Do you allow your client to take photo of what you've design on your screen?

[Richard Wills]

Cheap inkjet printer, copier paper, postage stamp, watermarked print. This is what event photographers do – they don’t show on screen to browsing punters, as they’ll whip out the iphone, and the sale is gone.

At the stage the client is feeling happy with how the design process is going, it’s time to talk deposit. Wants to run it past his other half/partner. The design is approved, time to take deposit. Potentially factor in one or x number of revisions, but you’d spent the time with them getting to the approved design.

[Pane Talev]

Thanks Richard.

I’ve done none of the things suggested. I shall improve on this matter.

[Martyn Heath]

Sounds a little over the top pane. Theres not a lot he could do with a picture on your screen. And if worse case scenario happened and you didnt hear from him again, he went elsewhere and got same design done, Legally its all on your side.

[David Hammond]

If it’s approved, they should be handing over some money to move to the next stage.

I’d rather them have a photo of the screen, than a high resolution jpg, or worse still a vector pdf!

Make it clear from the very beginning when you expect payment, it can be daunting at first, but the customer must be expecting to hand over some money at some point, just let them know when, and how much.

Alarm bells would certainly be ringing if they were happy, but didn’t want to part with their cash.

[David Rogers]

“I’ll just take a photo to show my partner / wife and we’ll get back to you”…

Then you get the spidey senses tingling of a scam in progress…

This is sometimes the case of “I’m probably not ready to spend ANY money with you but will take your concept and hawk it round to get a knock off done on the cheap”.

Mostly sussed out with “if you leave a small deposit I’ll send you a proper file as we’ve sadly had too many people take our designs and give them to other companies” OR “bring them in so we can make any changes together”.

Basically blame the scammers before them for the policy.

You won’t win them all and if met with a “just forget it then”…did you really want them anyway, just trouble waiting to happen.

[Stephen Morriss]

I can’t be arsed with all that, I send the customer a low res jpg of the design, they make suggestions as to how they want the design altered, I’ve already given them an estimate based on the basic designs so I give them a quote based on their final design and away we go.

Some don’t come back but most do and what’s more they keep coming back year after year. You do get a 6th sense for when you’re being had though so we don’t put too much effort (if any) into them ones.

Steve

[Jason Davies]

Always pop a watermark across any work produced until payment

[David Hammond]

We’ve done that in the past… but it’s too easy for someone else to copy the idea. Might as well go and work for the competition. You spend your time creating a fantastic design for nothing, only for them to rip it off and plaster it all over social media.

I believe there was a company local to us, who actively encouraged it, go and get a quote and design from another company, and we’ll beat it.

[Colin Crabb]

All artwork has this footer:

No unauthorised distribution or reproduction of these images without written consent from (company name).

If any of the design, layout or content is used without payment or consent, consultation & design time accrued will be

invoiced at £50p/h.

Additionally, a £200 copyright release fee, or £150 per use** of design will be invoiced – whichever the greater.

** ‘per use’ means each vehicle, print use, embroidery etc.

Upon completion & full payment of the job, design time & any logo design fee’s, copyright transfers to the customer.

[Myriam Garrido]

Unless the client is an existing customer and ordered previously I wouldn’t allow them to take a screen photo. Offer to send an email with a low res png with all the copyright notification etc as wordered by Colin.

It’s a real chore dragging them through the courts for copyright infringement so better to not get caught up in all that if at all possible

[Hugh Potter]

That wording looks familiar 🤣

For the record, I still had someone taking the rise with the £200 release fee so i changed it to the following…

“If any of the design, layout or content is used without payment or consent, consultation & design time accrued will be invoiced at £45p/h. Additionally, an annual user licence fee of £299 per use, or a one time fee of £749 to purchase the copyright in full will be invoiced. ** ‘per use’ means each vehicle, print use, embroidery etc. Prices exclude vat at current rate.

Upon completion & full payment of the job, design time & any logo design fee’s, copyright transfers to the customer.”