Apologies to Hero Design and to Julian Montague. Last week, when we found ourselves unexpectedly needing to fill the back page, an employee in the design department was asked to make a filler ad to promote our coming fall issue. The employee did a Google search for an “autumn” image and used some lovely artwork created by Hero Design. The employee also added a skyline silhouette from the cover for Mark Goldman’s book City on the Edge, designed by Julian Montague. Julian was satisfied with an apology, but Hero Design was not pleased at all with the unauthorized use of their art. We completely understand, and again, we’re sorry this happened.

In addition to our in-house design staff, who are very capable and prolific, Artvoice also subscribes to online image catalogues that make tens of thousands of photos and illustrations available to us for a yearly fee. Our current subscriptions are paid through 2010. As a news publication, we are also registered with a couple of news bureaus, which supply news photos, maps, and art illustrations for modest fees ranging from $25 to $100. We have no need to steal artwork from anyone and it is not our policy to do so.

That this employee did not use one of our subscriptions for art has caused great turmoil for all of us at the paper, in addition to the offense to Hero. So I must also apologize for the lack of oversight to the 40-plus people who contribute to the creation and distribution of Artvoice, people who had nothing to do with this but are now feeling the negative results. That the misused artwork was from a local design shop is doubly troubling for a newspaper that has supported local arts since its inception 20 years ago. We are communicating with Hero Design and hopefully we can reach some reasonable resolution to this incident of copyright infringement.

—jamie moses