Imagery Plagarism and Graphic Design
“2867956161_d7f16f7981.jpg” Designer Unknown (1995); Saul Bass (1959). Flickr – Photo Sharing!. Web. 29 April 2011. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24140210@N05/2867956161/
Having had quite a few discussions with fellow designers about design plagiarism, the difference between “stealing” someone’s work, “copying” someone’s work and drawing “inspiration” from someone’s work, I always found it disturbing that in all the years I spent in high school and college there was only ONE class that ever mentioned plagiarism pertaining to imagery. This was especially shocking considering all four years of college I attended art classes, and the last two of those four years I completed 15 graphic design courses. Never once was imagery plagiarism discussed in my art classes. In fact, the ONLY time one of my teachers mentioned plagiarism that included imagery was in a exit course, Criminology. Stated in her syllabus where resources on where to find information to properly site sources (whether they be written text, video or imagery). I frequently used Son of a Citation Machine to site sources for my school work. However, this site only offers information on how to site web based images and video – but what about images outside of the web? I think that imagery plagiarism needs to be better taught and enforced in schools. My thought is, if you can get expelled from school for copying part or all of a paper, shouldn’t you have to face the same consequences for copying all or part of an image?
What does plagiarism mean for the design world and how do you protect your own designs? Where is the line drawn between copying someone’s work and using it as inspiration to push your own design further or in a different direction? Jacob Cass of Just Creative Design wrote a similar article on design plagiarism that offers some great resources, I recommend you check it out.
Example of how to site web based imagery:
Name of Artist if known. “Title of Image.” Title of Web Page. Web. 29 Apr 2011. URL.
Example of how to site imagery from a book or other print source:
Artist’s name if known. Title of artwork. Date of the artwork. Museum, collection or individual that it belongs to, the city where the owner is located (add this separately if the location is not included in the name of the owner). Title of book or periodical that the image is found in. Author of the book. Location of publisher: publisher, date.
Statement of Use.