Creating a bespoke stock image library for your company means you get to own a bank of images that you can use (and reuse) over a period of time and for multiple purposes. It beats relying on purchased stock imagery that you can buy from the likes of istockphoto because the images are made specifically for you and reflect what your company truly does. The images can really help you tell your brand story and help illustrate loads of content that you produce internally and externally.
Many things need images including social media posts, blog articles, presentations, internal comms, marketing collateral and much more. If you have a large set of images to choose one when posting content your life will become much easier and the thing you produce will be a million times better!
With a bit of planning you can acquire a large set of images that reflect your brand and serve multiple purposes.
Here are key considerations to guide the process:
1. What Images Do You Need?
- Tone and Style: Ensure the images align with your company’s visual identity, including colours, themes, and overall mood (e.g., minimalist, vibrant, formal).
- Brand Guidelines: Images should adhere to established brand guidelines if they exist, such as the use of company logos, specific colour schemes, fonts, and imagery styles.
- Visual Storytelling: Choose images that tell a story about what the company does from it’s people to customers, products, premises and location
2. Target Audience
- Demographics: Images should resonate with the company’s target audience in terms of age, culture, profession, and interests.
- Relevance: Content should be relevant to the products, services, or values the company promotes.
- Representation: Make sure the library includes diverse representation in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, and backgrounds to appeal to a broad audience.
3. Usage Versatility
- Multiple Applications: Design images with flexibility in mind so they can be used for different purposes, from banners to social media posts, without losing quality or relevance. Play exactly which places you need to use images and think about which images you would like for each place. E.g. sales presentations, website pages, marketing comms, internal comms, social posts, recruitment campaigns.
- Modifiable Elements: Images should allow for easy editing or cropping to fit different formats or themes, without losing important elements. Think about how you may overlay text onto some images
4. Legal and Copyright Considerations
- Licensing: Ensure all images are cleared for commercial use, and that you have the rights to use, modify, and distribute them as needed.
- Model Releases: If images feature people, secure model releases to avoid legal complications.
- Intellectual Property: Avoid images that may infringe on other brands’ trademarks or copyrights.
5. Resolution and Formats
- Resolution: Ensure high-resolution images to maintain quality across various platforms and screen sizes and resolutions to suit different use cases, such as web or print.
- Formats: Provide images in multiple formats (JPG, PNG, SVG)
- File Organisation: Organise the image library for easy search and retrieval, using keywords to diff topics, themes or subjects
6. Planning the Shoot
- Time: You will probably need between a half and a full day of a photographer’s time on site
- Location & Things: Which locations are you going to photograph. Just your office? The surrounding area? Client sites and project? Are there any things you want to be photographed such as marketing collatoral.
- People: Who do you need to be around for the shoot and what should they wear? You need a good selection of people from different business areas who have agreed to be in the photos and who can be doing variety of tasks
- List: Work with your photographer to plan and list the shots you want to get
if you’d like to work with us to build an image library for your business, get in touch.