Graphic design insurance
Your clients rely on your designs to help them convey their brand identity and key messaging while reaching their customers on an emotional level to influence their decisions. And often before you can start designing a website, logo, brochure and other marketing materials, you often have to help your clients discover what their identity is. So not only do design companies have to worry about keeping their clients happy and successful, but intellectual property disputes, potential liability for bodily injury & personal injury, or property damage as well as protecting their online business from natural disasters and cyber threats also need to be addressed.
Whether you run a one-person design studio from your home, are a small team of the design business and branding experts or are a large arts design company that does large-scale designs and illustrations, we can get you ALIGNED with the graphic design company liability insurance designed to protect you from your specific risks.
Why do graphic designers need insurance?
As a graphic designer, you do creative work for all industries and stakeholders. You’re responsible for creating visual concepts or images for brand logos, blogs, posters, websites, and other digital or print materials. Clients could run into issues with your design concepts, the work process, and the end results during your services, which could cause litigations and other liability claims.
Any third-party claims or lawsuits mean expensive out-of-pocket costs without a comprehensive graphic designer insurance policy. Even one claim could make you go out of business if you can’t pay the legal defence fees or settlement awards. Insurance helps you mitigate financial risks. It protects your business and its assets not only from liability and litigation, but also from unexpected damages. It covers equipment and office repairs, legal fees, and compensation required if there are damages to your business or a client sues.
What insurance do graphic designers need?
Graphic designers should have professional liability insurance and general liability insurance coverages. Professional liability insurance protects your business against claims of misconduct, errors, omissions, breach of contract, and negligence while you’re providing services for a fee. If you created a logo for a client using the wrong brand colours or didn’t make the edits they wanted, you could face a lawsuit or other claims of damage. Professional liability insurance protects you against these lawsuits by covering legal defence fees and settlement awards.
General liability insurance is standard coverage for any business that wants or needs insurance. It protects your business against third-party claims of property damage or bodily injury. General liability insurance covers any medical bills, settlement awards, or legal defence costs up to the coverage limit.
How Graphic Design Company Insurance Can Protect You
With the ever-increasing pace of business, clients expect quicker turn-around times between consultation and the first (and hopefully last) round of design options. The chances of making a mistake increase with the pressure to meet or exceed client expectations and retain new ones. The foundation of insurance for graphic designers package will include Media Liability Insurance to help guard you against professional liability losses common in the design industry. Some of the risk scenarios faced by design companies include:
- The colours and/or fonts of a logo you designed appear to be similar to another logo and the company sues for trademark infringement
- A typo or incorrect anatomical illustration in a medical brochure causes your client to look incompetent and lose clients
- A scheduling error causes you to miss a deadline on a packaging design, delaying the release of thousands of units of a client’s product
- A competing design firm claims you badmouthed their company during the selection process of a lucrative design contract
Some of the highlights of media professional liability coverage as they pertain to graphic design companies include protection from lawsuits alleging:
- Trademark/copyright infringement and coverage to legally enforce your own intellectual property or damage claim
- Errors, omissions & negligence
- Breach of contract
- Libel/slander
- Breach of confidentiality
- False advertising
- Deceptive trade practices
If your graphic designer insurance company faces litigation for an insured claim, media professional liability insurance can provide you with the resources to cover legal fees, defence costs, out-of-court settlements and awards for damages.
Keep in mind that lawsuits brought by unhappy clients or competing graphic design companies that don’t have any merit still cost a significant amount of money to defend against.
Other types of insurance that protect graphic design companies from potential liabilities and losses
Commercial General Liability Insurance
Business Interruption and Extra Expense Insurance
Cyber Liability & Privacy Insurance
We are commercial risk management experts because we only deal with commercial insurance products
At ALIGNED, we specialize in commercial insurance and will use the relationships we’ve built over the years with Canada’s top insurance companies to get you graphic design insurance that meets your protection needs at affordable rates. Contact an ALIGNED advocate to get a free insurance quote in minutes or get started right away by using our free online tool.
