Design 101: Selecting a good image on a budget

Even if your offering is traditional or conventional, the imagery you use to communicate this doesn’t need to be. Don’t just go wild in the aisles for the first search term you thought of.

Try to explore further. Thinking laterally can produce search results that surprise and delight, and bring you unexpected images to help you stand out from the crowd.

What are you searching for images of? Are you looking for fresh new takes on real-world scenarios or abstract concepts? Are you expressing very specific ideas or providing additional richness and texture to a brand in a conceptual way?

Consider not only what will connect with your audience best, but also what will enhance and define your brand look-and-feel.

If people are going to be central to your brand’s visual landscape, then avoid clichéd images. Obviously staged images will lead you towards the tired old tropes of the stock library world. People are savvy and can see straight through these pictures.

They’ve probably even seen the exact image before. Think of the time you visited the contact page of some local business’s website featuring a generic stock shot of a smiling person wearing a 20-year-old call centre headset. Kind of goes against the current push towards authenticity, doesn’t it?

Is there a concept or theme underpinning your image choices? This could be something as simple as choosing between black and white or colour images.

You could opt for a more conceptual approach by choosing a suite of close-up macro images of nature, overhead shots from drone cameras, or pictures which all feature the colour red, for example.

Tying in brand values or campaign aims can also lead you into new creative territory. Do you want crowded, busy images? Or stark, minimal shots? Nature and life in all its colour? Or man-made, linear structures?

Decisions like this can focus your image work into a coherent part of the design language of your project.

If spotting one of your images rumble past on the side of a bus with another company’s logo next to it brings on the cold sweats, you can always purchase exclusive rights to that image.

This means that although it may have been used many times in the past, it can never be used again by anyone else.

This exclusivity comes at a price though. Both the image libraries and the photographers who supply them work on a low margin/high volume pricing model and taking one of their images out of circulation permanently could be costly. It’s also important to clarify that you only gain ownership of the image, not the copyright – this stays with the photographer.

However, if you’re looking to buy exclusive rights, it might be cheaper or the same cost to have a bespoke photoshoot. That way, you get the best of both worlds: the images are just what you want and they’re yours for good.