The Advertisement Industry and Stock Visual Graphics – A Love/Hate Relationship
Stock visuals have been a part of the advertisement industry pretty much since photography became a thing. When photographers discovered that they could sell one photo to many publications and make money from every single one, stock agencies were born. Not surprisingly, they grew exponentially.
Stock photo agencies have expanded into stock illustration, stock icons, and much more. Below are some examples:
- Photography
- Illustrations
- Videos
- Icons
- Backgrounds
- Artwork
- UI/UX Visual Sets
- Social Media Graphics
- Brochure Templates
- Flyer Templates
- Website Themes
As stock agencies grew into catalogs and then into full-blown websites, advertisers and other visual creators depended on stock visuals to create their content. Only when companies can afford photographers, illustrators, and icon designers do they steer away from stock visuals.
Through the years, the relationship between advertisement and stock visual graphics has become a love/hate relationship on so many levels. Nobody understands that better than people who create stock visuals regularly to make a living.
Let’s take a look at both the love and hate factors of this relationship.
The Love Factor
There are lots of reasons why designers, content creators, and visual marketers use stock visuals. First of all, stock visuals are easy to find and are much less expensive than custom visuals. This is especially true for a business that is just starting and doesn’t have a high budget for visuals, especially custom ones.
Thankfully for many new businesses, bloggers, and small scale advertisers, there are lots of stock resources available for free. Even better, they all come without license restrictions for both commercial and editorial use.
A significant love factor for stock visuals is that they can be customized. That means that any stock visual can be changed enough to look at least a different from other people using it.
Photos can be cropped, trimmed, color customized, and used to create impressive collages. Illustrations can be changed in many different ways. If the file is a .svg, the colors and the shape can be easily customized with a vector graphics program.
Videos can be turned into GIFs, color corrected to use as website backgrounds, and much more.
Web designers have easy access to free icons, buttons, and designs to create their UI/UX designs.
Yes, free stock visual graphics are easy to find and use, but so is paid stock. When stock visuals are paid under a subscription or on use by use basis, they are technically “better” than the free ones. Why? Well, because fewer people are using them. Nevertheless, they still get used quite a bit.
Another good thing about paid stock is that advertisers can use celebrity photography in their entertainment blogs; historians can use vintage stock photography in their books.
The Hate Factor
Now that we know why people in advertising (and other visual marketing spaces) love stock photography. Let’s take a look at why the other spectrum hates it.
It’s easy to be annoyed at stock photography, especially when you see the same image or illustration on lots of different platforms. It’s particularly hateful when the photos haven’t even been customized or adjusted and look the same as the one before it.
Even though stock visuals can be customized and personalized, not everybody does it. They are resulting in hundreds of blog posts with the same featured images, numerous billboards with the same people on it, brochures, and websites with the same imagery, etc.
Another significant hate factor is how stock photography tends to look posed and unnatural. The usual corporate stock images are full of cold smiles, stiff handshakes, and standard office groups. Most illustrations look the same from each other when they become famous.
Sometimes a character in a set of stock photography is so memorable that you start seeing the photos with him in them everywhere! That’s the epitome of a love/hate relationship right there.
Where’s The Middle Ground?
A huge hate factor in stock photography is how humans are under-represented. Thankfully, this has been improving lately, with more and more layers of humanity in all shapes, colors, and styles. This has been happening not only in the usual stock photo sites we know and love, but there are plenty of new sites that represent the visually under-represented.
What about illustrations and graphics? An excellent middle-ground for illustrations is the illustration stock sites that offer interchangeable parts for people and even more complex themed illustrations. Check out sites like Humaaans, for example.
Let’s not forget the public domain, a treasure trove of high-quality imagery that isn’t exactly stock. All visuals in the public domain are either old enough to have lost their license or have been placed in the public domain by the artist.
What is your relationship with stock visuals? Do you love it, hate it, or a little bit of both? Let us know in the comments!
