Lesson learned!

A few weeks ago, a coworker from Cycle Gear sent me an email with a picture attached. It happened to be one of her friends that she knew very well. Apparently he was joy riding in the mountains a few weekends ago and hit some gravel on a highly known curvy road for motorcyclist, was thrown off the bike and was killed. Since I had worked with Rebecca, she knew of my passion for designing and thought I could help her with an idea. The other part of the email said something to the likes of...

" Hey I want to have a sticker decal made for my friend and wondered if you would like to design it for me. I know of your creativity and thought you would do a good job if you are interested. His riding number was 13 and could you some how incorporate the number into the design. Thanks".
Rebecca


I wrote back and said that I would be honored to make something for her friend. Rebecca was a cool girl to work with and I've always told her if I could do anything for her to let me know. So I immediately went to work with some things I had in mind. The one thing I didn't realize was the twist that was heading my way...

Read on to find out what happened.

Here is the original picture of the motorcyclist that I had to design something from.

My first design. I took just the rider out of the original and placed him in a new canvas with a black background and tried to make his number look like the track. Kinda like he was riding on his number.

I also told Rebecca that if she had any ideas that I would gladly try to design what she had in mind. So she asked me to design something outlined in black and white. This was my result.

I started playing around with some other ideas and thought...ok I'll add some text to the design and make it come together. After I sent her all the images I designed she wrote back and said they were all excellent but overall wanted just the bike with the abstract look with the number 13 in red. So I replied.

A day later I get an email that says: " Hey thanks... you are the man... you designed images I would have never thought of.... if these decals start to sell, I'll tell my friend to add on a dollar for you on every sell".

I was just glad to hear she liked what I had done. Now here comes the twist. Next thing I know she emails me back and says... "my friend wants to know if you can make a vector out of the images".

Well, I 'm not that skilled in photoshop just yet but I found an easy way to get it to look decent. I send the images to her and the next thing I know she is sending me this image with text going in a circle around the image. Not to mention, this image was one of the first designs I created, not the vector image I was told to make. I wrote back and asked... why was there a change in the image I created? I could have put text in the final design for you. Not only that but she included... "My friend said the sticker will cost around ten dollars. Let me know how many you want".

Is that not just screwing me over or what! I designed the image... several images at that and if I want one it will cost me ten dollars? Even though she initially said she was going to add a dollar on the cost for me... I could really care less about that. It was for a friend a passed away in a motorcycle accident for crying out loud. The gift to me would be seeing this bike club with a sticker decal that I designed all over their bikes. Well, there is really nothing I can do. I didn't watermark or copyright my work. Even if I did the friend of hers was obviously a little knowledgeable on photoshop. He has the final decision to top off the image with something of his on if he wants to, even if I did copyright the image. It just puts me in my legal rights. My question is why didn't he do it to start with. I know Rebecca pretty good from working with her over several months and she would not have done this on her on. Now that I have cooled down a little from this I am going to send her a little email to give to her friend. It will probably read something like this:

Hi Rebecca, hope the design of your friend HeeJun has been printed and looks good. Just a little note for your friend with the decal business. He might want to make sure he gets permission from the owner of any designs before he decides to manipulate any images. By doing this he will avoid any violation to copyright laws and will keep himself out of any trouble. Since I didn't copyright these I guess you can say he got lucky this time. Hope you are doing well on your new job. Talk to you later.
Brian

Do you think this will get my point across?