How to Work with Royalty-Free or Low Cost Photos

February 8th, 2010

This post is a follow up to Royalty-Free vs. Stock Photos: Differences and Benefits

The reality of tight budgets is that many of us rely on low-cost images when designing brochures, web sites or other marketing materials. If you do find yourself working with less-than-perfect photos or illustrations, make sure you work carefully within the restriction of those images.

Make the Design Work with Low Cost Images

It may take more time to find a good image. There are many web sites boasting low-cost of even free photos. You’ll notice a large variance in the quality of these royalty-free photos. That means it often takes longer to sort through pages and pages of poor quality results. The larger, more reputable stock agencies offer free research, so they can do a lot of the leg work for you. Factor in the cost of your time. For example, does it make sense to search for 6 hours to find a decent $25 image or should you search for 45 minutes and pay $400?

Understand the resolution of the image. Most royalty-free sources charge based on the size of the image sold. A small, web-resolution image is going be less expensive than a large-scale, high-resolution image ready for poster-sized printing. Read this post, if you need more information about resolution. However, you will not be able to put a web-resolution file into a printed piece without it looking blurry, bitmapped or both.

Don’t make poor-quality images the focus of your design. What makes something less-than-great? Poor lighting, stiff actors/models, out-of-focus images, cheesey poses, trendy (ie soon to be out-of-date) clothing and hair styles, out-of-date looking people, places or accessories.

Examples

As a graphic designer, I have certainly found myself having to work with less than ideal images. Sometimes a tight budget only allows for royalty-free photos, other times one or two poor quality photos are the only images available.

Educational Endeavors printed marketing materials. When we worked with Educational Endeavors we had to rely on low-cost royalty-free images to stay within budget. Silhouetting all the photos helped to unify them graphically, and made the layout less boxy. Making the images duotones diminished inconsistencies of color palette, lighting, and style.

Community Energy Cooperative printed marketing materials. When Visible Logic worked with the CEC on the Energy-Smart Pricing Plan, we used primarily all royalty-free images taken from just one or two photo CDs. Because all of the images were energy-related, it was easy to find images. But, they varied greatly in the angle, depth of field and color spectrum. So we kept them small, and enhanced them in photoshop through judicious cropping and some color effects.

Cambridge Human Resources Group Web Site. Finding low-cost, but high-quality photos of adults can be particularly hard. Clothing, hairstyles and accessories can look out-of-date quickly. Think of it like investing in a good suit: focus on timeless styles. For Cambridge, we purchased a group of photos and then made them duotones of gray and purple to work with their branding systems we were building. We made sure to purchase high-enough resolution versions to work in both their print and web campaigns.

Cover design for Boycott. Boycott is about the athletes who were unable to compete in the 1980 Olympics because of the Moscow boycott. The stories were based on interviews with the athletes and we wanted to show the athletes at that time. So, we had to rely on images supplied to us by the author and publisher. Rather than use only the photos, we made sure major design elements and parts of the concept were made up of other graphics. In this case the red-white-and-blue motif and the distressed type.

There is no denying that high-quality photos can improve your design. But if you know that there are limitations because of what is available or what you can afford, design around it. Make images small, use other graphics, manipulate and pull the images together with an effect like duotoning or silhouetting. In the end, you may decide that no photos is a better solution than poor photos.

Tags: design, low cost, phototography, royalty-free
Posted in Design Basics | No Comments »

Royalty-Free vs. Stock Photos: Differences and Benefits

February 4th, 2010

Many people use the phrases “royalty free” and “stock” interchangeably when talking about photography but there is a difference, and it’s important to understand the difference when planning a design project.

History

It used to be that if you needed a photo, you hired a professional photographer who created a custom shot for you. There are still many times when a custom shot is the only real possibility—to take a photo of your new product, your facility, your employees, etc.

However, there are times when a photo is used more to convey a mood or set a scene. For example, a financial planning company shows a retired couple walking and laughing along the beach. This suggests a carefree retirement achieved through careful investments. These types of images, sometimes called lifestyle shots, are often generic enough that a financial planner in Maine, an insurance agent in Minnesota and a stockbroker in Florida could all use a similar photo in their promotional materials.

At some point, photographers realized they had a stock of previously shot, unused photos. Maybe they were extras from a custom shoot, or images whose usage rights had elapsed. On the other hand, a lot designers, marketers and ad agencies realized they didn’t have a the budget to fly to the Caribbean, pay a professional photographer and his assistants, and set up a custom shoot. So stock photos became a new product. Initially they were mostly bought directly from photographers, but then stock agencies compiled them together to make the research faster for designers and to help photographers with their marketing.

Stock photography

Stock photography is generally priced the same way a custom shoot is—the fee is based on usage. Obviously with stock images, there are no direct costs of getting the shot made. The fee is determined on where the photo will be used and for how long. For example, it could be running on the front cover of a catalog that is distributed across the U.S. during one holiday season. Or, it could be running inside a book at postage-stamp size on an educational flyer distributed only in the State of New York. When you buy a stock photo, you are only supposed to use it for that usage, so if you love the front cover of your catalog and decide to use the same image on your web site and your other marketing materials, you need to negotiate and pay for more usage rights.

Royalty free photography

By contrast, royalty-free photography allows you to pay one flat fee and you can use the image as much as you like. Generally, there are different costs depending on the resolution of an image. A low-res file that would only work as a small web site image costs less than a large-scale, high resolution image that could be used in both print and web. If you are thinking about building a marketing campaign around a key photo, it is appealing to just pay one fee. Once you’ve paid for it, you can use an image in any new circumstance that arises. However, there is a downside to royalty-free images.

Exclusivity

Another distinction between royalty-free and stock photos is that royalty-free images can be purchased over and over by people everywhere. The photo you’ve chosen for the front page of your web site may be the exact photo your competitors have chosen for their web site. As a designer, I’ve definitely see photos I’ve worked with, used in other places.

Traditionally, with stock photography, because you bought a photo for a certain usage, the stock agency could tell you who else was using the image. They would also tell you if there were restrictions. For example, an insurance agency in Maine could buy the rights to a stock image in a way that does not allow any other insurance companies in New England to use the image.

However, it seems like this information is not as readily available because of internet purchasing. When you go online to purchase a stock photo, you are required to give detailed information about the usage (this is not required for royalty free images). Therefore, that data is probably available on request, but it’s easy to just slide over those details and buy the image. Therefore, even though you are paying the higher price for stock photos we are often not getting the full benefit of exclusivity.

Quality and price

As I just mentioned, stock photos tend to be more expensive. The economics is that a photographer is controlling your usage with stock, so he or she can only resell that image a limited number of times. With royalty-free the creator of an image could potentially resell an image hundreds or thousands of times. Therefore they are less expensive.

But it is more than that. If you sort through the online catalogs of a stock agency like Getty, it’s hard to ignore that the quality is considerably higher than a low-cost, royalty-free source like iStock or Shutterstock. However, these two competitors are creeping closer together as Getty continues to add royalty-free options and iStock’s quality improves.

Conclusion

It’s important to understand the benefits and true costs of each type of file.

Royalty-free photos are definitely the most economical because they are less costly to begin with, and you can use the image any way you like. However, your competitors may be using the exact same image you are, because there is no way to control usage.

Stock images cost more upfront and any additional usages must be paid for separately. However the quality tends to be higher and you can pay for exclusive usage. Even if you don’t pay for exclusive rights, a stock image is less likely to be seen repeatedly because of the cost limitations for some clients.

Coming up the next post: How to design using low-cost images.

Tags: photography, royalty-free, stock
Posted in Design Basics, Design Trends | No Comments »

“Simple” Does Not Mean “Not Designed”

February 1st, 2010

Nothing too complicated. Nothing fancy. Something simple, it shouldn’t cost too much.

These are remarks I’ve heard many times from people considering hiring me for design services. And they all seem to suggest that something that is simple is therefore easy and therefore shouldn’t cost a lot.

However, I’d argue that the cheapest design is all the stuff that falls in the middle. It’s not complicated, but it’s not simple either. It has the usual amount of fussiness and detail, and the usual amount of scale and proportion applied.

To do something simple and minimalist takes a certain design expertise (which you’ll pay for) and the ability to keep out all the extraneous details (which you’ve got to really be ready to embrace).

Some wonderful examples of minimalist design are many of Paul Rand’s logos:

Iconic logos by Paul Rand: ABC, IBM, and Westinghouse

Creating minimalist and simple design, is a skill that can separate a mediocre designer from the best. It’s that ability to strip a concept down to it’s essential meaning and simplest shape. Logos are the clearest example of this. But a great designer can help you follow this method by applying the same philosophy to your web site, your marketing materials, or your book cover.

I don’t want to compare myself to the legendary Paul Rand, but I do want to show that the ideals of minimalist design are alive in well even in this time period where swooshes, shadows, bevels and gradients seem to overpower too many design. Here are a few items from the Visible Logic portfolio to make my point.

Modern Epicure logo

Book cover design: BYOB Chicago

Next time you are looking for something simple, realize that you need to do two things:

accept that some things will be “left out” of the design
work with a highly skilled designer so that the end result is beautiful, minimalist design rather than boring, unfinished looking design.

Tags: design, minimalist, simple
Posted in Design Basics, Design Trends | 3 Comments »

President Obama Promotes Web Site in State of the Union Address

January 27th, 2010

President Obama Talks about Web Sites during the State of the Union

I did my civic duty and watched the State of the Union address last night. I was raised to believe it is my duty as an American citizen to listen to this yearly speech by our President, and I think I’ve watched nearly everyone since starting sometime in high school.

And I believe it may be the first time the President even said the word web site.

President Obama mentioned using web site technology to track earmark spending. He said:

“I’m calling on Congress to publish all earmark requests on a single website before there’s a vote so that the American people can see how their money is being spent.”

I found it fascinating that the President of the United States was talking about some of the same issues that small business owners face with using and maintaining their own web sites.

You need to have a web site. Obama mentioned briefly that some politicians had already started posting earmarks, but that not everyone was following this protocol. So I was a bit confused if there is one central web site already. If so, anyone know the URL?
For your small business, you absolutely need to have a web presence, and then make your web site known to potential clients and search engines. You need to see it as a business tool, marketing tool, sales funnel, etc.
You need to have a way to easily update and maintain content. Obama is asking lawmakers to update this web site, which makes me wonder what type of Content Management System (CMS) is in place.
Make it easy on yourself to make updates. Invest in a CMS that allows you to quickly and easily make updates. You (or whoever will be doing the udpates) should be well-trained on how to do regular content updates. If you’ve forgotten, get retrained by your web developer and document the process.
You need a system for making these updates. My question to Congress is, who will actually be the one to write, edit, and post these details? Whose job is it? The senator, an aide, a web master, or who?
Once you have a CMS or a blog in place, do you have some systems in place to keep you on track? Is there someone who has accountability for making posts and updates? Do you have an editorial calendar and/or a schedule for doing maintenance to double check and update content?
Is your content relevant? I’m interested to see the actual web site in question because I wonder how useful it will be to the average American. Will it be searchable? Will it be written in a style that is readable?
As you write text or add other material to your web site you need to be asking yourself a similar question. Will this engage my reader and get them to take the next step that I want them to take? That action may be to call you, or to read more, or to buy something. If your viewers cannot find the information they seek, or they do not find your site compelling, they’ll likely just surf on over to the next site.

I was quite surprised to hear, even in passing, the president mentioning how a web site can help with productivity. But that really is the reason behind so many web sites: they should work to help you achieve your goals, or your business’ goals.

Now who has the web site address that Obama is talking about?

Tags: earmarks, Obama, State of the Union, web, website
Posted in Design Basics, Design Trends, Web Design | 4 Comments »

I’m Not Slow; The Creative Process Takes Time

January 22nd, 2010

I like to think of myself as someone who can think on her feet. But sometimes when a client, or potential client asks me a question, I end up with just a blank stare or dead silence.

If I’m asked about the nuts and bolts of building a brand identity, the general process of web development, or even the identity of a typeface I can usually come up with an articulate answer quickly. But if you ask me to provide you with some creative ideas, out of the blue, you may not be as impressed with my answers.

The creative process takes time.

I don’t think this is unique to me or to graphic design as it’s something I’ve read about from people doing creative work ranging from fine art, to computer programming to scientific experiments. There is something about moving a project out of the conscious line of fire, and into the subconscious that allows a new perspective and breakthrough creativity.

Whether I’m developing a logo, a book cover concept, or a web site design, the more I allow ideas to percolate in my head, the better the responses. Well, within reason. I’m not saying I need six months to create preliminary web designs, but I do need more than 60 seconds. In fact, I’ve come to recognize there is sweet spot in my creative process that comes with having just enough pressure (often a time deadline) with just enough leeway to allow the concepts to rattle around in my head for a while.

So, if you call me on the phone and ask me for my quick ideas about your new project don’t be disappointed if I’m unable to come up with brilliant ideas on the spot. I hope I can come up with a brilliant idea soon, but give me time.

Get the process rolling

Even mundane tasks such as job estimating and organizing of job files can help me with the process of integrating the information and ideas for a design project. Sometimes I write a formal creative brief, sometimes I do a lot of sketching. Other times, I just do a lot of thinking in the gaps between doing other things. Like sleeping.

Yes, I do often start thinking about design projects just as I drift off to sleep. Then I silently curse you, but you get some of my best design work.

So make sure you allow enough time for the creative process.

Tags: creative process, creativity, design, time
Posted in Design Basics | 3 Comments »

Your Logo: Be There and Be Square

January 14th, 2010

With avatars and favicons, your logo is being pushed into a box. For whatever reason, the standard for these items seems to be a square shape.

A favicon is the little icon that sits just to the left of the URL address in your web browser. On this page it’s the Visible Logic monogram inside a green square. Favicons (short for “favorites icon” because it appears with your bookmarks or favorites) is always created as a 16 pixel x 16 pixel graphic. Very small, very little data, and definitely square.

An avatar is the graphic that represents you (or your company or brand) in places such as blog comments, forums, etc. You could even consider your Facebook profile photo an avatar. Notice, again, how they are all square. There is variation in size, based on the requirements of each web site, but I’ve yet to see a default avatar that is anything but square.

There was a time when graphic designers felt there was almost a sacred space around a logo. Identity standards were created and distributed. These manuals were filled with rules regarding how much white space should surround a logo, and harsh warnings about never cropping or otherwise altering a logo.

There are still many valid reasons for protecting your identity and keeping it consistent. But you also need to realize that you’ll need a square version of your logo. And it should reproduce well at small sizes.

Visible Logic’s example

I feel rather lucky with my logo. It was designed before favicons or avatars were widespread. But my thought process was always that I wanted to have logic in my design. So the monogram is the same height and width.

I haven’t always used my monogram within a box, but it’s a version I’ve used more and more lately because it has a bolder presence, and quite frankly because it does translate well into all these formats. Because it works in those formats, I build consistency whether or not I’m in an environment that requires a square.

Don’t Limit yourself to Squares, but have a Square Version

I don’t think it makes sense to design every identity with a square template. If we all did that, there’d be a definite lack of diversity in corporate identity.

However, you should develop a version of your logo that is used whenever a square format is requested. This could be done by cropping the logo, or rearranging the parts. Ideally you should have one version that is used whenever you are faced with this challenge. The favicon has its own very special limitation because it’s square and extremely small, so readability becomes a factor. But for all other applications having a consistent square version will help maintain consistency in branding.

Once you have this version protect and distribute like the logo itself. Protect it from being changed by countless people, but distribute it so it’s used consistently.

Tags: avatar, Branding, favicon, logos
Posted in Branding, Design Trends | 6 Comments »

Visible Logic’s Blog Listed on Alltop

January 12th, 2010

We’re proud to announce that this very blog has become part of Alltop.

What is Alltop?

Alltop.com is a Web site that lists hundreds of current newsfeeds and blogs by category, and you can find Visible Logic’s Design Advances Success blog at design.alltop.com

Alltop describes itself by saying:

The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. … You can think of Alltop as the “online magazine rack” of the web. We’ve subscribed to thousands of sources to provide “aggregation without aggravation.”

Obviously readers could find and subscribe to all these sources themselves, but Guy Kawasaki, the Alltop founder, estimates that 99% of internet users don’t use RSS feeds. So he does the subscribing for you.

More importantly, Alltop does the curating and organizing. So we’re proud to be listed alongside some other great design blogs. Take a look, you can create your own individual “front page” of stories for yourself.

What are your favorite blogs that you learned about through Alltop?

Tags: alltop
Posted in Design Trends, Web Design | No Comments »

Branding Tip: Set Up Your Gravatar

January 11th, 2010

An avatar is the small icon that represents you, on places like blog comments, forums, and other Web sites. A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. Setting up an avatar individually on every site you visit can be tedious, so establishing on gravatar will let you avoid that set-up on any Web site that links with the gravatar system.

Also, it is a way to consistent identify to yourself, and build a cohesive and recognizable brand. This may mean personal branding, corporate branding or a combination.

Pick an image

Considering this gravatar is an image that represents you on many different places across the internet, you want to take some care in choosing an image. This is really essential decision-making for building your brand identity. You may want to read my presentation Personal vs. Professional Branding on the Social Web for some ideas about whether you represent yourself with something like a headshot or a logo.

If you choose a portrait of yourself (headshot photo for example), make sure it’s professionally shot, well-lit and above all a clear shot. You can get creative with cropping it a bit, or having something in the image reveal something about you. Are you at the ocean? or wearing a suit, etc.? You can turn a portrait into something more cartoony or illustrative, but think about what that says about you (goofy, superhero, etc.)

Or you can choose something else to represent you. Usually, if it’s not a photo of you, it’s your logo. Remember, that avatars are generally square so figure out how to crop your logo into that shape.

Sign up for a Gravatar account

Once you have an image ready, go to gravatar.com to link your image to yourself. As mentioned above, gravatars are square, but you can do the sizing and cropping through their web site, if you don’t have something like Photoshop to work with.

Your gravatar is linked to you via your email address. So if you log into a blog to post a comment, for example, it’s registering with that email that will pull your gravatar with you.

Here’s a video that explains how it works.

Test it.

This blog is set-up to link with the gravatar system. If you’d like to post a comment and see what your gravator looks like, go ahead.

Tags: avatar, Branding, gravatar
Posted in Branding | 1 Comment »

How to Look Less Like a Startup? Good Branding

January 8th, 2010

We all have to start somewhere. As a new business owner, you can sometimes feel that pinch of “I need to get experience, but I need experience to get clients”. That catch-22 makes it hard to get your new business up and running.

Branding may be the missing link to promoting yourself more effectively. You need to look the part before people will accept you in the role.

As much as new startups and solopreneurs complain about the difficulties of landing new business, they are adding to their pain by not investing in their own branding systems.

Consider these two scenarios:

Business A has a web site full of content, a professionally printed business card, and proposals from them come as well-formatted, branded documents.
Business B has a web site “under construction”, a flimsy business card with clipart on it; and the proposal is a poorly typeset Word file.

Which is established? Which do you trust?

Branding is a series of small decisions that work together to create a consistent look for your company and sets the foundation for building a reputation that says “I’m for real”.

In the world of marketing, know me, like me, trust me is a critical sequence of events that many buyers go through before deciding to work with you. If you don’t have a consistent brand, it’s difficult to a known and liked entity. If you look like you just decided last week on a whim to hang out your shingle, it’s hard to trust you.

Consistent branding, developed by a professional designer can leapfrog you forward in how established you look to your clients. Being established means the ability to demand higher prices, seek larger projects, and work with other larger and more established entities.

Case Study

If you’re interested in reading about how one of our clients, Educational Endeavors used branding to create a more professional image and grow their business, download our white paper: Professional Graphic Design: The Crucial Step Toward Higher Brand Equity, Increased Revenues.

Tags: Branding, startup
Posted in Branding | 4 Comments »

How to Keep Your Web Site Resolutions

December 31st, 2009

It’s that time of year when everyone’s talking about resolutions. Eat better; Exercise more; Be more productive! And if you’re a business owner you may have “Re-do my Web site!” near the top of the list. But, like a goal of “eating better”, the goal of “improving a web site” is equally vague and hard to follow through on.

To actually see results you need a more specific goal, a clear motive for doing it, and steps to follow along the way.

I hear many people say they want to “re-do” their web site. And often times there are problems on multiple levels, but defining those different areas can help you put together a plan to address them.

Content

Frequently-updated, compelling content will drive traffic to your site. You look at your site and see that you have out-of-date content, and no systems in place to update content easily.

Ask yourself why it’s not up-to-date? Are you sending updates to your Web developer, or do you do them in-house? Do you have an easy-to-use and affordable system? If it’s too expensive to make updates (ie you go through your development firm) it’s probably better to sink some upfront costs into a Content Management System (CMS) that will pay for itself in the long term. If it doesn’t get done because it’s “nobody’s job” you need to assign the task to someone (with a deadline) or hire a Virtual Assistant to help.

Professional help: A professional Web developer can create a system that allows you to update and add content easily. It’s not necessary that all content be refreshed quickly, because information like your contact information probably doesn’t change too frequently. Therefore, you could either build a CMS to run your entire site, or you could have certain areas that are updateable such as a blog, news area, articles library, etc.

Help yourself: As much as we may all wish it to be so… a CMS does not magically update itself. Someone needs to generate content, and it then needs to be added to the site. Whether you use a CMS or send updates to your Web development firm, you need to build a schedule to keep on top of this. You may want to write out an editorial calendar with ideas for blog posts. You may want to assign different team members to keep up-to-date with different content on the site. You may find paying a writer is marketing money well-spent.

Design

Your Web site needs a compelling design, branded to match your corporate identity. If you have been relying on a design or template that does not reflect your identity, you are confusing your customers and diluting your brand. And a poorly designed site projects an unprofessional image.

Why is it so poorly designed? Some sites start out poorly designed: you used your neighbor’s highschooler to design the site; or you built a site with a clumsy-looking template. Other times, as content balloons the design no longer holds the information well. You need to reorganize information and redesign the navigational elements. For example, there are sites that I was once very proud of, that now look horrible because of all the jerry-rigging we’ve done to add in new content and elements.

Professional help: It’s probably time to pull in a professional for this problem. Don’t be afraid to go back to your original designer and ask them to upgrade the design. Or if it was a DIY job the first time, find a professional Web designer. Together you can work on parameters for the redesign. It may be mostly reorganizing content into different navigational buckets, or it may be a larger scale redesign to accommodate changes in your business.

Help yourself: Take a critical look at all the new content you’ve added. Yes, adding content is good (see above); but it needs to be organized. Also, inform your designer or developer about ideas for future content. If you’re going to do a redesign, make sure it will house not-yet-created content too.

Make Your Web Site a Work Horse

A well-designed site should work for your company. It could be making sales with an e-commerce site; showing off your capabilities with your portfolio; building trust and credibility with a blog; etc. Even a business that is primarily referral based (my own business for example) will benefit from a highly functional web site.

Why is it not working? Many times a web site is not working optimally on more than one level. Maybe you dislike the design and it’s hard to update. Or, you are ready to add a blog and you want to better highlight your client testimonials. Maybe you love the design, but need to develop landing pages for click-through advertising. Maybe you’re not having good search results and you have no idea why.

Professional help: After you identify your problems, it may be clear the type of help you need: a web designer, a CMS-builder, a Google Adwords specialist, etc. But if you have multiple problems, you may need an expert’s help to sort it out and help you prioritize. If that is the case, you’ll probably want to arrange a meeting with more than one Web development company. Many companies will sit down with you to assess your site’s weaknesses and to propose and estimate on a solution. However, you may want to take some extra time with one firm, (or two) and pay them for a more full assessment of your site. Spending some more time upfront, will make sure you’re using your time and money wisely as you start a redesign. Your Web design team can create a plan to prioritize the redesign based on your goals and your budget.

Help yourself: Figure out a budget for your Web site redesign; this will help you prioritize the steps in the project. Be realistic about what you want to take on. If you know you won’t keep up with a blog, find another person to write for you, or don’t bother adding one to your site. If you want your Web development firm to handle updates, work out a schedule and payment plan together.

Just like so many resolutions out there, redoing the Web Site can be tackled, but you’re more likely to succeed if you replace your vague goal with something more concrete (ie Redesign the navigation to incorporate the content we’ve added over the past 18 months).

And here’s the great thing… Have you ever thought: “If only I had a professional chef, I’d eat better.” You can hire your personal chef (ie developer/designer) to get your Web site working for you. It will still need your help to keep it looking good and up-to-date, but with the right tools and systems in place, it will be much more manageable for you.

Tags: redesign, resolution, Web Design, web site redesign
Posted in Web Design | 3 Comments »