP over fonts. DO NOT USE FREE FONTS. This is a huge No-no in commercial work. Find good fonts from MyFonts.com or from foundries like Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Purchase the fonts. And oddball is right - no internet pics. Not only are they most likely copyrighted work, they're not high quality for print. Web images are always 72 dpi (dots per inch). Print quality images are 300 dpi and bigger. And you can't enlarge an image to 300dpi, because that would require more pixels than the image has, so your graphics software will ultimately just enlarge individual pixels, rendering your image pixelated and therefore useless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swe3t Posted February 7, 2009 Author Share Posted February 7, 2009 Okay so say I'm designing some merchandise and I need a picture of a Chrysler 300. My best bet is to find someone who owns one and let me take a picture of it? And fonts wise, the safest way to go is to buy them. Although its hard to shell out money if I don't even know if I like the font. Thanks for the input guys, if anyone has anything else to contribute that would be awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MVP Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 and I disagree with MVP over fonts. DO NOT USE FREE FONTS. This is a huge No-no in commercial work. Find good fonts from MyFonts.com or from foundries like Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Purchase the fonts. And oddball is right - no internet pics. Not only are they most likely copyrighted work, they're not high quality for print. Web images are always 72 dpi (dots per inch). Print quality images are 300 dpi and bigger. And you can't enlarge an image to 300dpi, because that would require more pixels than the image has, so your graphics software will ultimately just enlarge individual pixels, rendering your image pixelated and therefore useless.Well you didn't really disagree with me, I guess I just wasn't clear enough. I wasn't promoting the use of free fonts, obviously the use of free fonts can easily lower the quality of work. What I simply meant was that there really isn't any rules on it. You can use them, they just won't look good aesthetically by any means whatsoever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordie_delini Posted February 7, 2009 Share Posted February 7, 2009 haha right on - and a good point. Once you've got your hands on some decent fonts, there's not limit to usage. I would take a peek at ilovetypography.com, they've got some great articles about type and design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AsM29 Posted February 8, 2009 Share Posted February 8, 2009 i thought you needed a commercial license or something like that for fonts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordie_delini Posted February 8, 2009 Share Posted February 8, 2009 those are for fonts purchased. when purchasing digital type, often times there's an end user license agreement that one must agree to in order to download said purchased font. fonts included with adobe creative suite are included in the software's license agreement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quantum Posted February 8, 2009 Share Posted February 8, 2009 those are for fonts purchased. when purchasing digital type, often times there's an end user license agreement that one must agree to in order to download said purchased font. fonts included with adobe creative suite are included in the software's license agreement.On a related note, the recipient of artwork from a designer needs a license to use the purchased font as well. That is, of course, unless the font is limited to the logo and is converted into outlines. "One of my concerns is shysters show up and take advantage of people's good will and generosity". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordie_delini Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 actually that applies to any commercial work, not just logos. If artwork supplied does not have embedded fonts but converts them to outlines, then no license is required. This may actually be different for various fonts depending on the license agreement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quantum Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 actually that applies to any commercial work, not just logos. If artwork supplied does not have embedded fonts but converts them to outlines, then no license is required. This may actually be different for various fonts depending on the license agreement.We agree, but my point was really about people that hire a designer to create an entire identity. The designer comes up with a series of commercial fonts for office use, and at times, the client thinks the font or fonts are included for free. I worded my previous post the way I did because outside of the logo, the fonts usually wouldn't be converted to outlines in most cases.Makes one wonder how some pros can charge so little for their services. "One of my concerns is shysters show up and take advantage of people's good will and generosity". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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