Anyone Else Rely Heavily On Public Domain Resource

Design Resources
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I’m a big fan of using resources I don’t see used often by others. It started when I just wanted some copyright free psychedelic backgrounds. I discovered Fractal Generators (and actually wound up as a founding member of Fractal Forums (the original .com - Not the new .org) (although I did help them with the transition when it changed hands) (,com is still there as an archive) (I used my Naughty Adult Content name there - Sockratease - because I was using them for my then-fiance’s site).

Fractals are beautiful and nearly all fractal generators specifically give permission to use anything created with them commercially. So that is almost a given.

But when I was looking for more conventional resources and found https://publicdomainreview.org/ then found https://www.rawpixel.com/ I was well on my way.

Anybody else ever delve into these resources? Or is this part of what makes my stuff unique?

If others do, share your resource links! I think Public Domain content is going to be used more and more because many famous characters are now Public Domain, like (the original illustrative styles ONLY!) Winnie The Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes and many more. You have to be careful to find out which incarnations are Public and which are not, but The Possibilities Are Infinite (to steal the catch phrase from Fractal Forums). Even one of my favorite characters is now Public Domain - John Carter.

Here’s a link to a list of 42 characters you can incorporate freely into your work (again, only some styles are PD, Winnie The Pooh has to look like the original A. A. Milne illustrations - no red shirt, etc!). 41 Best Public Domain Characters You Can Use | CharacterHub

I rarely use the characters, but it’s good to know we can. I mostly stick to the public domain Scientific Illustrations and music, rarely using texts or characters - but it does open up a floodgate of royalty free resources for us cheap fish poops (bass turds).

Am I alone in this?

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What kind of resources are you looking for ? for example images for without copyright owner or something similar ? what kind of stuff ?

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Yeh, like anything, fonts, colours, graphics, images, characters etc. make sure you have the correct usage and license for them. There were old stock photos of Katee Sackhoff that a friend of mine used to use all the time. Not sure you can still get them.

There’s a responsibility to the client to ensure that there are no legal issues going forward.

I don’t rely heavily on any one resource, public domain or not.

I did need a photo of an old Irish butchers for the cover of a book before, stock sites just didn’t do them. So I went to the national library and found a range of photos I liked. I asked could I use it for the cover of a book, they said absolutely, but they only had a glass plate of it, and I asked how much would it cost to get it printed and scanned in high resolution - they said it was free - and they did it for me, got the the glass plate and made the photo and scanned it for me and sent it on.

I think I just had to add a credit to the imprint. But it was great that they did it.

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Oh and FlickR, I found a few photos I wanted to use for a magazine, and I emailed the photographer and asked if he had the hi-res and could I use them and how much he’d want.

His response was honestly ‘Thanks for asking’ he was shocked that he was asked, and said something like most people just take them and use them without asking.

He was so happy, he didn’t want anything, he just wanted a credit for the photos and a link to his FlickR account printed alongside it, which we didn’t want to do, so he accepted a footnote on the Table of Contents page - and then he just wanted about 10 copies fo the magazine for himself to give out to friends or whatever.

Pretty sweet deal.

Asking is the best policy.