Additional Resources for Print on Demand design contributors.
Advertising and Promotion
Creating "feeds" for Google Base and other advertisers
Managing Fonts
-
TTF Amp Font Viewer www.ampsoft.net
-
The Font Thing
-
Linotype FontExplorer
-
FontView - Pops up a little window with all your installed fonts listed. Type in a test phrase then scroll through the fonts list.
-
Font Browser this link will list the fonts on your system on the left. At the top is a small panel where you can enter text to display. The text displays with the selected font in a window in the middle, right.
- Font Resources
Accounting Aids
Statistics
How many people are visiting your shop, and how did they get there? These sites provide code that you can add to your premium shop to track visits. Sorry, they can't be used in basic shops.
Browser Tools
- CafeLink
- It is a toolbar helper to provide quick links to your CP Account, CP Forums, Templates, and CP's Contact page
- Search bar for the Marketplace
- Scrolling RSS feed that features any news about CafePress
Legal Stuff
There is a lot to be aware of in the area of legal rights and responsibilities. Below I introduce a few of them.
Copyright
For simplicity.
Most images you find on the Internet are not legal for use regardless of whether it is for your web site, a product for sale, or something just for yourself. It is also not legal to find an image and use it as a base for your own image. The right to modify an image belongs to the copyright owner, that is usually the person who created it.
There are different ruies for different uses. Commerical use is different from commentary. Using an image as an enhancement is different from when the image is the critical element to a product. POD customers aren't buying just a t-shirt or a mug, they are buying a product enhanced with a particular image. Without that image there would be no premium price for the product.
There is a difference between rights in the image, and rights in the subject matter. Copyright relates to the image. The subject matter of the image might be separately protected. For example, someone takes a photo of Coca-Cola corporate headquarters with a focus on the Coca-Cola sign. They own the copyright for the photo. They can give others permission to use the image. But they don't own the Coca-Cola trademark so the person using the image is still restricted according to trademark protection. Similarly if the image includes a recognisable person that person has subject matter rights of publicity and privacy regardless of whatever rights you might hold to the image. Avoiding issues of content rights is easy enough - avoid anything is recognizable as relating to a particular brand, avoid anything with recognizable human faces.
Royalty Free Image - means you do not pay per use. It might be free, or it might be a flat fee. Use is often restricted. In most cases "royalty free" images are intended for use on things like web pages, newsletters etc. but not revenue generating items (greeting cards, posters, t-shirts ...). If you were paying a royalty you would have to keep track of how many items were printed and pay on a per item basis. That is what you avoid when an image is royalty free
Copyright Free Image- means there is no image owner. So it can be used without paying anything and without commercial / noncommercial type restrictions as to the image. Also called "public domain". Note that still may not take care of restrictions because of the subject matter.
Creative Commons Image - is not an entire release of copyright for that image but use is free and relatively unrestricted. Often there is a restriction against commercial use, but that means making money from the image (greeting cards, posters, t-shirts ...). So in most cases Creative Commons licensed images are OK to use for corporate newsletters, web sites etc. without payment. Very often there is a restriction against commercial use - which would include using the images for print on demand products offered for sale.
For corporate web sites and newsletters you can look for Creative Commons license or public domain (copyright free). When you are looking you will see that getting free / unrestricted photos is easier than finding drawn images (clip art - so called because they used to come in books and you would copy them then literally cut or clip them from the paper to be pasted to your document mock-up), but there are still tens of thousands of available drawn images.
Trademark
Trademark protects consumers by ensuring that they can know the source of the goods and services they buy. Trademark owners protect the integrity of their mark by ensuring that consumers don't think that the mark owner is the source of shoddy or unfit products. Whether something is a violation of trademark involves all the surrounding circumstances. So it is entirely possible that you could get sued not for the design but for the marketing surrounding the design, the text, the title or the search tags. While parody is a protected form of speech the line between parody and uses that risk a law suit are not clear, well defined or obvious. If you are considering using a brand name or some recognizable product in a design for sale make sure you understand the risks.
If you want to keep yourself out of trouble the guideline is "Does my marketing, or the design itself, make people think of a particular product, movie, tv show or otherwise specifically identified producer." If it does, then you are risking trademark infringement. If you want to make money marketing something related to a TV show, movie, performer, sports figure etc. you must make sure you have easy and rapid access to an attorney specializing in intellectual property law. Newspapers, magazines and performers who do parodies get sued regularly. And if you choose to enter into the arena of basing your sales on the products of others then you will too. You might win, you might lose, but if you don't have solid legal knowledge in your corner you are risking everything.
Trademark does not prevent you from using a particular phrase or word. It prevents you from using a particular phrase or word in a specific manner. The extent to which you are limited depends on the specific mark. They are not equal. In simple terms a critical factor is recognition, the more recognizable the mark the wider the protection. But the recognition factor is also evaluated in context. It is complicated and thus most PODs will choose to pull a product rather than risk a legal battle.
Rights of Publicty / Privacy
Rights of publicity and privacy apply to uses of a person's image, likeness (e.g. cartoon), name, nicknames and other information that identifies a specific individual. Trying to sell a product using this identifying information is at least risky. That would include not only the design itself but the marketing of the design or product.
Law Links
Potential free image sources
**Be extra careful to read image use rules before using an image. Just because you can use an image on a web site or company newsletter does not mean you can use it on items for sale. Especially be careful of the subject of the photograph. Identifiable people must sign releases. Publishing a photograph of copyrighted material e.g. art, may infringe on the artists copyright. The photo may show something protected by trademark. Owning the copyright to the photo is not the same as owning the rights to publish the subject of that photo. **
Creative Commons licensing varies. Be sure to read the particular license. Do not assume that you can use a Creative Commons licensed image commercially.
Yoto Photo searches multiple sites for finding free photos that are public domain or subject to Creative Commons, GNU FDL, and various licensing levels. Some terms may require crediting the author/artist/photographer or may restrict whether the image can be altered. Indexes Flickr, Wikipedia, Stock.Xchng, Morguefile, Pixelperfect Digital and OpenPhoto.
Image After - explicitly permits commercial use. Some images may require attribution. Use may be restricted by rights other than copyright.
USDA - images from the United States Department of Agriculture.
US Agricultural Research Service The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) image gallery.
Open Clip Art Library - All images are public domain which means they may be used in commercial works. Files are SVG (scalable vector graphics) format so requires an appropriate application to use them. Use may be restricted by rights other than copyright.
Submitted by ChefP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources - lists a variety of public domain resources.
- Submitted by PocketLama
http://www.everystockphoto.com/index.php
- Images are Creative Commons licensed.
http://www.freephotosbank.com/ - May be used for personal or commercial purposes. Forbidden uses are those connected with any pornographic, obscene or immoral materials or the promotion of drugs, alcohol, physical abuse, contraband, crime, discrimination or defamation excepting the situation or situations when used to combat, fight or discourage such activities. Use may be restricted by rights other than copyright.
http://www.morguefile.com/ - Selling prints, selling the images directly or claiming the photo is yours is prohibited. Request to credit the photographer. Images may not be used any manner which may be considered offensive, indecent or objectionable, or to defame, libel or discriminate, Use may be restricted by rights other than copyright.
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ - A variety of creative commons licensed images - some are OK for CafePress, some are not. Each image will have a license defining allowed use
http://www.flickr.com/groups/stock/ - Free Stock photos for designers. You're free to contribute your own photos or take what you need. As a courtesy to the photographer please let them know how and where you use their images, and do not bundle them in a package for redistribution. Use may be restricted by rights other than copyright.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page- A variety of copyrights/licensing such as Creative Commons Attribution/Attribution ShareAlike copyrights, GNU Free Documentation Licenses or under no copyright (public domain). Use may be restricted by rights other than copyright.
http://search.creativecommons.org/ - This search service helps you quickly find those authors and the work they have marked as free to use with only "some rights reserved." If you respect the rights they have reserved (which will be clearly marked, as you'll see) then you can use the work without having to contact them and ask. In some cases, you may even find work in the public domain -- that is, free for any use with "no rights reserved."
Example of sources probably not suitable for CafePress products or for which a fee must be paid to use the image on CafePress products. They may be useful for site graphics.
http://www.stockvault.net/ The images may be used freely for personal, educational and non-profit projects. You may not use them commercially, claim authorship and/or sell them.
http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp Free to private
non-commercial users. Commercial users must pay a fee.
http://www.sxc.hu/ - terms of use expressly addresses use such as by CafePress and requires permission from the photographer
http://www.shutterstock.com/ Requires paid subscription. Explicitly addresses use such as CafePress. Standard License prohibits such use. Extended license is contradictory
http://www.wpclipart.com/
http://www.eosdev.com/LinksResources.htm
http://antiqueclipart.com/
http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/cfimages.html
http://webclipart.about.com/od/msub28/Public_Domain_Clip_Art.htm
http://webclipart.about.com/
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Graphics/Clip_Art/Public_Domain/
http://www.sdst.org/shs/library/clipart.html
Not Free, But Legal
|
Tutor Tanith
