December 1, 2023
Kris: Hello and welcome to the Design and Prosper podcast. You’re listening to episode 105 and this is a Q&A quickie where we answer a designer question about using stock photography.
[Intro Music]
Don: Hello, hello.
Kris: Hey everybody.
Don: Another quickie. Okay, so this question was submitted by an anonymous source again. An anonymous designer out there who wants to know, Hey Kris and Don, what are your thoughts on using stock photos and illustrations, etc? I had a lecturer who said, no, absolutely don’t use them, but I was wondering what your thoughts are about this.
Kris: That’s really interesting. It’s really interesting that your lecturer said no. And I thought, Oh, I wonder how long has that lecturer been in the game for a while?
Don: Yeah, yeah,
Kris: it actually reminds me of a story from long ago
Don: Yep.
Kris: when I was guest lecturing at a different Institution. They asked me to come in and do some assessments.I think you did this as well sometimes, Don, where you know, the, the final year students will come along and they have to present their work
Don: as an external assessor.
Kris: So I was an external assessor and there was this one student who was just so adamant about, doing their own photography and so angry with the world of stock photography and I remember sitting there going, yeah, I used stock photography this morning and yesterday and the day before and also I used an illustration last week that I, that I got And I remember feeling like I used to be a bit of a purist like that when I at uni and I thought, bless your little heart,
Don: I know,
Kris: and I thought that actually has come from a lecturer as well. I thought somebody has been really instilling that belief that all stock photography bad. All stock images and illustrations, et cetera, bad and you must at all times
Don: Have original work
Kris: Have photo shoots
Don: Yeah, I was definitely a purist as well. And I would have been the lecturer to say, do not use stock photo images as the catalyst for an idea.
Kris: Oh yeah.
And I was big on that. I was like, do not even look at the stock photos for your ideas because a lot of designers would look first to stock photos and try and create a concept from an existing image.
Kris: Oh, no, no, no.
Don: So it’s absolutely don’t use stock photos for that perspective. Then the next thing is you can use stock photos as long as you are willing to pay for them.
Kris: Yeah,
Don: You have to pay for them, people. So unless they’re from a free source or whatever,
Kris: Yeah. There’s the unsplashes of the world
Don: yeah beautiful photos on unsplash and I’ve used them, you know,
Kris: beautiful. I know this conversation is going to go in lots of different directions. I can feel it all bubbling to the surface because we have so many experiences with this and opinions on this. But be careful with Unsplash, be careful with the free sites because there has been some situations where photographers works have been uploaded without their permission and then designers have come along. They’re using Unsplash, they feel like they’ve got legal rights to use this and they’ve used it on a client project and they’ve actually been sued by the photographer. So, make sure to just safeguard yourself wherever possible. We recommend using paid sources and there’s some incredibly affordable options for paid sources. But even with the affordable paid sources, just make sure you screenshot. with a date, the copyright usage rights as of that date.
Don:Yeah. file it with the project. And the downloadable document that comes with it. Usually you will get, when you purchase an image or illustration or whatever, you will get the documents that are associated with it, file them, make sure they’re filed accurately so that you can call on that at any given time.
So it’s just a matter of. Of crossing your t’s, dotting your i’s, making sure that you are doing all of your legal obligation to any usage rights. For your client and also for the creator of that image, you know, we’re all creatives. We want to be recognized for our creative. So, Just make sure that we’re honouring the photographer or the illustrator who has taken that shot, making sure that if it is used in multiple instances that they are remunerated for that.
And likewise that your client has fulfilled any obligation to that copyright for particular person. But the paperwork is always there. It’s always in the digital download. Like Kris said, we also take it one step further and we screenshot with the date on our computer screen so that we can go, this is the date that we did this and down it goes. So we’ve got that extra safeguard. So yeah, it’s just really important to, to cover yourself off.
Kris: And just with fonts and illustrations and photography, anything, just make sure you understand the usage rights. All these websites will have their usage rights there. And they’re, they are different depending on where you’re getting it from.
Sometimes it’s individual creators who are, who are determining, like it goes with fonts as well. Some fonts, if you use them for a brand, for a, for a logo type, you actually need to pay a completely different usage right. which is a completely different subject. I think we did go into that in one of our episodes on font licensing and that sort thing.
Don: Yes, we may have.
Kris: yeah, but just make sure you’re doing it due diligence, like crossing your eyes and dotting your T’s because you, did I say that right? I mixed it up.
Don: .Oh, you mixed it up. I love that. I didn’t catch it.
Kris: Haha I always mix those up. Yeah. So it is about making sure that you are covering covering your butts, basically. And In an ideal world, you know, my dream scenario for design projects is that I would have a beautiful photo shoot and I would have like an amazing illustrator to illustrate the aspect that I wanted illustrated.
But going back to that story where I was sitting in a chair looking at these presentations and I kind of felt a bit guilty. Like I might’ve blushed a little bit like, Oh God, we’ve been using stock photography so much because the nature of a busy commercial design studio, you know, like you’ve got quick turnarounds and you’ve got some clients with tighter budgets
Don: Exactly, I was about to say, it may not even be about your studio. It’s all about budget, right? A photo shoot requires models, and a stylist, and a destination, and a photographer, and post photography editing, and there is so many layers to a professional photo shoot. And we were blessed in our business to use professional photographers and art direct a lot of our photo shoots for our clients and we were blessed to be able to work with high end professional Australian illustrators and international illustrators for certain projects and like Kris said, that’s the dream, right? You actually collaborate with all the cool people to to bring a vision to life but not all clients have the budget to do that.
Kris: Or the time frame.
Don: Or the timeframe, really incredibly important point. So we have to lean on stock photography when it’s applicable. So Kris and I, we definitely have a little nod to the purists out there. We would ideally love not to use stock photography when we have a vision that we want realized.
But the most important thing that I hope that lands is that we have the vision first and then we match it to stock photography or a photo shoot. That’s the key. And if that lecturer was saying, don’t use them, absolutely don’t use them. Just check in again with why they were saying no.
Were they saying no because that photo then became the catalyst for the idea? Because what that means is, the idea already existed, especially if it’s conceptual, and you’re just piggybacking on the photo as opposed to you generating a brand new idea and then matching it. So that’s where evidence comes in as well because you likely to have come up with that idea all by yourself first and foremost and then you found an outsource to get a stock photo for that. But your process will demonstrate that. Your process will evidence that that was your idea and aren’t you fortunate enough to have found a stock photo that actually matches that, right?
Kris: Well that’s it as well. I wanted to talk about that. Because I don’t want you to throw yourselves under a bus looking for an image that matches your concept either….spending hours and hours and hours trying to find and image. . And I’ve done this. I’ve tried to save clients money by using stock photography. And I think surely this exists.
Don: Yeah, yeah
Kris: Using every clever search term I can in all the libraries, like surely this exists and not finding it. And now we have AI with generative design and Photoshop, you know, just swap out that bit and change it for me, please. But then there’s that question are you allowed to do that with the original stock image that you’ve got? Are you allowed to alter it and adjust it?
Don: The ethics of it all,
Kris: What are the usage rights? So it’s a tricky one, but yeah, just be mindful of that because I think that we’ve all been guilty of that, spending way too long going way over budget to try and save the client money.
Don: Yeah. And then you end up doing what would have been equivalent to like a half a photoshoot because you’ve actually spent hours trying to find that particular thing.
Kris: And we want to be practical about this, because sometimes in a practical sense, getting a stock image or getting some little icons or whatever, or getting some vectors from VectorEzy or whatever, is such a good way to go because who wants to recreate, for example, social media icons?
Don: Yeah,
Kris: oh gosh, who wants to create those from scratch?
Don: There’s so many little things that you don’t need to recreate again.
Kris: Just to be a purist.
Don: I mean, we’ve all been there. We’ve all been purists, I’m sure, at one point in our careers. But then, like, like we’ve been saying, there’s so many factors that come into play. Time, budget, you know, a whole host of things and we end up doing what we need to do to get the project done on time and to budget.
Kris: Yeah, I think that wraps it up.
Don: So, yes you can. Use them.
Kris: Use them
Don: Reference them. Understand the T’s and C’s and make sure that you have fulfilled any obligation to copyright so that everybody is above board and there’s nobody feeling squeaky.
Kris: Yeah, and you know, try not to let it dictate your design.
Don: That’s it. That’s what I’m really passionate about that. I sort of get on a bit of a soapbox about that. You create the idea first and then match it with something like Kris said, don’t bog yourself down, you know, trying to find the image, make sure that you actually just do what you’ve got to do to get close to that concept, but the concept is yours first.
You are the idea generator. I’ll always be the ID generator and let the stock libraries support you.
Kris: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Because the brief comes first, then the concept comes next, and then the solution needs to support both of those thigs.
Don: That’s right.
Kris: So you don’t want to have a weak solution just because you’ve gone Oh, that’s a good idea based on that image, but it didn’t really have much to do with the brief or much to do with your process. People are going to see through concepts that don’t have a lot of depth. They really will.
Don: yeah, yeah. So that lecturer was a purist. So leave them where they are. And that’s okay. They may even have a different opinion now. You never know, people do change. And like I said, I was that lecturer saying no to stock photos, but not no to the usage of them in the right place, no to allowing them to dictate the creative, because we all fell into that trap.
And I wanted all of my beautiful designers, design students to be the creators of the idea and not be dictated by what was existing. So there’s a difference between, and we go into this in the academy, when we take a deep dive into research, there’s a difference between inspiration and research, and we just don’t like things to dictate our pathway.
Kris: I hope that helps. And I hope that you have, uh… Gosh, we need a way to wrap up, Don. I was listening to a podcast the other day where they just didn’t know how to sign off. And, they were asking the listeners for a way to sign off. And I feel like, beautiful people help us out.
Don: Help us!
Kris: We always like drifting off and then we need a catchy sign off.
Don: You should see us as well, we’re looking at each other going, what were you going to say? Are you done? Yep, right.
Kris: Are we done? All right. I hope you have a beautiful week.
Don: Take care. Bye.
Kris: Bye.
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