In relation to the AIGA guide on Design Business and Ethics, I believe my company has done a pretty good job in keeping things in line.
KWM handles getting images through licensing. They obtain most of their photography, stock video, and audio from external stock media websites. I’m not 100% sure where they sourced the images for their website or for their 15th anniversary video but when asking Trish about the subject during one of our calls, she told me that she had hired people to construct both the website and the video. They had to use company accounts in order to source out images and videos as the company is a financial firm and understands how integral it is to own the content you push out to the public. I’m not 100% sure how the trademark and logo came to be but I believe they hired a graphic designer to make a logo and then had a message trademarked on top of it.
When signing up with KWM, I did have to sign a NDA. The Non-Disclosure Agreement was to ensure that I would only use company assets for and only while working with the company. The NDA also signed off an acknowledgement that whatever project I were to be working on would be kept within company grounds until the final release. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to sign an NDA but I knew that this type of internship with this type of company would have me sign off on this as most of it is confidential information. I don’t believe that this had placed any grand limitations on what I could post on my journal as I am very reserved on the information no matter what. When working as a designer, if you want to uphold as much anticipation on a project as possible, you simply just keep it in private. There wasn’t much for me to post onto my journal within the first few weeks and even when there was, I didn’t want to (not could) post any company projects.
To finalize, while working KWM, I had made sure that any stock photos, footage, or music were to be sources through a stock website. As a student, I sort of grab things whenever I can and use them as I know it’s not going to be commercialized in any way. While working for KWM though, I need to uphold keeping a professional image and that means preserving rights to content regardless of where it comes from. Luckily stock sites allow me to use watermarked content, make sure it fits and is approved, and then allows me to pay a subscription to use the items. This saves a lot of time and money by finalizing what is truly needed before paying for anything. While working for KWM, I sourced my items through Envato Elements as it’s cheap, has an insane amount of content, and is easy to implement into the workflow needed to work for KWM.
