One of the most common questions I get is about purchasing digital files of my Word designs. During Word, my answer was always “no.” Word was a very personal project and I felt that selling digital files of them would compromise the integrity of the project. I missed out on a lot of sales, but it felt right at the time and I’m glad I made that decision.

Now that I’m a few months removed from the project, I’ve realized that I don’t feel as strongly about not selling them. It may be because I’m no longer in the midst of the project and that I’m knee deep in the midst of a new one (more on that over the next week or so), but that sense of having the integrity of the project compromised just isn’t there for me anymore.

That said, I’ve decided to start making my Word designs available to purchase as files.

The Pirates of the Interwebs

Trust me, I still have a reservations about making the designs available as digital files. I mean, let’s face it, digital content is easy to share, right?

If someone is interested in the designs, chances are they’ve visited my site a few times and know a bit about me. They’d know I’m not a faceless business or corporation. They’d know I’m just a designer in St. Paul who likes to make Biblical designs. They’d know I like to give away as many free prints as possible. They’d know I like popcorn from Candyland. So sure, someone could purchase and share the files. I’m just asking that they don’t.

If you’re still reading, you probably have some questions, like…

Are there limitation on how I can use the designs?

Very quickly, there are a couple of different ways that digital imagery is usually sold and licensed.

• Royalty-Free: With this license, the imagery is purchased for a set amount and the purchaser may use it for almost any purpose, whether it’s on a local flyer or the cover of Time magazine. (Just to be clear, this license does not cover sharing files with others or selling prints of the designs.)
• Rights-Managed: With this license, imagery is purchased for specific one-time uses, like a book cover or sermon series. The cost differs depending on how the image is used.

As an artist, I like the concept behind rights-managed, because it gives a more accurate “value” to the imagery for both the seller and the buyer. But this also means there are many variables to the price, and this necessitates a more complicated purchase process for both the seller and the buyer. I’d really like to keep this thing simple and “small” in the sense that folks who want to purchase imagery are contacting, paying and getting the download links directly from me rather than dealing with a 3rd party stock imagery site or service.

Mainly for that reason, the designs will available with a royalty-free license.

When can I get ‘em?

I need to figure out a few more things, but I plan to make 10 of my Word designs available to purchase as royalty-free digital files within a couple weeks.

Why only 10?

It’s gonna take some time and effort for me to get files ready to sell so I want to start out with a small batch and see how that goes. Who knows? Maybe I won’t sell any and I’ll just scrap the whole idea. So this first phase will be a test round. Keep in mind, the more popular these are, the more likely I’ll add more (or all) the designs down the road. So if you want to see more designs made available, please tell others about this. I’m happy to put the time into doing this, but it’s gotta be worth it, y’know?

Which 10 designs will you make available?

Whichever ones you want! Seriously, you get to vote for which designs you’d most want to purchase as files. The 10 most requested ones will be made available.

VOTE NOW

What are the prices?

I don’t have the pricing nailed down yet, but it will be in the range of common stock imagery sites like iStock or Corbis.

Will there be quality options?

I don’t have the specifics nailed down yet, but there will be 3 image quality options for each design:

1. SMALL: Web image quality
2. MEDIUM: Regular print quality
3. LARGE: High resolution print quality

The highest quality prints will still be the ones available on my ImageKind and RedBubble stores.

Will there be quantity discounts?

Yup. I don’t have the exact numbers figured it out yet, but the more you order, the larger your discount will be.

If you have further questions, please drop them in the comments and please remember to vote for the designs you’d like to see available!

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One Response

1. RubeRad says:

   January 16, 2012 at 1:48 pm

   I would recommend also a quality level intended for wallpaper, if the above resolutions are too high or too low. On the other hand, the Word designs are all portrait-oriented, so they may not be the best for wallpaper.

   Reply