{"course":{"slug":"visual-storytelling","title":"Making It Say Something","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling","level":"beginner","track":"create"},"lesson":{"slug":"using-reference-honestly","title":"Reference, and the line you actually cross","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/using-reference-honestly","position":7,"of":64,"minutes":9,"answer":"Take structure, mechanism and constraint from reference and never surface (test it by asking whether someone who knows the original would recognise it in yours), and write under each board item what you are taking.","keyIdea":"Take structure, mechanism and constraint from reference and never surface (test it by asking whether someone who knows the original would recognise it in yours), and write under each board item what you are taking, because an unlabelled board drifts into copying by itself."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## Everybody works from reference; the question is what you take\n\nThere is a persistent idea that looking at other people's work is cheating, held mostly by beginners, and a matching idea that anything on a mood board is fair game, held mostly by people who have not been sued. Both are wrong, and the useful distinction is not legal at first — it is structural.\n\nWhat you can take freely and usefully:\n\n- **Structure.** Where the emphasis sits. That the headline is one word and the explanation is six. That the piece withholds the product until the last third.\n- **Mechanism.** *Why* it works. The poster is legible at speed because there are exactly three tones and no mid-grey. The reel holds because the first shot poses a question the second shot refuses to answer.\n- **Constraint.** That it was made in two colours, or entirely in one continuous take, or with no type larger than 12pt.\n\nWhat you cannot take:\n\n- **Surface.** The specific illustration, the photograph, the exact colour-and-typeface combination that makes it recognisably theirs, the particular joke.\n\nThe practical test: could a viewer who knows the original recognise it in yours? If yes, you took surface. Taking structure produces work that looks like nothing in your reference pile; taking surface produces a copy with new words.\n\n## Build the board to answer a question\n\nA mood board of forty beautiful things is a procrastination device. A useful board is six to ten items with a note under each saying what you are taking from it. Write the note; without it the board becomes an aesthetic mood and you will unconsciously take surface.\n\n>: *Kraft-stock gig poster:* taking the three-tone limit, not the woodcut style.\n>\n> (*Rival's reel:* taking the on-screen-text rhythm) one line per 1.5s. Not the music.\n>\n> — *Old railway timetable:* taking the dense-information-can-be-calm idea.\n\nInclude at least two items from outside your field. Everything in a designer's board coming from other design is how whole categories start to look identical — a mechanism worth naming: each maker samples the current consensus, adds a small variation, and publishes it back, so the consensus tightens with every cycle. The escape is reference from outside the loop: signage, packaging in a grocery shop, a textile, a scientific diagram, a film from a country whose advertising you have never seen.\n\n## Where the law actually is, and where it is not\n\nCopyright protects expression, not ideas. A layout concept, a colour scheme and a general style are not usually protected; a specific photograph, illustration, piece of text, typeface software file or piece of music is. That much is broadly stable across most jurisdictions.\n\nBeyond that, be careful, because the details differ by country: how much of a work counts as substantial, whether parody or pastiche is defended, whether trade dress protects an overall look, how long a musical phrase can be. These vary, they are decided case by case, and this course cannot give you legal advice. What it can tell you is where to be cautious: **anything recognisable belonging to somebody with a legal department** (a brand's trade dress, a character, a famous photograph, a typeface's actual font file) is the wrong place to be adventurous on a client job.\n\nAI-generated reference deserves its own warning. A model trained on existing work can reproduce a distinctive style closely enough that the origin is recognisable, and whether that is infringement is under active dispute in several countries right now, with cases running in both directions. Do not treat any confident answer you read on this (including a confident answer that it is all fine) as settled, because it is not.\n\n## The practical habits\n\n- **Keep the source with the image.** A board of unattributed JPEGs becomes, six weeks later, a board where you cannot tell what you may use. Save the URL.\n- **Never put a reference in a client presentation without saying it is a reference.** Clients remember images, not captions, and a borrowed image shown as an idea becomes an expectation.\n- **Move one step away on purpose.** After the first version, put the board away and rebuild the piece from your notes only. What survives without the images in front of you is yours.\n- **Free sources worth knowing**: public-domain archives such as the Internet Archive and many national library collections, Wikimedia Commons with the licence read properly, and openly licensed typefaces from Google Fonts. Read the licence rather than the summary, especially for anything marked non-commercial.\n\n## The uncomfortable part\n\nWork that takes only structure is harder and looks less finished at the first showing, because surface is what makes something look resolved. You will be tempted, on deadline, to reach for the thing that already works. Everybody is. The reason to resist is not moral purity: it is that a piece assembled from other people's surfaces has no argument of its own, and the moment a client asks why it looks like that, you have nothing to say."},"check":{"question":"Two designers use the same award-winning poster as reference. One produces work that looks nothing like it; the other produces something recognisably derivative. What most likely separated them?","options":[{"text":"The first designer has more experience, so they naturally transform influences further.","correct":false,"tempting":"Explains the outcome by the person rather than the method, which leaves nothing you can actually do differently tomorrow."},{"text":"The first took the constraint and the emphasis pattern; the second took the typeface, palette and imagery.","correct":true},{"text":"The second designer used more references, so the influences blended less thoroughly.","correct":false,"tempting":"Inverts the usual dynamic: more sources tends to dilute any single one; the failure here is depth of borrowing, not count."},{"text":"The first designer changed the colours and the typeface, which is the standard test for whether borrowing has gone far enough to count as original.","correct":false,"tempting":"Treats surface substitution as transformation, which is exactly the move that produces a copy with new paint."}]},"prev":{"slug":"discovery-questions","title":"Six questions, and what to do when they cannot answer","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/discovery-questions"},"next":{"slug":"what-success-looks-like","title":"Agree the measure before you make the thing","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/what-success-looks-like"},"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) 'Reference, and the line you actually cross', in Making It Say Something. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/using-reference-honestly (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":"Reference, and the line you actually cross","courseTitle":"Making It Say Something","module":{"index":1,"slug":"before-the-software","title":"Before you open the software"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"Take structure, mechanism and constraint from reference and never surface (test it by asking whether someone who knows the original would recognise it in yours), and write under each board item what you are taking, because an unlabelled board drifts into copying by itself.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"everybody-works-from-reference-the-question-is-what-you-take","runs":[{"text":"Everybody works from reference; the question is what you take"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"There is a persistent idea that looking at other people’s work is cheating, held mostly by beginners, and a matching idea that anything on a mood board is fair game, held mostly by people who have not been sued. Both are wrong, and the useful distinction is not legal at first, it is structural."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"What you can take freely and usefully:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Structure.","b":true},{"text":" Where the emphasis sits. That the headline is one word and the explanation is six. That the piece withholds the product until the last third."}],[{"text":"Mechanism.","b":true},{"text":" "},{"text":"Why","i":true},{"text":" it works. The poster is legible at speed because there are exactly three tones and no mid-grey. The reel holds because the first shot poses a question the second shot refuses to answer."}],[{"text":"Constraint.","b":true},{"text":" That it was made in two colours, or entirely in one continuous take, or with no type larger than 12pt."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"What you cannot take:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Surface.","b":true},{"text":" The specific illustration, the photograph, the exact colour-and-typeface combination that makes it recognisably theirs, the particular joke."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The practical test: could a viewer who knows the original recognise it in yours? If yes, you took surface. Taking structure produces work that looks like nothing in your reference pile; taking surface produces a copy with new words."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"build-the-board-to-answer-a-question","runs":[{"text":"Build the board to answer a question"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A mood board of forty beautiful things is a procrastination device. A useful board is six to ten items with a note under each saying what you are taking from it. Write the note; without it the board becomes an aesthetic mood and you will unconsciously take surface."}]},{"t":"quote","runs":[{"text":": "},{"text":"Kraft-stock gig poster:","i":true},{"text":" taking the three-tone limit, not the woodcut style."}]},{"t":"quote","runs":[]},{"t":"quote","runs":[{"text":"("},{"text":"Rival’s reel:","i":true},{"text":" taking the on-screen-text rhythm) one line per 1.5s. Not the music."}]},{"t":"quote","runs":[]},{"t":"quote","runs":[{"text":"Old railway timetable:","i":true},{"text":" taking the dense-information-can-be-calm idea."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Include at least two items from outside your field. Everything in a designer’s board coming from other design is how whole categories start to look identical, a mechanism worth naming: each maker samples the current consensus, adds a small variation, and publishes it back, so the consensus tightens with every cycle. The escape is reference from outside the loop: signage, packaging in a grocery shop, a textile, a scientific diagram, a film from a country whose advertising you have never seen."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"where-the-law-actually-is-and-where-it-is-not","runs":[{"text":"Where the law actually is, and where it is not"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Copyright protects expression, not ideas. A layout concept, a colour scheme and a general style are not usually protected; a specific photograph, illustration, piece of text, typeface software file or piece of music is. 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