Almost 10 years ago I joined Shutterstock as a contributor. Starting out with a few abstract and urban photographs and textures but soon changed into uploading vectors: illustrations and pattern designs only. A lot has changed in print. Things have gotten more digital and the demand for designs for commercial purpose grew.
Our Shutterstock portfolio has been a great way to showcase our designs and we still upload some artwork every now and then. It has been a great way to built up a steady business, generate a base income and exposure.
The past year a lot of things have changed in the enhanced license agreement. Our designs are usually made from vector. So it is easy for customers to edit and change colors and adjust the prints to use them for their products. Which we love. But it also means it is easy to download the files without the right license and have a high quality file without paying the proper fee. Unfortunately that happened a lot.
Misuse of designs
As our business and also online vector portfolio has grown bigger we noticed an increase in misuse of our designs and since we have to protect our creations we decided that from April 1st we stop selling enhanced licenses over Shutterstock, at least for now. It does not mean our designs are no longer available, we just would like to do direct business when it comes to licensing our designs for commercial use, so we know every print we find out there is licensed in a legit way.
After some consideration we decided to opt out our enhanced license downloads via Shutterstock. But our entire portfolio is still available for commercial usage too. Just contact our studio directly and we will help you further.
Newbee in licensing?
If you are new in licensing designs we are also happy to give you more info about our standard and commercial licenses. We also have in-house expertise to guide your business through the process of production, can adjust colors, scales and detailing and of course with our 10 year experience we are on top of the trends. So don't hesitate and send us a message.
