Given the sour job market I decided to wing it and start my own residential design/build firm. I wanted to know what the consensus is on using photos of projects that I worked on at previous employers on my firms new website. Obviously starting a new firm you are not going to be able to have a full body of work that is 100% your own to market. I would definitely give credit to the old firm as well as state my role on each specific project.
I have a former employee who went into partnership with someone in a startup. Their homepage is a picture of our project with no credit to us. I think it is wrong to display other firm’s projects on your website. It is one thing to include them in a portfolio and quite another to put them on your website.
spyder - there are actually quite a few posts that deal with this subject. try looking back through the archives for them.
legally, you have a few issues with photos: one, the copyright on a photo will likely still rest with the photographer. if that was your previous firm, they own those rights. if it was a professional, they own it. you'll have to either negotiate rights with them or your employer. or, to get around that, you can go and shoot your own photos of the work. when we launched, we did both. we negotiated for the rights to certain images, spelling out clearly where and how we could use them and what language we agreed to put on them (our role and a credit to the firm, as you noted). the key is we got all this in writing from them.
imho - be safe vs. being a jerk. nothing will piss off a former employer faster than putting up their literal images without permission. even if you take your own shots, still give credit to the firm. really, the most important thing for you to do is get quotes from the owners you worked with, praising your work on the project. ask them to be a reference if people need one. beg to let you take your potential clients through the projects. people hire people - if a past client endorses YOU, that's 90% of the battle won. it shows you're not just blowing hot air - you really were the linchpin that made it work.
I´m with SeaArch on this one: in a portfolio that you take along to client meetings, where you can explain what you did for the other firm and such is completely different than putting it online.
I'm in the same boat as you, but I think its in poor taste to post work done under previous offices on your professional website unless you did the old work as a principal and even then I'd make it very clear that it was done while working for another firm. I ended up just linking to my old employers websites on my bio and that was it, there's a lot of good work in those links that I was involved with but I wouldn't dare claim it as my own.
Displaying work from previous employer for new startup marketing
Any advice, comments, and thoughts appreciated.
Given the sour job market I decided to wing it and start my own residential design/build firm. I wanted to know what the consensus is on using photos of projects that I worked on at previous employers on my firms new website. Obviously starting a new firm you are not going to be able to have a full body of work that is 100% your own to market. I would definitely give credit to the old firm as well as state my role on each specific project.
Thanks.
I have a former employee who went into partnership with someone in a startup. Their homepage is a picture of our project with no credit to us. I think it is wrong to display other firm’s projects on your website. It is one thing to include them in a portfolio and quite another to put them on your website.
spyder - there are actually quite a few posts that deal with this subject. try looking back through the archives for them.
legally, you have a few issues with photos: one, the copyright on a photo will likely still rest with the photographer. if that was your previous firm, they own those rights. if it was a professional, they own it. you'll have to either negotiate rights with them or your employer. or, to get around that, you can go and shoot your own photos of the work. when we launched, we did both. we negotiated for the rights to certain images, spelling out clearly where and how we could use them and what language we agreed to put on them (our role and a credit to the firm, as you noted). the key is we got all this in writing from them.
imho - be safe vs. being a jerk. nothing will piss off a former employer faster than putting up their literal images without permission. even if you take your own shots, still give credit to the firm. really, the most important thing for you to do is get quotes from the owners you worked with, praising your work on the project. ask them to be a reference if people need one. beg to let you take your potential clients through the projects. people hire people - if a past client endorses YOU, that's 90% of the battle won. it shows you're not just blowing hot air - you really were the linchpin that made it work.
I´m with SeaArch on this one: in a portfolio that you take along to client meetings, where you can explain what you did for the other firm and such is completely different than putting it online.
I'm in the same boat as you, but I think its in poor taste to post work done under previous offices on your professional website unless you did the old work as a principal and even then I'd make it very clear that it was done while working for another firm. I ended up just linking to my old employers websites on my bio and that was it, there's a lot of good work in those links that I was involved with but I wouldn't dare claim it as my own.
For what it's worth, I completely agree with Noah.
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