Your Name Here
Have you noticed that most work posted by Biller Designs has a little version of our logo near the bottom of the image or some other unobtrusive place? This is called a watermark.
Many companies, especially those who specialize in visual art, put watermarks on their work when they share them on social media or on their own websites. There are a couple of reasons for this.
Prevent Unauthorized Usage or Theft
If a company is worried that their work will be used without their permission, they can put a complicated logo or other image across the middle and obscure the main parts of the image. Many photographers and graphic artists take this approach with previews of their work. You’ve probably seen this on places like Shutterstock:
Gain Exposure
Another reason to watermark your work is that you never know what will catch on and go viral. If your work becomes widely shared, it is great exposure for your business! The key difference is that if your intent is mainly to gain exposure, you’ll want to put your watermark somewhere on the image that is out of the way and doesn’t detract from the main content.
This allows for the full experience of your work but still lets anyone viewing the work know who made it. Unfortunately, some crummy people can just cut your watermark off since it wasn’t right across the middle of your image, but if you were only in it to get some exposure or show off your work and not get paid for it, it’s best to just roll with it. Don’t share something that is super high resolution and devious folks won’t be able to use it for much more than just sharing, anyway. At least this way, if someone down the road wants to attribute proper credit, they can do a Google Image search and your correctly watermarked image should come up.
There is a real concern for people stealing work. It happens all the time, and sometimes by big companies. There are tons of examples of major brands stealing art and not crediting- or compensating- the artist properly. Honestly, there’s not much that can be done outside of social media outcry because legally fighting a large company who can afford to find all of the legal loopholes isn’t worth the time or money.
As an artist, there will always be the potential for plagiarism because some people are crappy, but lots of people are great and actively want to attribute work to the right person, so keep at it. If you are interested in making stuff for other people, they need to see what you’re able to do, so do what you love and make some cool art!
