Customer Reviews

Business and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Our small graphic design firm had been relying on the legal forms and contracts from this book for about one year. Finally, we decided that perhaps we ought to visit with a lawyer to make sure we were doing it right...$560.00 later for an initial consultation, we realized that this $29.95 book was the best business investment we'd ever made! The lawyer confirmed that the contracts that we had been using were airtight and were great (he had a few other pointers...but, none worth $560.00).

We have had many comments from our clients that over all the creative teams they'd worked with over the years, our design firm had surpassed them all in business professionalism. If you are serious about running a firm, or just want to protect yourself, you really can't go wrong with this book! Such a small investment for such a large return!

In starting out and gathering information it's hard to determine what books will be helpful. This is great. It is filled with tear out forms you can make copies of and use over and over. Great information. And the CD-ROM includes all the forms in pdf format, as well as Pagemaker and Quark XPress so that you can make changes to fonts and style, logo additions, and more, to suit your own home business. Files are compatible with Mac and IBMC platform, which is great for me being a designer working mostly on an IBM computer. Excellent book!

While this book should never be said to replace the advice of a competent lawyer--especially if you're dealing with larger, more complicated arrangements wherein partial rights are being transacted--the forms provided herein do afford basic protection for the small graphics firm. It's an absolutely indispensible collection of work for anyone just starting out in the field--or anyone doing fairly routine contract work.

There are many books that contain legal forms for graphic designers but the reason why I enjoy these types of books from "Business and Legal Forms" is the fact that it does come with a CD and that you can fix the forms up to your liking.

It's one thing to use copies from this book or any book but more than likely you want to change something, omit something or add something to the forms and thus this is where this book provides convenience.

This book offers forms for graphic and web designers as well. Definitely a good investment.

While I probably won't use too many of these forms directly out of the book (or off the included CD), I find every form filled with helpful tools and ideas. Since purchasing this book, I have used a number of the forms just a guides for creating my own.
While I can understand that people might be disappointed that the forms included on the CD use fonts that not everyone has, as a designer, I would strongly recommend that you get those fonts anyway. If you are serious about being a successful graphic designer, you can't rely on the default fonts that come with your computer (besides, Helvetica is a great and well-crafted font).

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the business side of graphic design, or anyone who is interested in covering their behind (protection from those eventualities such as uncooperative clients).

This is a great book if you are starting to design websites on a professional level and need that professional touch and insurance. A great buy.

I found the book very useful for my graphic design business and would recommend it, but was disappointed with the CD rom that was included with the book. All the legal forms were to be on the CD, which they were, but I am unable to type directly in the Quark or Pagemaker document of the form. All I am able to do is print the blank form and hand write in the information (which I find unprofessional) I would give this publication 5 stars if I were able to open up the legal form and type my information directly on it before printing.

This book has EVERYTHING you need ... and then some. When you think you're not going to need one of the forms in this book, you later realize that YOU DO! As a freelance artist, using these forms made me feel as though clients noticed that they were dealing with a real professional. Absolutely a great investment.

I had previously written a review and had mentioned my disappointment with the CD rom. I would like to re-rate this publication as a 5. I had some great emails written to me from others that own the book and one of the people involved in producing the book, the emails gave me some great tips on how to use different methods of using the CD rom to get around the problem that I was having. I would still find it a little more useful if the CD rom had a seperate text box obove the line (instead of typing directly over the line). But it is still a great resource and a 'must have' for any freelance/independant designer! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

First off, I have to say this book is absolutely perfect for all first-time freelance graphic designers. My business partner and I recently started our own design agency at [...] and didn't have a clue about where to get our hands on the legal forms needed. We were referred to this book from another source. And since my partner's father-in-law is a lawyer, we decided to let him take a look at it to see what he thought. He said everything was solid. He couldn't find any holes on any of the forms inside. So after making a few small changes to custom fit our business, we were set. I can honestly say this book should be on the shelf of every aspiring freelance graphic designer. I highly recommend it.