•Plainly4 minutes

A portfolio has been shared with you

An artist has sent you a link to their portfolio on Legality. It is a real, private page made for you, not a mailing and not a marketplace. This explains what you can do with what is behind it, what the artist can see, and how a conversation becomes a licence.

The link works without an account and without a password, which is deliberate: you should be able to open it, show it to a colleague in the meeting, and get on with your day. It is not public. The artist made it for a particular audience, can close it at any time, and nothing behind it is indexed by search engines.

Is this legitimate
Yes. Legality is invitation-only: every artist here was admitted by a person, not by a sign-up form.
What you may do
Look, download what the artist marked as downloadable, and share it inside your company for the purpose it was sent for.
What you may not do
Use the work commercially, sample it, or pass it on to a supplier. A download is not a licence.
What the artist sees
That the link was opened and what was downloaded, with dates. Not who you are, unless you tell them.

The recording is on your side too

It is worth knowing that opens and downloads are written down, and worth knowing why we say so plainly. It is not surveillance and it is not a trap: it is the same record on both sides of the table. Six months later, when somebody asks which files were sent and when, the answer exists, and it is the same answer for you as for the artist. Most disagreements about who saw what come from nobody writing it down.

Moving from looking to licensing

If something fits, mark it and send your selection back through the page; it reaches the artist as a request with the exact works attached. From there the two of you agree what matters: which products, which markets, how long, exclusive or not, and the money. None of that is decided by a download or by us. It is written between you and the artist.

If you need a quotation for internal approval, ask; artists here keep their deals and invoices in the same place as their work, so the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed from an email thread.

Who we are

Legality is a small place where artists keep their work and the evidence that goes with it. Every file uploaded here is fingerprinted and time-stamped by an independent service as it arrives, so the question of who made a design and when it existed has an answer before anybody needs one. On top of that record sit the ordinary parts of a working studio: private portfolios, licences, royalty schedules, payments.

The artists are illustrators, pattern and surface designers, photographers, painters and animators, of any kind and any country, admitted one at a time. What they have in common is not a style but a way of working: the record is kept as the work is made, not assembled afterwards when something goes wrong.

For a brand that mostly means two dull, useful things. The provenance of anything you licence here comes attached to it, so a design does not arrive in your product with an unknown history. And there is no middleman taking a cut: the arrangement is between you and the artist, and we are the place it is written down.

Questions about the work belong with the artist who sent you the link. Questions about the platform can go to main@legality.art.

Open a real certificate →

A record page for one work: its dates, its fingerprint, its stamp. Nothing here is a mock-up.

Written plainly, and not legal advice. Rules differ by country and change; for a decision that matters, ask a lawyer in the country where the other side is.