Keep Your Graphics Legal
Saturday, 30 August 2014
When we build training, we try to focus on the end-user performance and finding the simplest and most effective means of enabling them to perform their jobs. Unfortunately, effective training is often not enough by itself. Clients expect the program to look good too, and by good we mean “professional.” Professional training is often expected to look aesthetically pleasing.
Advances in graphic design and animation have changed the game so that simple line drawings and text presentations feel incredibly dated. So how do we as developers find time to create professional graphics without losing sight of the end user’s actual training needs? Does substance take a back seat to style? It shouldn’t have to.
For very specialized applications, you may have no alternative to authoring your image yourself. In other cases, you may be able to find what you need on a website. Even when you are lucky enough to find a graphic that suits your purposes, it may actually be someone else’s intellectual property. Though lot’s of people will copy images freely from Google searches or other web sources, it is not always clear whether it is really legal to use them without permission.
For very specialized applications, you may have no alternative to authoring your image yourself. In other cases, you may be able to find what you need on a website. Even when you are lucky enough to find a graphic that suits your purposes, it may actually be someone else’s intellectual property. Though lot’s of people will copy images freely from Google searches or other web sources, it is not always clear whether it is really legal to use them without permission.
There are really four situations in which you can legally using a graphic.
- You created it and own the rights
- It is not protected by copyright
- You have permission or a license to use it
- You can use it without permission, under “fair use”
In the weeks to come, we will look at these four paths and some of the in’s and out’s to legally using graphics. You may be surprised to see that things are not as simple as they might appear at first glance.
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Ian and Pete recently presented a session called “Legal and Effective Graphics for eLearning” at the 2014 Chicago eLearning and Technology Showcase. Most of the principles apply to all kinds of training, as well as presentations. If you want the details, view the presentation.
