Let me be the first one to admit…

Though I do a lot of from-scratch design work, Photoshop Brush-making, and vectorizing, I’m not gonna lie. I do download quite a few stock images, vectors and brushes. Why? mainly because there is no sense in spending an extra 20min-5hours reinventing the wheel. If an image exists and it suits your purpose, use it.

This brings me to the subject of FREE vector, brush, and texture stock art. There’s a lot of it. Most websites use it as a means to get graphic designers and artists to spill traffic onto their website, becuase lets face it, free is free, right? –NO!

There are a TON of websites and other graphic artists that “give” free stock designer tools away, but the licensing is always “give me links and only use it for personal use” –I have two beefs with that:

1) 90% of people are going to ignore the License and never get caught

2) I can’t imagine there are that many people who know how to use Photoshop/Illustrator files too extensively that don’t intend to make money off of it –either as a designer, a screen printer, or even a fine artist. Nobody pours over images for hours on end with no hope to get fame and fortune… at least very few do.

THUS, only honest (or paranoid)  people are going to follow the copyright rules. As one who strives in that direction, it can be very frustrating to go through the searching, downloading and extracting process for handfulls of files, just to find the readme file being overly restricting.

Honestly… if you want money for it, charge. If not, give it away FREE AND CLEAR! Free files with uber-restrictions are usless, a waste of time, and ultimately say either,  “I’m dishonest for calling something free that is not free” -or- “I don’t believe in my design talent enough to sell my work for what it’s worth (so I “give” it away for free), but I think I should be compensated for my hours of work and don’t think the file should be used in public domain”… **waste of bandwidth**

As a printer/designer I know that it’s important to get paid appropriately for your hourly labor. It’s a real thing. Life is not a charity. I get that. But I also fully believe that the internet was founded on the ideals of “free” and “open source”. That’s not to say that everything has to be; but if you are going to give something away for free. Just do it and end it. People will come back for more! Go Media does a great job with this. They give a way literal TONS of brushes, textures, video, vectors, etc. (TONS). They also sell “complete” sets for a very affordable price and offer full service design and video work. They make the free thing work. You should too. (or stop calling it free)

What sparked this rant? This freshly honest TOC agreement for a brush I downloaded.  –for that… you get a link.

                    COMMERCIAL USE; LIMITATIONS:
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How stupid is it to distribute a brush set then limit the way that
an artist can be creative with them?  I am not a genious, but I am
smart enough to know that if you really want to use them, you are
going to do that.  So there are no limitations on commercial use.
Use these brushes as you need to use them.  In fact, I would be
honored to know you felt my brushes were worthy enough to use in a
project were you got paid.
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