Stock image libraries are strange places for graphic designers. The rise of cheap, affordable image libraries in recent years could be seen by some as a God send. However I don’t see it that way. I see them as a kind of Hell, Purgatory if you like. A place where a once creative individual can spend hours locked in a world of annoyingly over smiley, slim, attractive American models with perfect teeth. Not that I have anything against attractive American models with perfect teeth, it’s just they don’t always look like they belong. Like Lady GaGa at a W.I. meeting. I’ve lost many hours of my life trawling through these websites trying to find something usable. Hours that I can never get back, and it was killing my creativity.
Have you ever been given a design brief and found the first thing you did was type words into a stock site to see what came up? To my shame, I have. That’s what these sites do to you, they whisper in your ear and tell you there is a stock image for everything. You can have your cake and eat it, all for $5.
A while ago it hit me. I was fed up with being a graphic designer. I hated that my job had become so predictable as it was unpredictability that had attracted me to design in the first place. As a kid growing up I loved art, but when I was deciding what career path to follow I came to the conclusion that artists only became famous and made money after they’d died. I mean no disrespect to artists, but in the words of Brian Clough, “Don’t send me flowers when I’m dead. If you like me, send them while I’m alive.” So I chose the world of commercial graphic design.
It occurred to me that I’d been neglecting the very skills that had brought me to where I was. I can hold a pencil, I can draw, I can paint. I like to create something new, something unique, something artistic. Why was I wasting hours of my life sifting through endless pages of search results? I could be spending my time coming up with a truly creative solution. And with that thought, with the decision to pick up the arts that I loved, I rediscovered my passion for design and my inspiration to do something new.
If you browse our website, I’m sure you’ll be able to spot a few stock images in some of our work. Unfortunately in some cases, stock images are a necessary evil. I’d much rather come up with an illustration or commission a photographer, and where I can, I do. Sometimes though, it’s just not practical, it’s unavoidable. When a client asks me to “just find a stock image to go there,” I now tell them that every time I have to search for a stock image, a part of my soul dies! On a tangent, if there are any photographers out there reading this, my advice to you (free of charge)… Get together a large group of people made up of multiple ethnic groups, all ages and both sexes. That image will make you a small fortune! My advice to my fellow designers though, see royalty free stock image websites for what they truly are… a last resort.
Andy Cogdon
Cogdon, Clark & Tranter
). So to a certain extent they are similar to a limited edition.