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| Intellectual Property: Do you know your rights? Designers face an increasingly complex landscape when it comes to copyright and intellectual property. When a single idea or concept can be expressed or utilized in dozens of different formats, platforms and mediums, how can creators control ownership and usage of their work? Even a simple idea like ownership can become complicated, when the work in question is not composed of atoms, but ideas.
First things first: Is the work yours? In most cases, the answer is straightforward. When you make something, you are the author and owner of that work, with a wide range of rights and privileges that you control, unless and until you transfer that ownership to someone else in writing. Once you've been dead for 70 years, all (well, most) bets are off; your work enters the public domain for all humanity to use and enjoy. So being the creator of a work makes it yours, automatically. But should any problems arise, you will need to prove it.
Registering a copyright is the simplest way to protect yourself from someone else using, copying or making derivative (imitative) versions of your work without your permission or proper compensation to you.
Copyright is the government's official recognition of author/ownership. You can register your copyright at any point, but the sooner you register a work, after it's created and before it's made public, the more complete the benefits and compensation you might receive for any misuse of your work. Learning what your rights are and how to protect your intellectual property can save you a lot of headaches in the future.
This is an excerpt from HOW Design, continue reading this article here. Learn how to protect your designs in HOWU's course Intellectual Property Rights for Graphic Designers. | | |
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| Graphic Design Proposals 101
It would be nice if strong design work could speak for itself, but in many cases, writing a graphic design proposal is the only way to be considered for a job. You may even already have a proposal template that you tailor and tweak for each project, but is it strong enough to get you the design projects you want most? You don't have to be a great writer to craft a winning graphic design proposal, but you do have to know which requests for proposals are worth responding to, and what to include in them. In this course, instructor Ilise Benun will teach you how to write a proposal, how to weed out bad prospects, and get to know the good ones better before you work with them. Learn how to use the process to your advantage-developing strong connections, so that even if you don't get the job in question, you'll have managed to build a relationship with a future.
When you register for the course, you get access to chapter downloads from some of Benun's most recently published books, video tutorials, interviews on pricing, and loads of freebies from the best-selling Proposal Bundle for Designers! | | |
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| | The Design of Everyday Things In Donald Norman's classic book The Design of Everyday Things, he describes six principles of design. Though the book was written in 1988, and by internet standards is an ancient artifact, these core ideas vividly apply to modern web design as we practice it today. In fact, the more complex things get, the more important it is to cling to core principles that push towards friendlier interfaces.
The Design of Everyday Things is an approachable guide to the basic attributes of everyday objects that make for good design. These attributes focus on properties that make the user experience as effortless, easy and as enjoyable as possible. This results in intuitive objects that will be enjoyable to use and produce a positive experience.
For many, this book is the perfect introduction to the world of User-Centered Design and, subsequently, User Experience Design. It's not hard to understand how these simple ideas naturally lead us to the world of UX design on the web. And, as you will soon see, these 27 year-old ideas are in fact hot topics, greatly impacting modern web design.
Norman outlines six key principles: visibility, feedback, constraints, mapping, consistency and affordances. Designers have long used basic principles of design to create attractive work that clearly communicates. In contrast, this set of principles challenges the designer to also craft systems that are easy to use. As you design each day, these simple ideas can help push your work towards that goal. When combined with the basic principles of design, the results can be simply outstanding.
This is an excerpt from Patrick McNeil's article on HOWDesign.com. Learn more about web and UX design with HOWU. | | |
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