I have always been amazed at all the conditional, convoluted thinking that law can produce. “What if…”, “what if not…”, everything has to be an option. I became really interested in licensing and copyright last year because I was wondering how I, as a graphic and type designer, could share and publish my work. I am trying to learn open source software, so this also sparked my interest in other forms of sharing, focusing on a more collective aspect.
As I became more familiar with licences, it became really hard to keep track of everything, so I started to list and mind map all the licences I discovered as I went along. I found a flowchart of how to use someone else’s work in Eric Schrijver’s Copy This Book, an artist’s guide to copyright, and liked the idea, it was very visual, easy to understand. It was also very “dry”, with as few words as possible, and I didn’t like that part. Then Pierre, my teacher, told me about the Anti Telemarketing EGBG Counterscript, a scripted list of questions to use when a telemarketer calls you, to turn the call around and make them waste time talking to you. I combined the two and started asking more or less useful questions in my flowchart.
There are dead ends, digressions, but in the end it is more about discovering all the possibilities that exist, and asking yourself questions about what licences really mean, than it is about actually finding a licence for you.
These are the words of our dear friend Clara Bougon, who today generously shares with us a document that I believe is an essential tool for today’s designer. She showed me her research two months ago during a visit to Brussels. As always, I was in awe of her ability to synthesize information, to make it easily accessible and to make it fun to learn. Her research is part of her Master’s course in Typography at La Cambre, where the projects initiated there are geared towards understanding new tools and collective creation in a changing world.
You can find the pdf generated on draw.io in better quality and in English and French versions. Pour nos lecteur·ices français·es, c’est votre moment.
Please feel free to share and use this valuable resource, always in line with the license she has chosen; CC BY NC SA ;)
Copyrighly yours,
OO OK BO OK SS
