{"course":{"slug":"independent-creative","title":"Working for Yourself","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/independent-creative","level":"intermediate","track":"create"},"lesson":{"slug":"fonts-and-stock","title":"The licence categories nobody reads","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/independent-creative/fonts-and-stock","position":55,"of":84,"minutes":10,"answer":"Desktop, web, app and broadcast font licences are separate products and yours cannot be passed to a client, so outline type in print artwork and name the faces.","keyIdea":"Desktop, web, app and broadcast font licences are separate products and yours cannot be passed to a client, so outline type in print artwork and name the faces, and for a small business that will never buy a foundry licence, specifying an open licensed face is better practice than specifying one they will use unlicensed."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## The licence you did not read\n\nTwo categories of material pass through nearly every creative project (typefaces and stock assets) and both are licensed rather than sold. The licence terms are where the trouble lives, and the trouble usually surfaces long after delivery, when the client has spent money on production.\n\n## Font licensing, by category\n\nA typeface purchase is not a purchase of the typeface. It is a licence for specific uses, and the categories are separate products from most foundries.\n\n**Desktop.** Install on a stated number of computers, use in documents and artwork, output to print and to flat images. This is what people think they bought.\n\n**Web.** Serve the font files to browsers, usually priced by page views or as a separate perpetual fee. A desktop licence does not include this, and using a desktop font file as a webfont is the single most common font licence breach in the trade.\n\n**App and embedding.** Bundling the font inside an application or an e-book. Separate again, and often expensive.\n\n**Broadcast, logo and merchandise.** Some foundries restrict use in a logo or require an additional licence for a mark that will be trade marked. Check before you build an identity on a face, because discovering it afterwards means redrawing.\n\n**Seats and impressions.** Desktop licences commonly cover a number of computers. If you hand files to a client's team of six, their team needs their own licence.\n\nThe practical consequence for a freelancer: **you cannot pass your font licence to a client.** Your licence covers you. Outline the type in final print artwork so the file does not need the font, tell the client which faces are used and what licences they will need, and raise the cost at the kickoff rather than the handover.\n\n> Figure: A font licence covers you, and it does not travel. Yours to do: Install on the number of machines the licence states; Output print artwork with the type outlined; Name the faces and where to buy them; Specify an open licensed face they may embed; Quote for the licences they need, at kickoff. Not yours to pass on: Sending the font files to the client; Serving a desktop font as a webfont; Covering a client team of six on your seats; Using a free-for-personal-use face commercially; Assuming a logo may use any face you licensed. For a small business that will never buy a foundry licence, specifying an open licensed face is better professional practice than specifying one they will end up using without a licence.\n\n## The free path for type, which is good\n\nOpen licensed typefaces are not a compromise any more. **Google Fonts** and the **SIL Open Font Library** hold faces under the SIL Open Font License, which permits use, embedding, webfont serving, modification and redistribution at no cost, with essentially one condition: the fonts themselves may not be sold on their own, and modified versions carry naming requirements.\n\nFor a small business that will never pay a foundry, specifying an open face is better professional practice than specifying a commercial one they will end up using without a licence. It is also the honest option for any client whose team needs to produce material themselves.\n\nCheck the specific licence rather than assuming. Not everything free is open licensed: free-for-personal-use fonts exist in large numbers on download sites, and using one commercially is a breach that foundries do pursue, because it is easy to detect in a published PDF.\n\n## Stock images and the tiers\n\n**Royalty-free** does not mean free. It means a one-time fee for broad ongoing use within stated limits, and there are always limits: print run caps, restrictions on merchandise or resale, no use in a logo or trade mark, no use suggesting endorsement, and restrictions on sensitive contexts.\n\n**Rights-managed** licences a specific use: medium, territory, term, size, exclusivity. More expensive, more precise, and it is how you buy exclusivity.\n\n**Editorial use only** is the one that causes real damage. Images marked editorial usually lack model or property releases and may not be used in advertising, packaging or anything promotional. They are common in search results, they look like ordinary photographs, and using one on a client's packaging is a genuine liability.\n\nThe restrictions that most often bite in commercial work: no use in a logo or trade mark, no use as the primary element on merchandise for resale, and print-run ceilings.\n\n## Free image sources, with the real caveats\n\n**Unsplash**, **Pexels** and **Pixabay** offer large libraries under permissive terms. They are useful and there are three caveats worth knowing.\n\nThe licence covers the **photographer's copyright** and does not grant you rights in anything depicted: recognisable people, private property, artwork on a wall, a branded product, a building with its own protections. A photograph of a person from a free library with no model release is not safe for advertising, whatever the site's licence says.\n\nTerms change. Several of these platforms have revised their licences over the years, and the terms that applied when an image was downloaded may not be the ones in force now. Keep a record: the source, the image ID, the licence text as it stood, and the date.\n\nAnd ubiquity has a cost of its own: the popular images appear on thousands of sites, which is a brand problem rather than a legal one, but a real one for a client trying to look distinct.\n\n**Creative Commons** material needs the specific variant checked. `CC0` is effectively unrestricted. `CC BY` requires attribution in a specified form. `CC BY-NC` prohibits commercial use, which rules out most client work. `CC BY-SA` requires derivative works to carry the same licence, which can be a serious problem in a commercial context.\n\n## Keeping the record\n\nFor every licensed asset in a project: source, licence type, licence number or receipt, date, and what it covers. One row in the project's spreadsheet.\n\nThe reason is specific. Stock agencies and font foundries do conduct compliance checks, and a demand letter arrives years later, addressed to the client, who forwards it to you. At that point the only thing that matters is whether you can produce the licence. If you can, it is a ten-minute matter. If you cannot, it becomes an expensive one, and the contract usually says it is yours.\n\nTell the client which assets are licensed and what the limits are, in the handover note. When they later use the packaging photograph on a billboard, you want that conversation to start from a document rather than from memory.\n\n## The limitation\n\nNone of this is uniform. Font licences differ foundry by foundry and some are unusually restrictive in ways no general rule predicts. Stock terms differ by agency and change over time. Copyright rules for images of people, buildings and artworks vary sharply by country: freedom of panorama, which governs photographing buildings and public sculpture, exists in some countries and not in others for the same building.\n\nThe workable habit is not to memorise the rules but to read the specific licence for the specific asset, save it with the project, and quote for the licences the client will need before you design something that depends on one."},"check":{"question":"A designer buys a desktop licence for a typeface, uses it in a client's identity, and supplies the font files so the client's developer can serve them on the website. Which statement describes the position most accurately?","options":[{"text":"The use is fine because she paid for the typeface, and the client is simply using what was purchased on their behalf as part of the project.","correct":false,"tempting":"Reflects how most people assume font purchases work, and it is exactly the assumption that causes the breach: a licence is not a sale."},{"text":"The transfer is acceptable as long as the client does not install the font on more machines than her licence covers, since seat counts are the operative restriction.","correct":false,"tempting":"Seat limits are a real constraint on desktop licences, but they do not make the transfer permitted and they say nothing about webfont serving."},{"text":"Transferring the files likely breaches her licence, and webfont serving is a separate licence category that a desktop purchase does not include.","correct":true},{"text":"Outlining the type in the delivered artwork would have resolved both problems, since outlined type carries no licence obligations at all.","correct":false,"tempting":"Outlining genuinely solves the print side and is the right habit, but a website needs live text: outlines cannot serve a webfont."}]},"prev":{"slug":"licensing-not-selling","title":"Medium, territory, duration, exclusivity","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/independent-creative/licensing-not-selling"},"next":{"slug":"music-and-sound","title":"Two copyrights in every recording","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/independent-creative/music-and-sound"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'The licence categories nobody reads', in Working for Yourself. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/independent-creative/fonts-and-stock (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"The licence categories nobody reads","courseTitle":"Working for Yourself","module":{"index":6,"slug":"ownership-and-risk","title":"Ownership, rights and risk"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"Desktop, web, app and broadcast font licences are separate products and yours cannot be passed to a client, so outline type in print artwork and name the faces, and for a small business that will never buy a foundry licence, specifying an open licensed face is better practice than specifying one they will use unlicensed.","hero":{"kind":"figure","figure":{"t":"figure","label":"Figure","figure":{"left":{"title":"Yours to do","items":["Install on the number of machines the licence states","Output print artwork with the type outlined","Name the faces and where to buy them","Specify an open licensed face they may embed","Quote for the licences they need, at kickoff"]},"type":"compare","right":{"title":"Not yours to pass on","items":["Sending the font files to the client","Serving a desktop font as a webfont","Covering a client team of six on your seats","Using a free-for-personal-use face commercially","Assuming a logo may use any face you licensed"]},"title":"A font licence covers you, and it does not travel","caption":"For a small business that will never buy a foundry licence, specifying an open licensed face is better professional practice than specifying one they will end up using without a licence."},"alt":"Figure: A font licence covers you, and it does not travel. Yours to do: Install on the number of machines the licence states; Output print artwork with the type outlined; Name the faces and where to buy them; Specify an open licensed face they may embed; Quote for the licences they need, at kickoff. Not yours to pass on: Sending the font files to the client; Serving a desktop font as a webfont; Covering a client team of six on your seats; Using a free-for-personal-use face commercially; Assuming a logo may use any face you licensed. For a small business that will never buy a foundry licence, specifying an open licensed face is better professional practice than specifying one they will end up using without a licence."}},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"the-licence-you-did-not-read","runs":[{"text":"The licence you did not read"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Two categories of material pass through nearly every creative project (typefaces and stock assets) and both are licensed rather than sold. The licence terms are where the trouble lives, and the trouble usually surfaces long after delivery, when the client has spent money on production."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"font-licensing-by-category","runs":[{"text":"Font licensing, by category"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A typeface purchase is not a purchase of the typeface. It is a licence for specific uses, and the categories are separate products from most foundries."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Desktop.","b":true},{"text":" Install on a stated number of computers, use in documents and artwork, output to print and to flat images. This is what people think they bought."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Web.","b":true},{"text":" Serve the font files to browsers, usually priced by page views or as a separate perpetual fee. A desktop licence does not include this, and using a desktop font file as a webfont is the single most common font licence breach in the trade."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"App and embedding.","b":true},{"text":" Bundling the font inside an application or an e-book. Separate again, and often expensive."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Broadcast, logo and merchandise.","b":true},{"text":" Some foundries restrict use in a logo or require an additional licence for a mark that will be trade marked. Check before you build an identity on a face, because discovering it afterwards means redrawing."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Seats and impressions.","b":true},{"text":" Desktop licences commonly cover a number of computers. If you hand files to a client’s team of six, their team needs their own licence."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The practical consequence for a freelancer: "},{"text":"you cannot pass your font licence to a client.","b":true},{"text":" Your licence covers you. 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Not everything free is open licensed: free-for-personal-use fonts exist in large numbers on download sites, and using one commercially is a breach that foundries do pursue, because it is easy to detect in a published PDF."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"stock-images-and-the-tiers","runs":[{"text":"Stock images and the tiers"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Royalty-free","b":true},{"text":" does not mean free. It means a one-time fee for broad ongoing use within stated limits, and there are always limits: print run caps, restrictions on merchandise or resale, no use in a logo or trade mark, no use suggesting endorsement, and restrictions on sensitive contexts."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Rights-managed","b":true},{"text":" licences a specific use: medium, territory, term, size, exclusivity. More expensive, more precise, and it is how you buy exclusivity."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Editorial use only","b":true},{"text":" is the one that causes real damage. Images marked editorial usually lack model or property releases and may not be used in advertising, packaging or anything promotional. They are common in search results, they look like ordinary photographs, and using one on a client’s packaging is a genuine liability."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The restrictions that most often bite in commercial work: no use in a logo or trade mark, no use as the primary element on merchandise for resale, and print-run ceilings."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"free-image-sources-with-the-real-caveats","runs":[{"text":"Free image sources, with the real caveats"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Unsplash","b":true},{"text":", "},{"text":"Pexels","b":true},{"text":" and "},{"text":"Pixabay","b":true},{"text":" offer large libraries under permissive terms. They are useful and there are three caveats worth knowing."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The licence covers the "},{"text":"photographer’s copyright","b":true},{"text":" and does not grant you rights in anything depicted: recognisable people, private property, artwork on a wall, a branded product, a building with its own protections. A photograph of a person from a free library with no model release is not safe for advertising, whatever the site’s licence says."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Terms change. Several of these platforms have revised their licences over the years, and the terms that applied when an image was downloaded may not be the ones in force now. Keep a record: the source, the image ID, the licence text as it stood, and the date."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"And ubiquity has a cost of its own: the popular images appear on thousands of sites, which is a brand problem rather than a legal one, but a real one for a client trying to look distinct."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Creative Commons","b":true},{"text":" material needs the specific variant checked. "},{"text":"CC0","code":true},{"text":" is effectively unrestricted. "},{"text":"CC BY","code":true},{"text":" requires attribution in a specified form. "},{"text":"CC BY-NC","code":true},{"text":" prohibits commercial use, which rules out most client work. "},{"text":"CC BY-SA","code":true},{"text":" requires derivative works to carry the same licence, which can be a serious problem in a commercial context."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"keeping-the-record","runs":[{"text":"Keeping the record"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"For every licensed asset in a project: source, licence type, licence number or receipt, date, and what it covers. One row in the project’s spreadsheet."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The reason is specific. Stock agencies and font foundries do conduct compliance checks, and a demand letter arrives years later, addressed to the client, who forwards it to you. At that point the only thing that matters is whether you can produce the licence. If you can, it is a ten-minute matter. If you cannot, it becomes an expensive one, and the contract usually says it is yours."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Tell the client which assets are licensed and what the limits are, in the handover note. 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