Time and time again I see sites that use celebrity images to make their layouts, and I see other sites on their faux copyright-lawyer high horses telling these sites they are breaking the law. While it is true that certain content featuring celebrity images, such as PSDs which do little more than remove the background, are totally illegal, using a celebrity image in your personal site layout (or other graphic) might not be as bad as you think, that is if you’re an American. Canada, South Korea, and Israel have similar doctrines in their copyright law.

        In the United States Code [Title 17] there is a doctrine known as “fair use.” Basically, if you are sued for copyright infringement (which is unlikely as only 1% out of 4,910 copyright cases made it to trial in 2007 [view]), the court will look at four factors to determine whether your graphic falls into the fair use category:

        Now, you must be thinking, “How does this apply to graphic designs? I don’t teach with my art.” Take a closer look at the four factors. Does you work affect the celebrity photography market? No, the paparazzi will still continue, as will professional photographers. Does it affect the value of the image? Doubtful, as this image has likely already been bought by a publisher of some kind. Did you make the graphic for profit? Chances are if you didn’t, you won’t be prosecuted.

        I’m not telling you to use celebrity images on everything you make, nor am I condoning "breaking the law". I’ve seen a lot of nice graphic designs made with stock images or no images at all, and I think it’s a better way to go about making your graphics. I just wanted to inform American graphic designers that they aren’t ruthless criminals for using images of their favorite musician in their site layouts, and they shouldn't be shunned as inferior designers for doing so.

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