“Why Won’t Our Graphic Designer Give Me Source Files?”
Files, Permissions, & Licenses
Graphic design is a profession that includes a ton of different jobs under the title. As a graphic designer you may specialize on branding, web design, package design, logo design, photo editing, user testing, photography, illustration, motion graphics, or your might dabble in all of these. The smaller the agency, the more hats you tend to wear, but the overall sweeping connection between all these jobs is that Graphic Designers work with clients to create things that never existed before. We help take ideas from inception to development to launch (or print). Graphic design is a process that requires the use of many materials, software, licensing, and a good knowledge of the legalities of design. We can gather from many different sources and each source contains their a set of rules and licenses required for their use.
What are Source Files?
Source files are also called Design Files or Master Files. You pay a designer or design company to develop something for you – magazine, brochure, website, poster and they do a great job. Everyone’s happy, your business looks even better now and you got what you needed.
Your designer sends you a GIANT FILE for download. You get digital copies of press files, PDFs, or a folder full of final files (depending on the product). It seems like a lot, but if you think somethings missing and you request the design files (or source files) you'll quickly find out quickly that designers don’t share them, and if they do, you have to pay a hefty fee.
“Why won’t our graphic designer give me source files? We paid for them, right?”
The short answer is no, and here’s why:
You’re paying for the product. Not the tools.
When you hire a professional designer or web developer to create and deliver an end product, that’s what you will receive: a fully completed asset – like a brochure or website or advertisement. You are not paying for the history, tools or layers used to create that asset.
FOR EXAMPLE:
If you went to the Tesla Website to buy a Cyber Truck, you pay for the truck (and upgrade to self driving of course) and eventually you get your Cyber Truck. But you ONLY get a Cyber Truck, not for the manufacturing trade secrets, not the blueprints, not for Elon Musk's friendship, nor for the rights to take that cyber truck, remove the brand sticker, and replace it with your brand sticker and sell it for profit.
Or you get your house painted and pay the bill for the service of making your house look amazing again. You don’t get the scaffolding, brushes and equipment used to get the job done. You get the painted house… but you don’t retain the painter, the skills and the tools.
There are third parties involved.
Designers use licensed items that they pay fees for.
The most common are typefaces and fonts, but they could also include items like icons, photos, graphics, plug-ins, or web scripts that are often the works and software of someone else which comes with their own set of licensing fees and rules for distribution and production. Designers spend a good amount of money (font licenses can cost anywhere from $25 to $600) purchasing licenses to multiple typefaces.
These tools are not our property but are the property of their respective creators, we have simply secured the right to use it to provide you with awesome designs. Legally, designers are not permitted to release those tools as they are not the copyright holders.
What other options are there to access source files?
You can always work with the supplied press file.
At Rule of Design, Inc. , we don’t lock our PDF press files, so edits might be available to clients simply by using their own software. There are usually limitations to the amount of overall editing that can take place, but clients can always explore that option to see if that solution works.
Or you can ask your designer and offer to pay for the the rights to their layered/master files.
Most designers won’t have an issue negotiating a price for the transfer of full copyright and layered files, and most are more than willing to help you secure the various image and font licenses to protect yourself from violating a third-party’s copyright. The industry standard for copyright transfer is 300% of the total bill so if you’ve used your designer for an item that totaled $200 in design fees, be prepared to offer about $600 for the source files, plus additional commercial grade fees for software access to fonts and typefaces. You need to pay your designer for their intellectual property, the loss of future income for the design, as well as the time it will take to collect and prepare the documents for sale.
Still Have Questions? Give us a call.
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