Valentine Graphics
From LoveToKnow Web-Design
Whenever the month of February rolls around, web designers and artists begin considering Valentine graphics for their sites, emails, and other electronic media. Luckily, many of these creative types also like to share, so it is easy for even the most artistically challenged to find the right image to meet their needs, whether it's for a personal email or a corporate press release.
Tips for Finding Valentine Graphics
There's good news and bad news about trying to find the right image for your site. The good news is that there's a lot of images out there. Thousands, if not millions, will come up when you do a search for "valentine graphics" in the engine of your choice. Even better, many of these sites publish those graphics as "free to use."
The bad news is that old truism that states "anything free is worth what you pay for it," is also true in this case. While not entirely true in the creative commons world of web 2.0, the fact is that many of the graphics you find from a simple web search will not be very good. Some may even date back to the early days of the web, in low resolution or tiny 8-bit graphic style. These are fine if you're going for a retro look for your Valentine site, but fairly useless if you want a more contemporary look.
Not that there aren't good, free Valentine graphics out there – they're just hidden within a forest of advertising and popup ads (which is how most "free" graphic sites make money). Trying to wade through the chaff is usually not worth the time.
Copyright Issues
It may be tempting to simply click on the "images" section of a Google search and find a pretty graphic you can right-click, save, and use. The obvious problem with that is that it's both illegal and unethical. If you try this with a business site, you are liable to lawsuit for copyright infringement. Even if you simply use a graphic on a small blog where you believe no one would notice or care, the fact is that someone spent time creating that image and they deserve compensation for it. It's stealing, plain and simple.
There are a few ways to avoid this kind of copyright infringement:
- Creative Commons – The Creative Commons license allows artists to release their work under various terms that they find fair. This may be as simple as asking for attribution, specifying non-commercial use, or something else. There are several licenses and a vast, constantly updated library of images, sounds, and other creative works on the website.
- Clip Art Libraries – Many office applications such as Apple's Pages, or Microsoft Word, contain libraries of clip art with holiday themes including hearts and other Valentine graphics. Unlike the online "free" sites, these are easy to find, usually high quality, and completely free to use as you'd like.
- Pay for It – There are many stock image websites such as iStockPhoto that have libraries of thousands of images under a standard commercial use license for as cheap as a dollar, depending on size. Often these sites also have "free images" available, which are usually high quality (though they will be used by many other sites, so your own won't be unique.
Roll Your Own
Of course, the easiest way to get Valentine graphics that you like is to create your own. Even if you have no artistic inclination or training, there are many programs that make it very easy. For example, most word processors contain fonts such as "WingDings" or "Dingbats" which contain symbols such as hearts, arrows, and curlicues. Simply inserting these in a large font size, with the color red and a text effect (such as "word art" in MS word) will create a Valentine theme graphic.
Another method is to simply sketch something freehand, color it in with a red sharpie or crayons, and scan it into your computer (or use a digital camera). The minute you draw that heart with an arrow, or the stick-figure cupic, it is yours. If you keep it simple, you are likely to come up with the perfect graphic for your Valentine's day celebration.
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This page has been accessed 410 times. This page was last modified 14:55, 23 January 2009.
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