I see a lot of discussion online about whether certain things are OK for personal use, or whether they can be used commercially. There seems to be a bit of confusion around those two terms, and how they apply to licensing. So let’s dive in!

I’ll mostly be talking about fonts here, since that’s my area of expertise. But a lot of this will also apply to designs, clip art, and other downloadable digital goods.

Also, every designer has different ideas about what “personal use” means to them, so they may have language in their licenses that are the opposite of what I say in this article. If that’s the case, of course, go with what their license says! I’m laying out general guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules for every seller of digital goods.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: YOU AREN’T BUYING A FONT.

For almost all digital goods—not just fonts and designs, but also e-books, software, MP3 music, and more—you aren’t buying the item itself; you’re buying a license to use the item. Then the item file is included along with the license, so that you can use it according to the terms of that license.

Think of it like a hotel room: you aren’t actually buying the room itself; you’re paying for the right to use that room for a set period of time, according to the rules and regulations that the hotels has set. The room still belongs to the hotel owner, and if you violate any of the rules (Trash the room with a big party, steal all the towels, use the bathtub as a toilet, I don’t know why you’d do these things, why are you doing these things?!) then the hotel can go after you for damages.

In a similar way, you buy the license (or are given a free license, we’ll get to that later) and you can use the digital goods according to the rules in that license. And if you do something that isn’t allowed, the owner of those digital goods can also go after you. So it’s best to read the license, understand the license, and follow the license!

BUT LICENSES DON’T ADDRESS EVERYTHING.

There’s no way they could address every possible type of use; they’d be hundreds of pages long. Also, new use types come up all the time! Very few licenses talk about use in generative AI, because 2 years ago it didn’t really exist. Freebie font licenses from the early 2000s, like the SIL OFL and Apache license, don’t address creating SVG alphabet sets from the fonts, because those types of use didn’t really exist at the time. (I have a deep dive about that topic too!)

So when we write our licenses, we try to cover as much as we can, while keeping the document as short as we can, in an effort to make sure that people are willing to read it. (Because I know you. You’ve clicked that “Yes, I have read the Terms and Conditions” button on a boatload of things, but you didn’t really read the whole thing. We all do that. Unlike pooping in the hotel bathtub.)

As a general rule, though, if a type of use is not specifically allowed in a license, you should always assume that it is NOT allowed. Compare it to another type of license that most of us are familiar with: a driver’s license.

Yep.	Nope.

On a driver’s license, you’ll see a list of vehicle types or classes that you are allowed to drive, as shown in the first image. What you won’t see is the second image: a list of things that you are specifically NOT allowed to drive. Think about a software license the same way: there are a ton of possible uses out there, but if the license doesn’t specifically say “you can do this,” then you should always assume that you cannot do that.

And yes, software licenses often call out specific things that you can’t do. That doesn’t mean that it’s a definitive list, and anything not called out as disallowed is fair game! It’s just a list of the most obvious things that the designer could think of that people would want to do. Even if a license has a list of non-allowed things, anything that isn’t specifically called out as allowed is still NOT allowed.

NOW, LET’S TALK PERSONAL VS. COMMERCIAL USE.

At its most basic, “personal use” covers things you’re doing for yourself, and “commercial use” covers things you do for money. Or, to be more formal about it: “commercial use” is when you’re using licensed digital assets in any way to support the direct or indirect exchange of goods and/or services for goods, services, or money.

Too formal, right? Let’s break it down.

The direct exchange of goods/services for goods/services/money is the easy one. You have a good (let’s say a t-shirt), and you give it to someone, and they give you money for it. Direct! But it doesn’t need to be money; you could make a shirt, give it to someone, and they give you a haircut in exchange (a service). That haircut has a monetary value, so this was a commercial transaction. Same thing if you exchange that t-shirt for a coffee mug of equal value—an exchange of two things of equal monetary value.

But there’s also the indirect exchange: you make a thing and you aren’t paid directly for it, but it supports a thing (often an event) where goods/services/money are collected. Let’s say you’re a parent with a kid who’s in the school band, and you make a poster for the school’s bake sale. You don’t charge the school for your poster design. But the bake sale is an event that involves the exchange of baked goods for money to support the band; that’s technically a commercial exchange, and your poster is in support of that, so it’s commercial use. (We’ll cover more similar examples below.)

Note: some font sellers make exceptions for things like fundraisers or non-profits, but they call those out in their license documents. If no exceptions are listed, go back to assuming that your intended use is NOT allowed.

COMMERCIAL USE EXAMPLES, THE EASY LIST:

There are a lot of use types that are obviously commercial use, such as:

• Brochures, business cards, or other items to support your business.
• Billboards, magazine ads, banner ads, or any other advertising for your business.
• Shirts, mugs, or other physical merchandise that you’re selling to others.
• Flattened or expanded-to-vector digital designs that you’re selling to others.
• Book covers, album covers, product packaging, or other decoration on goods being sold.
• Use in any way on your company’s website, including page text and flat images.
• Your business logo or branding.

Examples of obvious commercial use on obviously commercial items.

COMMERCIAL USE EXAMPLES, THE HARDER LIST:

A lot of these may come as a surprise to a lot of people, because “personal use” does NOT mean “I’m using it for my own thing, not for a business.” There are a ton of projects that people do on their own behalf that are commercial!

• Page text or flat images on your blog, if you have banner ads, affiliate links, or any other source of earnings on that blog.
• Titles, credits, or text overlays on your YouTube videos, if you monetize those videos at all or offer sponsorships.
• Titles, captions, or text overlays on your TikTok, Shorts, Reels, or other short videos if you monetize that social media stream.
• Flat images of any kind to support your business.
• Flat images of any kind to support your hobby, if that hobby has any income. (Even if it operates at a loss.)
• Shirts, mugs, etc. that you make for friends when they reimburse you in any way, even if it’s just “for your labor” or “to cover the cost of materials.”
• Flattened or expanded-to-vector digital designs that you’re giving away for free, in order to bring customers to your design business.
• Jerseys for your kid’s amateur/recreational/school sports team.
• Signs for your garage sale, yard sale, estate sale, car boot sale, flea market, or other similar sales event.
• Flyers or signs for your church’s charity raffle, Christmas sale, bake sale, or other similar event.
• Flyers or signs for your school’s charity raffle, Christmas sale, bake sale, or other similar event.
• Any of these uses by non-profit entities — being a non-profit does not mean you are not exchanging goods/services!

It’s a heck of a list, right? A ton of people get tripped up by the whole “doing it only for the cost of materials” one. Even if you aren’t charging for labor, you’re still exchanging goods for money.

Three very different posters, but they’re all commercial use.

PERSONAL USE EXAMPLES:

This is a shorter list, to be sure. But there’s still a lot of good stuff.

• Student work as a student, as long as that work will not be sold. This doesn’t cover just things like book reports or term papers; this can include items in your student design portfolio!
• A gift for a friend, with no reimbursement of any kind. (Not even them paying for supplies or for your labor.)
• Objects (shirts, mugs, cards, decals, etc.) for your family members, with no reimbursement of any kind.
• Objects for your own personal use: shirts, mugs, wall prints, stickers, whatever you like.
• Items sent to others for personal purposes where the item is not what is being exchanged for goods. For example: text on self-designed wedding invitations, where gifts are given to the couple at the wedding. The invitation itself is not being exchanged for those goods. How does this differ from signs for your garage sale, you may ask? The wedding is not a commercial venture where things will be bought or sold, as those gifts are not *technically* required. (But if you don’t give a gift when you go to a wedding, you may get shunned.)
• Materials made by teachers for use in their own classroom. (Similar exception to the wedding invitation one; yes, the teacher is being paid to teach, but that salary isn’t a direct result of using the licensed font or design.)

And here’s a really sticky one:

• Use on your blog/website/videos/socials, as long as there is no monetization of any kind—no banner ads, affiliate links, or any other source of earnings; AND there is no chance of the blog/website/channel EVER being monetized in any way.

If you do eventually monetize that blog/website/channel in the future? That means that views of your old material can then earn money, and those old videos, blog posts, and other content change from personal to commercial items. So you’d need to go back to every one of them and buy a commercial license for those old materials. So when it comes to blogs and sites and YouTube channels and social media, if there’s even the slightest chance that you may monetize at some point in the future, start with commercially-licensed products right off the bat. It will save you a TON of time and trouble.

Examples of personal use: your own stuff, which can be given to friends/family for free.

GENERALLY, “COMMERCIAL USE” NEVER MEANS:

• Reselling the licensed item to others. I’ve heard this one a shocking number of times. Even though selling a font file is kind-of-technically a “commercial use,” most licenses will call this type of use out very specifically as not allowed. And even if it doesn’t, remember: if it isn’t spelled out that a use is allowed, you must always assume that it is NOT allowed. You need a VERY specific license in order to resell a font, and most font designers will only enter arrangements like that with marketplaces that pay them royalties. They will never let you resell their work for your own profit.
• Selling a derivative version of the licensed item. For fonts, this is usually someone trying to sell an SVG or PNG alphabet of the font, or converting the letters to embroidery formats to sell an embroidery alphabet. Most licenses will make it clear that this type of use is a no-go, but again, if it doesn’t say anything about it, assume that you can’t do it.  (I can’t think of a single marketplace that allows this in their license; things like embroidery alphabets are always arranged as a separate license.)

AND MAKING PERSONAL PROJECTS DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN…

Use unlicensed items covered under any type of intellectual property law. Here are some examples of unlicensed use for personal goods that are absolutely violations:

• Using copyrighted works, such as cartoon characters, on shirts for your family.
• Using a company’s trademark or logo on a gift for a friend.
• Using a person’s likeness or name on goods for yourself.
• Grabbing images or designs from Google image search results.
• Sharing fonts, designs, e-books, MP3s, or any other digital goods with other people, even if they only want to use them for their own personal projects. Even if you got a free personal use license for that item, you should direct the other person to get their own license and copy of the file(s) from the source.

Examples of unauthorized/unlicensed use of intellectual property.

One of the things I see the most often across the internet is the claim that because they’re just making an item for themselves, it’s fine if they use a cartoon character or company logo or celebrity’s image. It’s just personal use!

To that claim, I’d ask the question: would it be fine to steal a shirt from a store, because you only plan on wearing it inside the house? You aren’t going to wear it outside for others to see, so shouldn’t that be OK? It’s just personal use.

Doesn’t seem right, does it? Using someone else’s intellectual property (copyright, trademark, patent, likeness/personality rights) without their permission is still theft, even if the intent is to use that property for a personal project. The very existence of personal use licenses should make it clear that using things for personal projects still requires proper licensing.

The other thing I see the most is regarding taking things from Google searches: many folks like to claim that “if it’s on the internet, it’s fair game” or “if they didn’t want me to use it, they shouldn’t have put those pictures online.” To which I say: how else are they supposed to advertise their work? Nobody’s going to buy a license for that design, graphic, or stock photo if they can’t see it.

These images are usually advertising materials. So to make a variation on the stolen shirt example: you wouldn’t go to a movie theater, open up the case on the wall, and take down a poster, would you?

YOU DON’T ALWAYS NEED TO PAY MONEY FOR A LICENSE.

There are a ton of personal-use-only licenses available out there for free; most of the fonts at Dafont, for example, can be used for your personal projects.

Even better, some designers offer full commercial-use licenses for free for certain items. I have some resources below to check out.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO FONT AND DESIGN SELLERS:

Let’s all try to make things easier for our customers.

If you don’t include a written license document in your download files, start doing that! Having your license terms on your website and in the descriptions of your listings is a good starting point, but you should always have a PDF in the files to make it easy for your customer to reference. They should be able to see what they’re allowed or not allowed to do with your fonts or designs without having to remember where they purchased from and then hunt down your listing.

I strongly recommend ditching the whole “good for 200 pieces” type of limitation on commercial licenses. Do you want to keep track of that? Do you want to monitor your customers to make sure they’re keeping track of that? Sounds like a huge pain to me.

Instead, decide what types of use you want to allow, and allow an unlimited number of that. Every use type should either be yes-unlimited, or no. Nothing to track, nothing to monitor, nobody to harass for their sales numbers or anything.

We can’t help what various marketplaces have in their licenses, but for your own licenses that you sell through your own website or through places like Etsy, you can make it as easy as possible on yourself and on your customers. And if you have a better, easier license than other places, customers are more likely to buy directly from you!

WHEN IN DOUBT…

Only use assets with a commercial-use license. Even for your personal projects. Because what if your hobby YouTube channel suddenly gets popular enough to be monetized? Or your personal blog blows up, and you decide to add affiliate links or ads? If you were using personal-use licensed items you’d have to go back through and get commercial-use licenses for everything. Better to start out with the hope of future commercial success.

If you aren’t sure if your intended use is covered or not under the license(s) offered, you can almost always get in touch with the designer to check. They can go over what part of their license would apply, or they can write up an exception or addendum to their license. (I always LOVE when someone asks about something new that I’ve never heard of before!)

FREEBIE RESOURCES:

• The Google Fonts catalog contains a ton of good free stuff, all covered under commercial licenses. (Usually either the SIL OFL or the Apache license.) The majority are serif, sans-serif, and slab serif.
• Here’s my playlist of fonts at Dafont that include a full commercial-use license document in the download files. These are the exception at Dafont; most fonts there either give you a personal-use license, or have no license document at all (which should be treated as personal-use).
• Individual creators often offer their own freebies. For example, here’s my own freebies page, where everything is covered under a free one-user commercial license.

Or, why not consider buying a full commercial-use license if you really love a font or design? It’s often a deductible expense for your business, even if you run it as a hobby. And you can know that you’ve supported a creator whose work you enjoy.

And hey, remember: don’t poop in the hotel bathtub. And always bring a wedding gift.