How and where to source on-brand stock images
Let's talk about sourcing stock photos... in this video I'm going to talk to you about how and where to source on-brand stock images for your online brand and business design needs.
What you want to think about before you get started…
Have an idea of how you want to represent your brand visually before you begin searching for images (colors, styles, photo content).
Aim to achieve consistency in style across your stock photos, regardless of varying photographers.
Create a folder on your computer/Google Drive/etc. to save all of your downloaded stock images so when it comes time to create a graphic or a website, you have your collection ready to go.
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Video Transcript:
Let's talk about sourcing stock photos. In this video, I'm gonna go over where and how to find free on-brand stock images for your website, social graphics, ad and promo graphics, email marketing campaigns, and however else you might be using imagery for your brand or business.
The three places I like to go are Unsplash, Pexels, and Canva. In this video I will give you an overview and show you how I search through those three sites.
00:40 First up, Unsplash. If you use Squarespace, you might already be familiar with Unsplash. You can actually search Unsplash images directly through Squarespace when you're building and designing your website.
I like to go to Unsplash, just straight to unsplash.com, and source my stock images before I start designing my website. I often find if you're trying to design your website or some kind of social graphic or whatever it is and you're trying to figure out the text copy and the imagery and the design all at the same time, it can get a bit overwhelming.
For that reason, I would encourage you to source your stock photos ahead of time and to have a folder of sourcing sourced images for your brand. That way, when you're ready to create something, you already have images ready.
01:38 Actually, before we dive into Unsplash, I want to show you just a quick overview of my website and so you can see how I use stock images and how they all really flow together because I look for consistency in images, even though these images were taken by totally different photographers. So because I know my brand style, I know my brand colors already in advance, that lets me know what to look for when I'm sourcing my images. I would definitely recommend knowing those things before you just go find some random images. So that's what we're looking for and that's what I'm gonna show you how I do in this video. So let's go to Unsplash.
02:36 I'm going to search on Unsplash for "laptop." Now, when I look for the laptop, you can see there's a lot of different options, and if I quickly scan through these, none of these are gonna be really great for my brand. None of these photos have crisp, white, clean backgrounds. They're all pretty busy and dark. So we're gonna keep scrolling. See how having the style and the vibe that you're going for in mind, it makes sourcing images a lot easier?
04:12 Something else that I like to search for is like a a "desk flatlay."
A flatlay is when you put things on a flat surface and take a picture from above. I often find a lot of good things for my brand when I search for flatlays.
05:17 So let's go over to Pexels and we'll search the exact same thing. I have found that there are some duplicated images on these two platforms, which is fine, but there are some differences which makes it worth searching both.
Again, just start scrolling through the search results. These are definitely more busy. I like these pictures, but they are not in line with what I'm looking for.
Here's a photo I've used a million times. As you find the photos that match what you're looking for, just download them. And like I already said, you'll have a whole folder of images to pull from when you're ready to create something.
7:17 So this is Pexels. The other place I like to go is Canva and heads up, I do pay for the the Pro account, but you can search their photos and their elements even if you don't have a pro account. But what you're seeing me find is not all free.
What I do like about Canva is that if I hit these three dots on the top right of the image you can star your favorite images... and when you do that, they all save to a folder. So every time I'm creating graphics, I just go straight to my starred folder and there are all my saved source stock photos that I've already found here directly on Canva. I actually end up using these quite a bit just because of how easy it is.
10:00 So that is how I source stock photos. And if you have any questions for me on sourcing stock code as I didn't cover in this video, please let me know. And if you are working on your website and you want my free website branding worksheet and video guide, head on over to designingtherow.com/youtube... and I will see you in the next one.