Istockphoto.com : Anyone can feel like a great designer!

When creating artwork and website wire frames for ameripromo.com, our online promotional products business, one of my favorite resources is istockphoto.com. This is a marketplace for royalty free graphics, audio and video bits and most importantly, photography which can be used in all kinds of corporate advertising and communications. The quality of the photography is generally very good and some of it is exceptional.

We have a graphic designer on staff who adapts the images to our needs. What I love about it is the point/credit pricing is so affordable that I can purchase images for a couple of bucks when we are going over design ideas and not worry too much about the cost. The service is even affordable enough for dressing up personal websites, family blogs and the like. There are all kinds of sweet downloadable buttons and vector graphics.

Although, I wouldn't consider myself a professional designer, I can make my way around Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I have been in the logo imprinting business for long enough, that I have done work for clients to dress up or convert their corporate designs to usable formats. It is tools like this which really increase my confidence in creating really nice design.

If you want to make money from your best photography, I've also heard that there are photographers on www.istockphoto.com who are pulling down several thousand dollars a month, although I have not independently verified it.