Licensing

Every design on this site is original calligraphy by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase. When you buy a design you receive a license to use it. This page says what each license allows.

Personal license

Included with every design you buy.

You may use the design for yourself: as a tattoo reference, framed on a wall, engraved, printed for your own use, or made into a gift. You may show it on a personal website or on social media as an image sized for the screen.

You may give the file to your tattoo artist, engraver or printer so they can make your piece. They may not keep it or use it for anything else. A design bought as a gift may be given to that one person, and the license goes with it.

You may not resell, share, post or give away the file, or any copy of the design that someone else could reuse. You may not use the design in anything offered for sale, use it in a design template, or present the calligraphy as your own work.

Commercial license

For a business, a publication or a product. Available on request for the designs on this site.

A commercial license covers use of the design as part of your work:

• books and book covers, magazines, newspapers and other editorial work
• product packaging
• advertising and promotional material, in print and online
• film, video, broadcast and stage
• a business website or presentation

The design is licensed to be part of something you make. It is not licensed to be the thing you sell. The test is simple: if people would still want your product with the calligraphy taken out, the calligraphy is part of it. If they would not, the calligraphy is the product.

A commercial license does not cover prints, posters, wall art or similar items where the calligraphy itself is the product, print-on-demand goods, or design templates. Online, the design appears as an image sized for the screen, as part of your page or advertisement. The design itself is never offered as a download, and the full-size file is never placed where others can take it.

On clothing and merchandise the calligraphy is the product, so these are licensed separately, by the run. A logo or trademark is licensed as custom exclusive work. Please ask about either.

The license is perpetual, worldwide and non-exclusive, and it covers up to 500,000 copies; for a larger run, please ask. It belongs to the person or business named on it and cannot be transferred or sub-licensed. If you are making the project for a client, the license is issued in your client's name. Your designer and printer may use the file only to produce that project.

Editorial use carries the credit: Calligraphy by Eri Takase.

Every license

You may resize the design and change its color. You may not redraw it, separate its characters or combine them into new words: Japanese written that way is usually wrong, and it would carry Master Takase's name.

We do not license designs for uses that are pornographic, defamatory or unlawful, or for training a machine-learning or AI model.

Asking for a commercial license

The price of a commercial license depends on the use. Use the contact form, or write to eri@takase.com, and tell us which design, what you are making and for whom, and roughly how many copies. We reply with the price and a written license.

Custom commercial work

When a project needs a design of its own, Master Takase creates one for it, working with you through hand-brushed sample sets until it is right. Custom work is licensed as non-exclusive, exclusive, or work for hire. See Commercial Japanese Calligraphy.

Copyright

All rights in the calligraphy remain with Takase Studios, LLC. A purchase grants a license to use a design. It does not transfer ownership of the artwork.

For a use this page does not cover, ask through the contact form or at eri@takase.com.