Who Owns This Book? The guide for every designer’s worst nightmare: copyright

Michele Hratko is a Pittsburg-based graphic and brand designer whose most recent print experiment, Who Owns This Book? is an approachable guide for design students on how to navigate copyright and remix found images in the age of AI. In fact, it’s a remix in of itself, a collage of sorts, of found articles, original writing and famous examples of copyright cases to introduce designers to legal and ethical considerations of creating. What sounds like an experimental academic paper is actually a beautiful, thoughtfully designed book that takes the kind of risks that make design thrive, by creating an instructional manual on how to navigate the world of copyright law.

Michele was moved by an article from Elizabeth Goodspeed about how public domain images are used, which became a centrepiece in Who Owns This Book? “As a design student, I frequently overhear peers asking questions along the lines of: can I use this image from Google in a poster? Can I use this trial font without buying it for a project? How much do I have to edit an image I find online before I can use it?” says Michele. “The goal of this book was to respond to my peers’ musings and begin to answer those questions.” Inspired by her aunt, who is a librarian, Michele takes childhood memories of being inside libraries to pay tribute to one of the first image and text archiving practices.

The book itself uses the aesthetics of copyright laws to its advantage. “There’s a tension in the design of the book that I was exploring, between making it feel super contemporary and colorful, and leaning into more traditional aesthetics of archives and historical content. I wanted to honor both,” says Michele. “Copyright law can also be kind of intimidating, so I wanted to use the design of the book to make the content more approachable and engaging.” The book uses Malila by Cadson Demak as the main header typeface to communicate enough friendliness to offset the scariness of copyright infringements. And inside, the book is broken into three sections, each with a spin on the title: Who Owns This Library? Who Owns This Machine? and Who Owns This Image?

The fragmentation of colour helps people flip immediately to a specific section, making its use as a guide or handbook for copyright extra convenient. “I’m also very interested in tactile interactions. I love working with my hands and printing things out and feeling the texture of printed materials, so I knew from the start that I wanted to mix papers throughout the book,” says Michele. Who Owns This Book? uses seven different papers from off-white text-weight paper to several different coloured construction papers that were slightly heavier. The varying weights make flipping through the book more interactive with each paperweight signalling the beginning of a new section. So, next time you’re thinking about using a certain image, reach for this book and find out how to use the world’s expansive visual culture as your oyster.