Cheap, royalty-free photo sites. You know the sort... where you purchase credits and trawl through literally millions of images to find something to bring your communication to life. So cheap, in fact, that it’s tempting to settle for images which ‘roughly’ do the job.

We don’t entirely hate them! They can be useful for generic ‘filler’ shots, and (depending on your subject matter) you might just strike lucky and stumble upon something which fits the bill. What really bugs us, however, is when we see how they can stifle creativity and compromise effectiveness – when ‘designers’ build entire communications around available cheap images, rather than focusing on the message that needs to get across and allowing that to lead the creatives.

This is not just lazy design, it’s a false economy; because the resulting output is in danger of becoming so bland and contrived that it fails to do its job – whether that’s to grab attention, illustrate a product / service or tell a story.

Why show a faked ‘handshake’ shot when you can have real people from your organisation doing real work? Why settle on a generic office image when you can

make your own premises look interesting? Why go for a bland, poorly-lit pack-shot when you can make your product look exciting and enticing?

Interesting and appealing images can ‘make’ a communication. In some cases, they can establish an entire creative theme and act as a visual ‘hook’ – in which case they need to be absolutely right in terms of message, content and execution.

Our senior creatives are also Art Directors. This means that, when it comes to your photoshoot, they’ll not only be completely clued-up on what’s needed from an image and how this can best be achieved technically – they’ll also be aware of the context of the communication in which that photo will be placed, and the specific design requirements that it needs to fulfil.

Put simply, we’ll take exactly the right image for the job. And we’re equally happy shooting stills in the studio or lifestyle images on location; pretty much any kind of photography you care to mention, in fact.

It’s your image. Why compromise?