Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
It can be very exciting, when you have worked on a project for a well-known
brand or taken part in a major campaign, to include the project in your portfolio.
Before you do, be honest with yourself about your share in the work. Were you the
art director, or a junior designer? Did you develop the concept, or only execute the
production?
It's always better to present your share of the project honestly. Everyone
knows that major projects are the work of many minds and hands. If a project is
great, taking credit for only your share will reflect well on you. Giving credit to those
who earned it will prevent confusion when more than one team member applies to
one firm or deals with the same placement agency. Not only will you be better pre-
pared to speak about the portion of the project that you know intimately, but you
will be spared the embarrassment of being confronted with any gap between reality
and your presentation. See Chapter 11, “Portfolio Reels,” for ways to specify your
roles and to offer credit to others on a team.
In a surprisingly large number of cases, even when you create all your own
material, you don't own the copyright to it. The circumstances under which a work
was created determines who owns and gets to license it. This can have profound impli-
cations for a digital portfolio, which by its very nature involves copying and adapta-
tion. It has particular financial implications for illustrators and photographers. If you
maintain rights to your work, you can recycle an image into the stock-image market,
making your portfolio a potential income stream.
If you have created an image on your own time,
for your own purposes, it remains yours to duplicate or
change. Even if you sell the original artwork, you can
retain the right to show copies of it in your portfolio,
no matter what form that portfolio might take. If you
choose to make a series of unique images in the same
style, on the same theme, or with elements from the
original, you are still free to do so.
On the other hand, work you do might conceiv-
ably belong instead to your employer, your client, your-
self in combination with one of the above, or a third
party entirely. One key to this distinction can be your
legal working relationship with the other parties.
I hired a woman who had been
designing and art-directing for
multiplatinum-selling artists.
About six months later, I received
another book with one project
that was also in her book. I finally
said, “We hired so-and-so, and
that same project is in her port-
folio. She says she did it.” He was
defiant, but his body language
told me that he was lying. He was
good, but I did not put him forward
to the creative director.
—Cynthia Rabun
