These are general resources for The Iron Yard Academy students. You might also want to check out our guide to freelance and contract work, The Little Freelancer.
Great question. Before we point you in the right direction, though, we need to talk about stealing and licensing.
First, as a matter of general respect and ethics, it's simply not acceptable to take other people's work without asking. "But Picasso said, 'all art is theft,'" you say. Picasso was also one of the most prolific and successful artists in the world, but that's another conversation for another time. Here, the "golden rule" is a good one to follow: treat others how you want to be treated. Don't want someone to rip off your work and use it as their own (and profit from it) without giving you credit? Then don't take other people's work.
(Ok, enough of the soapbox.) Ethics aside, it's actually dangerous—legally—to take images you don't have rights to (especially if you are in any way including them client work). People (or companies) can and will take legal action if they discover you're using a picture of theirs that you don't have rights to. We'll be brutally transparent with an example from our own company: we pulled a 'random' image off of Google Image search to use in a blog post and it turned out to be owned by Getty Images, a gigantic online image repository. Their legal staff sent us a 'nice' letter detailing the cease and desist orders and potential financial consequences of our decision.
This probably sounds stern in a world of re-blogging, rapid sharing and general internet free-for-all-ism, but the possibility of putting yourself and, again, especially your clients at legal risk can turn into serious and expensive business. It's like not making a backup copy of your work: it's not a problem until it is.
I get the point. So what do I do?
Great news: there are tons of awesome images online that you can use. Millions, in fact.
There are many resources for images that are considered public domain, meaning they are free to use without copyrights (or attribution, but more on that shortly). That means you can use them freely with a clear conscience. Here are a few places to find copyright-free pictures:
- http://www.flickr.com/groups/freeuse/
- http://pixabay.com/
- http://freerangestock.com/
- http://www.imageafter.com/
- http://photorack.net/
As you might expect, the maxim "you get what you pay for" applies the world of photography. While there are some amazing copyright-free images, the resources are limited and sometimes you can't find what you're looking for.
Good news: there are still free photos to use. Most of them are licensed under a Creative Commons license. There are all sorts, and you can research them yourself, but for our purposes we'll talk about the Attribution CC BY license. The definition speaks for itself:
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
Translation: you can use (and modify!) images under this license, even for paid work, as long as you give credit to the original creator.
Pretty awesome, isn't it?
How do I give credit?
Great question. Creative Commons has a great guide, and this is a good blog post by a smart person named Molly Kleinman on the subject as well (there's a PDF of the post in the repo just in case).
Here are some great resources for finding awesome images under CC licensing:
- http://compfight.com/
- http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
- http://photopin.com/
In many contexts of creative work, you'll see a common practice of using copyrighted images for comps that are 'internal use only,' meaning they'll never see the light of day so it doesn't matter. Designers do this because when you put crappy images in a great layout that is dependent on beautiful photos, the poor quality makes the entire piece look worse than it is. If the entire piece is brought down by bad pictures, it's harder to get internal sign off and harder to sell to the client. Makes sense.
There are varying opinions on the subject, but here are a few recommendations:
If it makes sense, don't use images. Head over to Placehold.it and snag a nice, neutral placeholder image.
Generally, there are enough good images you can for free (legally) or under CC licensing that you should be able to make your design shine.
When in doubt, ask the client to provide creative assets. It's rare that a client will fire you over trying to protect them from copyright infringement. It's also less work for you (assuming the client can pick good images, which isn't a good assumption to make).