To be successful in any job field you have to have some basic level of decorum. You have to be able to deal with the nuance of office communication and be respectful autonomously. As designers, on top of interacting with coworkers at the office, we also communicate directly to the public as well. With that much responsibility on our shoulders, self policing can only get us so far. We have to remember to be ethical.

With my internship I had to use only images that I could find on a given website and their copyrighted logos which added some difficulty. I cannot disclose exactly which website. I did not sign an NDA, however I was told during the interview process not to disclose any unnecessary information or information that was used during the design process. I will only say the pictures I had to use could not be PNG’s as they are too size heavy and take a while to load which narrowed down my options even more. When I work on these types of projects in school the idea of copyright and licenses and such are a lot more lax because in most cases, those projects don’t leave the school so it’s fine. We have our own ethics at school but it pretty much only boils down to “don’t plagiarise”. But in the working world there are so many things we have to look out for and rules we have to follow in the name of ethics. 

I wasn’t entirely constricted. They made it clear that besides the website and their own copyrighted imagery, if I could create something myself to use I was more than welcome. They were very keen on using their own pictures as they wanted to keep a consistent image and guide my strategic process. 

Cited List: 

A Client’s Guide to Design: Joanne Stone and Lana Rigsby

Use of Illustration: Brad Holland and Tammy Shannon  

Guide to Copyright: Tad Crawford