RESPONSE: Plagiarism

In Monday's VOX staff meeting, Professor Jen Rowe gave an in-depth talk on plagiarism. I was glad that she included a lot of design-related plagiarism examples. I think a lot of times people look over intellectual property plagiarism and things like stealing images. With the availability of so many photos and illustrations with the click of a mouse and 0.32 seconds of wait time for results, it's incredibly easy to take the short route by using images from online. It was also a good idea to include a good chunk of the VOX style guide about what images we could use.

While working on past publications (which shall remain nameless), it was common practice to just google image search for clip art, import that image into Illustrator, Livetrace it to change the colors and then print it in the publication. I always felt really shady about that and advocated for changing that practice. VOX has access to several online photo archives and clip art databases, which I think when used appropriately can be very beneficial. It's always important to cite where the clip art comes from as well.

I ran into a problem just yesterday while working on my VOX foreclosures cover. I used several thumbnails of houses that had been foreclosed in Columbia. After the staff meetings I found out that two of the homes were no longer foreclosed and that we weren't sure if we even had permission to use the photos. YIKES. So after a discussion with some VOX editors, we got rid of the two houses. We also received permission later from the realtor to use the photos. Crisis avoided. But I think the talk on plagiarism really opened some eyes in the room as to what is acceptable as far as photos and illustrations go.

Above is the design I chose as a representation of a historical style. The reason I chose it was to go along with the section of the reading on photo sequences. This style is very influenced by Dada as well as by the invention of the first hand held camera in 1923. These new cameras allowed photographers to reposition faster and also had faster shutter speeds in order to take sequence shots. This style has become a prototype of magazine photojournalism. This spread is a good example of photo sequencing, especially with the zoomed-in third frame. The design of it makes it look more like a film strip and gives it action and movement.