Giving Ownership Of Artwork To Clients

The Design Startup Show

Hey, design starters, first of all, I'd like to just give you a big, thank you for always joining me on my own little discussion and conversation between myself and you. So it doesn't feel that lonely because I know you are there, you are subscribed and you download the episodes and listen. So I know you're there and.

So just want to yeah. Show my appreciation and, you know, it means the world to me that you are here consistently listening and learning and, and also applying to your own business. So it's just something that I wish that others will know certain things where can, that can help, you know, to, to improve your business.

And. And help you feel life as much as possible. Yeah. So for today I would like to talk about ownership of design artwork, materials, and the work that you have done for clients, you know, for the past, like maybe not a past, but since 20 or five, I've been haggling with myself over how I should. Keep the ownership of my artwork and the creative work that I've done for clients.

And many times I, because I invoice them and I send proposals on, on the, the, the work that we are supposed to do together, I will put in the terms and conditions, but that terms and conditions were sketchy if they are not done by lawyers, because I didn't know the way to get legal help. In those days and, and the tech wise and online digital, you know, legal stuff, wasn't that advanced in those days.

For me, even for me, I wasn't even looking out. So I didn't want to spend too much just to save on costs. I did everything myself on. On the, um, the terms and conditions so long, the customer agrees. Right? So what if my clients agree then, then that's fine. It works. And what I put that is a little things.

Like, I was just afraid that, you know what, they may just take my, my designs and copy them and, and, um, use them, which happens a lot because we provide the proposals for free. Right. We don't charge them when we send them our ideas and. You know, you may hear that a lot, that there are people who will take your ideas from your free proposals and they don't hire you.

They don't pay you, but they use your ideas by hiring another cheaper or, you know, less expensive, more affordable designer. And it's, you know, I, after some time I found that this kind of fear isn't worth it at all. It's. It's not that it makes me lose sleep, but it takes up my time and effort to, to cover, cover this up or to counter this, this area of, uh, of, um, this issue or this differences, or how should you put it, maybe like, you know, this kind of struggle that I have to keep worrying and wonder if.

I should provide free proposals and prevent kind off prevents my clients using terms and conditions to prevent my clients from stealing my idea. So whenever you're afraid of people stealing, you know, it takes time away from you because you have to come up with ways to, to protect yourself. Yeah. I think the word is protect and.

It was tiring. So when I started this, this, um, stop five years, six years back, I decided to just give away all the work that is done. What I mean by give away is so long. The client signs up paid for our service. And at least for that month, anything that we have done will belong to the client. And we also put in the Tums where we will use them as our portfolio or work on our own website, social media, testimonials, and such.

So those were what I mean by those will belong to the client is they can just use them, you know, um, however they want, meaning we have already done them in the piece. The source files will all belong to the client. We are not going to keep them. And. And kind of hold up away from the clients. You know, there are suppliers and providers who who's stopped somewhere, whether it's just J pack and only provide the J pack formats without the sauce fall and static slept static files.

And if clients want, when the sauce follow, they have to pay more. It's something like designers on Fiverr. Right. If, if, if, you know, if you are from there as well, and you work on Fiverr, that's what you do, right? So you're charging more for the source files. So in time I have decided not to do that. And, um, I used to kind of play around with how this can be, this can be done and, and provide clients with this kind of service.

But I did away with that six years ago and it just can't come include it right now. It's all included in the pricing. That's given to the client, why that is, because I don't want them to keep coming back to me for the files, even after our, our service has been expired or, or non-renew, if they renew, they still have that on file.

So that's fine. Right? That works fine. But if they don't renew and softballs are still with us, if we withhold them, There will be a chance where they will come back and keep emailing us and say, Hey, you know, we need the source files because we need to change this came. Please provide us with that. Since we have really worked with you.

And even in my terms, I've said that, you know, you need to pay for it. And, um, we don't give you the source files as part off the, uh, the service. Then it, it makes us sound a bit, a bit, um, selfish in the sense, like, like kind of withholding things and why make it so hot kind of thing. Right. And that does affect the, the, the customer service quality that we are offering.

It's just against our values in the sense. So obviously it starts with your values on, you know, how you want to provide for your customers. Right? So for us, we want them, we want to improve their lives. We wanted to make it less. Make make them, you know, kind of lead the, our businesses run their businesses and lives with less hassle.

Right? So if they are going to keep on coming back to us for the source files, without us giving it to them, then they are stuck. And if they are stuck, that's not what we want them, uh, to do, to be going through as well. So if that's the case, That's why me and me decided, okay, why don't we just provide them with everything?

Right. Every changes that is made, they will have the source files. They can just download it from the cloud. Right. We restore them up in Google drive and they can just download from that basically. That's it. And it made life so much easier because I didn't have to haggle with customers after they have churned.

I didn't have to have customers who are still using our services. They simply just download from that and that saves them time. They don't get stuck. And that saves us time too. Right. So it's a win-win and you know, as much as possible in this life, I would just like to have win-wins more than zero sum games.

And if everybody wins, then it helps myself as well because, um, when people are happy, they help you too. If you don't give them that when you don't let them have that. Is, for example, for the source file, you don't have that. Don't give them those source files. They will feel, you know, that they don't feel very satisfied with the services and it's like, it's not full and that they have to pay more.

Why don't you just add that sum into your price anyway, they will surely need the source file in some way or another. Right? Because things change things evolve. They may want that part of the source file to be used again. So, you know, In this way, I feel that there's no need to charge more, right? Unless it's a different kind of value, then I'll probably charge more.

Right? For example, communication via email versus communication via phone. I think these two things are different values. If they can explain on email properly, they don't need that phone call. They don't need the phone call. Then you, you don't have to charge that phone call. So I think this is fine where it comes to charging more, but when it comes to source files, They are the same thing, um, you know, production of their creative work.

And so if, if, if these items, you know, are required on a day to day basis, I would say I would want to provide that value and into that costing anyway. So you need to understand first what your customers need, the items they need to go through their day to day and put them into that package. And then you charge accordingly and give that value.

Right. So, yep. So that's it for today. I hope this helps in any way. If not, um, feel free to contact [e-mail]. Uh, once again, out, I'll say my email get Maryland and maryland.com. So great to hear from you. Bye.