- [email protected]
- Monday - Thursday 7:00am - 3:00pm (CST)
Stuck on Graphics?
Do you ever find yourself spending WAY TOO MUCH time (and money — *sigh) looking for that “perfect” graphic or stock photo to heighten the look of the project you’re working on or make your business brand *POP*?
Well, if this is you … always looking for more “do whatever you want” photos, then this blog post is just what you need. Pictures speak for themselves – so keep reading to find out what some of my treasured visual resource sites are that will help you out and stop your hunt right in its tracks!
Stock Photography:
- Pexels
- Pixabay
- Unsplash
- Shutterstock
- Photos8
- Pond5
- StockVault
- Gratisography
- Negative Space
- Life of Pix
- PicJumbo
- Picography
Now of course there are other options such as doing a Google or Bing search, BUT you must be VERY CAREFUL when it comes to copyright laws. As well, and equally important, the quality. Don’t just grab the very first photo you see just because it suits the style/need you have in mind. You must, for high-quality brand purposes, find and use the best quality photo otherwise it could make or break your brand … aka. lowers the standards.
Good design is good business. ~ Thomas Watson, CEO of International Business Machines
A good trick I use, that I don’t often share with very many people is a site called TinEye. This site helps you scour the internet for the best match to the photo you’re trying to look for (just by uploading the choice to their site once you’ve found that “perfect” image). You can also sort by most changed, biggest image, newest and oldest. This site is a true gem! Bookmark it now!!!!!
Vector Artwork:
Why vector artwork over easy to find clip art?
I could honestly write an entire novel on the why’s around NOT USING CLIPART. It makes my body cringe to the core to be quite honest. But in short … Vector images are made of thin lines and curves known as paths which are rooted in mathematical theory. You can identify a vector image by looking at its edges — it will always appear smooth no matter how large you make it or how close you zoom in. Text is one of the most common types of a vector image. No matter how much you increase a font’s size, for example, its look never changes. Another huge advantage to using this file type is its file-size efficiency.
Clip art is something that’s easily found and embraced but easy isn’t always the best option. Easy also comes with the downfall of over-pixilation and extremely large file sizes.
If you think about it, today we express ourselves, through our businesses and personally, using images in different ways. So, why would you allow yourself to fall short of something that’s this important …?!
Like this blog post?
If you found today’s blog post to be exactly the type of inspiration and know-how you were looking for, we would be very grateful if you would help this post spread
by sharing the LOVE with it socially, emailing it to a friend or dropping us a comment with your thoughts. You never know whose life you might change.
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Linkdin
Share on Pinterest
Crystal Kordalchuk
Crystal is an artist, a writer, an organizer, a dreamer, a doer, and down-right proud of it NERD!.
Struck with a love for #AllThings creative at a very young age, Crystal dreamed of a life fueled by her passion for creating and bringing the stories and images in her mind into reality.
As she worked toward her dreams, she earned a diploma as a Computer Applications Specialist then another in Graphic Design and from there began to develop her extensive background in multimedia and the arts. She began her worked in the magazine industry as a layout designer and had a succession of design jobs thereafter. It was her role as a graphic/web designer that gave her the first real glimpse of her future. Soon she began a side job as a freelance designer while keeping one foot in the corporate world. A spark was lit! She turned her freelance gig into a full-time business combining design work with her other passion: creating organization from virtual chaos.
Crystal is one of the most organized individuals on the planet. She is by all means a Zen master of her crafts. She excels at helping others become “untangled” and provides her clients with tools to run their businesses smoothly while she takes care of the details behind the scenes. Thus Virtually Untangled was born. A successful business where her work as a top notch creative in graphic and web — with a twist of virtual assistant — married into one amazing place where clients can come with their virtual messes and become magically untangled. Crystal can always make sense of even the most unorganized chaos and offers a virtual detox of order and peace, so her clients can get busy doing the work that they love the most.