Stock options

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 1997 by Jeff Hadfield

Are you being asked to do more with less? (If you're not, don't tell the rest of us.) Most publications are tightening their budgetary belts, and art and production departments aren't immune to this cost-cutting epidemic.

Stock images have always given art directors a cost-effective, just-in-time alternative to commissioned pieces. Today, electronic resources--online archives, digital clip art and photo CD-ROMs-allow art directors to search, select and secure the rights to images from the desktop. If you thought precanned digital images were for someone else's magazine, it's time to take another look and reconsider your stock options.

Search and destroy

Stock photos are a part of every art department. Right now you're probably looking at a pile of catalogs bristling with sticky notes and a list of trusty contacts at various agencies around the country. Although using the experts at a stock agency remains effective, there is one major drawback: It takes time. No matter how well staffed your favorite stock agency is or how good you are at describing exactly what you want, you still have to place several phone calls and then wait for the overnight packages full of slides to arrive. Odds are, you may even repeat the process (with a per-search fee of about $75) a few more times before you find just the right image to scan.

With digital stock, you can go from concept to comp in a matter of minutes. (See "What you see is what you get,"page 66, to clock FOLIO:'s art director in a real-time search.) CD-ROM-based catalogs and online archives give you instant access to images in multiple resolutions. In most cases, 72 dpi (dots per inch) images--for placement or comps--are free. Many Web sites and CD-ROMs include higher resolution, royalty-free versions (300 dpi, 1,200 dpi or better) for professional printing for around $50. If you've got a reasonably fast connection to the Web (at least 28.8 Kbits per second), you don't even need to buy a catalog. Just go to a Web site like www.photodisc.com or www.corel.com, search for an image and download it.

Most of these electronic-image sources allow you to search based on predefined keywords or descriptions. For example, if you're looking for an image of children playing in a swimming pool, you might enter key words like "child," "pool," "swim." There's a good chance you'll find the type of image you're looking for. But if you don't want to illustrate in a literal way and instead want a particular look or feel, PhotoDisc's advanced search can automate the type of search it can take researchers at your favorite stock agency hours to do. Using PhotoDisc's advanced, natural-language searching methods, you can specify the type of visual criteria you want--color, texture, structure and composition. For example, you can do a search for supersaturated blue or motion blur. You can also search for emotions--like anger, ecstasy or hope.

New kids on the stock block

To take advantage of digital stock, you may have to look beyond the standard sources. So far, traditional stock agencies--Image Bank, FPG International, Tony Stone Images--haven't embraced this new technology. There's still a gap between the "old school" stock and the upstarts that, for the most part, come from the computer software industry, not from the publishing industry. And in the past, the quality of the images they provided made that heritage abundantly clear. That's no longer the case. Companies such as PhotoDisc, Image Club Graphics, a division of Adobe Systems, Inc., and Corel offer professional-quality photos and illustrations in any resolution you need--all royalty-free.

Move beyond the magazine

Stock images may not meet the needs of some magazine editorial, but in today's publishing environment, magazines are just the beginning. Depending on the size and structure of your organization, you may be designing media kits, promotional materials, invitations, comps and a Web site. Digital stock can help get the job done.

Dennis Wolf, art director of Beef based in Minneapolis, uses stock for promotional and collateral material. For projects--editorial or promotional--that require sign-off-from people who may not be accustomed to thinking visually or conceptually, digital stock can be a convenient resource. The image used in the comp can be the final image. As Wolf says, "You can use a live photo in a layout, sell the idea based on that layout, and use the image everyone's excited about in the final design."

The bottom line is, there's no reason to shy away from digital stock anymore. The price is reasonable, delivery is instantaneous and the image quality is excellent. As more and more art directors turn to stock to solve design needs, digital stock becomes key--another tool in the savvy art director's arsenal. Dennis Wolf has the last word: "No one said we were hired to jockey an X-Acto knife. We were hired to solve visual problems. If the tool changes, we need to learn how to use it to that end."