| I'm not sure I understand the demand for stock-anything. When I need an image, illustration, or icon I need it to be one or more of the following: 1. Accurate The image or illustration depicts a real thing or process I care about and it needs to show that clearly. It's unlikely that stock photos and illustrations will meet that bar. Unless the rest of my content is about a well known or generic topic my imagery is not going to be widely available or generic. 2. On brand If I'm adding visual interest, color, flare, whathaveyou to a page and the exact content doesn't matter, then the styling and emotional tone do. More specifically they need to be coherent across my entire site/presentation/product. In addition this content needs to be helpful to a viewer to remember my specific property. My brand can only be diluted by using assets which are common, off-tone, or not fully integrated with a recognizable and memorable look and feel. 3. Repeatable For any media I create and want to maintain I have to think about how hard it's going to be to change it in the future. If I find a great image or icon or illustration I need to know that if I need the source modified or reproduced with a slight variation I can do that. In practice, that usually means having continued access to the artist who produced the asset. Their style will come through in any project and maintain the coherence over time that allows for iterative rather than drastic change. Convey information, build a brand, build a repeatable process. Stock feels like a self-defeating trap. Sure it looks nice, and for arts sake it can be desirable, but for any business or professional communication purpose it seems to entirely miss the point of having media in the first place. |
For instance, commissioning a custom icon set rather than picking one off-the-shelf is a luxury only some projects will have access to.
Additionally, oftentimes stock assets function as good placeholders until a larger budget comes into play. Suppose you are working on a video game and waiting for environmental assets to be complete; in the meantime, a sample texture may do.
In a perfect world, perhaps every font, icon, illustration, photo, or texture would be bespoke to its exact application. In the mean time, we have stock assets.