creative commons

The 7 Most Used Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons licensing is an important item to understand as “CC” licensed images are used often in presentations. I have found one of the large misunderstandings of many designers is that “Creative Commons” licensing does not always mean the image is free to use, free from attribution needs, and free to own. This is a very high level overview of Creative Commons and I am calling out the 7 most used Creative Commons licensing options.

Here are a few soundbytes of info, and as much detail into legal use, where to use, how to use I am including (eg. basically none): 

  • The best, short, definition of Creative Commons I found and like to use is: “Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.“
  • Copyright is the exclusive legal right, given to the legal owner of the art piece to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, AND to authorize others to do the same.
  • Copyleft is approval to use, modify and distribute an art piece freely on condition that anything derived from it is has the same rights (eg. anything created from a Copyleft art piece is also Copyleft).
  • Share-alike is used by Creative Commons and virtually the same as Copyleft; approval to use, modify and distribute an art piece freely on condition that anything derived from it is has the same rights.
  • The official website for Creative Commons is CreativeCommons.org.
  • The Creative Commons Wikipedia page is a great resource on the topic.

Creative Common licensing is visually represented by rectangle logos like these. Inside the rectangle, each circle icon has an exact meaning and logos can have 1 or several of the Creative Commons attributes, or clauses, assigned to it.

The icon tells us a lot about that image. The Creative Commons “CC” logo is on left of every logo. To the right are icons representing the clauses, or rules, that apply to that image.

Here is a quick primer on the 4 most common licensing clauses:

ATTRIBUTION (BY). You can copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works if they give the author or licensor attribution.

SHARE ALIKE (SA). You can distribute derivative works only under a license identical (“not more restrictive”) to the license that governs the original work (Share Alike and Copyleft are similar concepts).

NON-COMMERCIAL (NC). You can copy, distribute, display, perform the work, and make derivative works only for non-commercial purposes.

NO DERIVATIVE WORKS (ND). You can copy, distribute, display and perform only using the original image (eg. “verbatim copies of the work”). 

Here are the 7 most common Creative Commons licenses we encounter:

CC0, Free content with no restrictions, globally (note: it is C-C-Zero)

BY, Needs attribution

BY-SA, Needs attribution and ShareAlike

BY-NC, Needs attribution and only for non-commercial use

BY-NC-SA, Needs attribution, ShareAlike, and only for non-commercial use

BY-ND, Needs attribution and only original art (no derivatives)

BY-NC-ND, Needs attribution, only for non-commercial, and only original art (no derivatives)

By |2019-07-13T14:31:42-07:00July 22nd, 2019|Resource/Misc|

Unsplash – Free Images (that are great!)

In a recent podcast, my co-host, Nolan, made a comment about a project where the client wanted to release a presentation project to the general public. Nolan’s point was that the presentation could not use standard royalty-free image resources but needed Creative Commons images. Just this week, Christie, a member of our design team, sent me a link to an image site she found. Her notes were: free, high-quality, easy search, lots of options. After looking at the Unsplash.com site, I agree, the images are high-quality, creative and the site has a good search option (often a limitation of many free image sites). And to Nolan’s point, all images are under Creative Commons licensing and would work great for a presentation design project where the ability to freely distribute the file is needed.

unsplash 1

What makes unsplash different from other image sites is that it does not actually own the images. Unsplash is a community with photographers submitting images, all of which must meet the Unsplash criteria (quality, licensing, file size, free). It was founded in 2013, based in Montreal, Canada. I am surprised that I have not run across it sooner.

On the quality side, one of the requirements is that photos are at least 3MB and 2048 by 1536 pixels in size – which is great for presentation use! The licensing is near perfect. This is just the first paragraph of the Unsplash License: “All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.”

I will not be giving up our subscription to Adobe Stock or Getty, but, for certain projects, we have added Unsplash to our list of resources. In looking at images on the site, I found the “Black” and “Photos for Parent Bloggers” collections to be great, curated images within a theme.

Tip: After selecting a collection or doing a search, click the small grid layout icon to see images in a more friendly grid layout.

unsplash 2

To download:

  • Search for an image
    unsplash 3
  • Click on the image
    unsplash 4
  • Use the save options in the upper right (or save to collection if you have signed up with a free membership) or the download icon if viewing as a thumbnail grid
    unsplash 5
  • Use image in project!

Troy @ TLC

By |2017-06-20T15:31:18-07:00June 21st, 2017|Resource/Misc|
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