To stand out from the crowd and make your message pop, you may spend hours scouring the web to find the best and most creative fonts and images. But keep in mind, the perfect font or image you find may come at a steep price if you don’t have the right license or permission to use them.
Fonts
Fonts are creative works that are considered a type of intellectual property. They can be trademarked or subjected to copyright laws whether they are part of a computer program or a standalone product.
Fonts and font families are often created by designers who receive royalties for the use of their work, and therefore many are copyrighted. For the designers to earn a living, it is common for marketers and other creative professionals to purchase a license to use the unique font.
Avoid future cease and desist letters in regards to your font choices, by making sure that you understand the license requirements for the use of the font. Some licenses may come with limitations to how many users have access to the font, transferability and commercial usage.
Paid fonts are worth the cost if you want to ensure proper rendering across multiple platforms from print to TV, to the web as well as access to a wide variety of characters in the font family.
Images
It’s easy to get caught up in how simple it is to save an image from the web and use it in your own project. But that doesn’t mean that you should.
Like fonts, images are created by photographers that intend to receive royalties for their work and have copyrighted their pictures. While there are many different licensing permissions when it comes to using images, always be sure that you have adhered to the license guidelines or have permission from the creator to use their work.
There are plenty of free sites that allow for free usages like Unsplash and Pixabay, they just ask that you credit the photographer. Or you can create your own graphics for free. I like using Canva for their free templates and images.
A lot of money, time, resources, and talent went into creating the perfect font or image that you found on the internet. The person behind the asset makes a living off of their creation, so the least we can do is to pay to use it.
When you purchase a font or image, you are not only supporting the creator, but you also have a high-quality product that you can use throughout all of your branding.
As the saying goes, “you do get what you pay for.” If you invest in a good font or images, they will play integral parts in your brand or company’s toolkit.