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Wed 23 May, 2018 07:01 am
Hello,
My friend spent hours designing a yearbook cover for our 8th-grade year. We have this contest at our school every year where students get to design covers and we get to vote on which one we want.
One of the conditions is, if you win, you get credited on the back of the yearbook. This year, my friend won and was stoked! At least until the yearbooks came out.
The yearbook had her art on the cover and the school did not credit her anywhere. When we went to the office, the staff said that it wasn't plagiarized and it was the people who made the yearbook's fault.
She was very angry that the school has not given her credit for her art, not once, not twice, but three times.
It was the last straw for her. She stayed quiet when the school sold band jackets with a logo she designed on it with no credit, and when she drew a cover for our English teachers book that was, once again, sold for profit with her design on it.
I was curious what we can do about the school stealing students designs and ideas and selling them.
Thank you so much,
A frustrated student.
@madidingels,
The school hasn't stolen her design, she entered a completion where the winning design would end up in the yearbook. They have not credited her, and they should. As far as the law goes your friend really need to contact a lawyer, but she needs to stick to the facts and avoid inflammatory language.
Painters usually incorporate their signature directly into their paintings.
Perhaps your friend could do the same.
She entered the contest with the understanding that her entry could it be used for the yearbook, right?
Was the promise to credit her for the design in writing? Personally, I think it’s crappy to not give her credit somewhere in the yearbook, maybe with the yearbook committee acknowledgement.
Re: using her artwork to sell products. That’s another matter. Unless she knew what was going to be done with the artwork, then they misrepresented their intentions.
I wanted to be a commercial artist. My father discouraged it, saying that my ideas would be taken by whomever I worked for and I’d never get the credit. The woman who coined the word “cocooning” and copyrighted it, made millions. The guy who came up with the idea for the intermittent windshield got screwed out of millions.
Your friend has learned a valuable lesson that all artists must know: protect your work and ideas. Learn all about copyright laws and creative licensing.
@madidingels,
There are two things she can do
1) Try and go public about it: Contact your local paper and TV stations and see if they will pick up her story and run with it. Of course this will be something of an attack against the school so she needs to think of all the possible consequences and if she can deal with them. However, if the local newspaper or a local TV station runs with her story in the first place they will love to cover any retaliation against her by the school
2) Contact a lawyer.
Either way she should discuss these options with her parents or a responsible adult she trusts.
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