In Fearless Future’s attempt to remove the scourge that is clipart from the face of the earth, here is a list of stock photography sites and other alternatives:

Cheap sites:

• http://www.istockphoto.com/
  Great quality, most images are $1 - $5 but can go up as high as $40 for huge images.
• http://www.bigstockphoto.com/
  Images range from $1.40 -$2.50 each for all of them.

Expensive sites:

• http://www.veer.com/
  Impeccable quality, but pricey. Images range from $130 - $420 each or discs of multiple images in a set for $500.
• http://www.corbis.com/
  If you can’t find it on Veer you can find it on Corbis, prices are practically identical.
• http://www.photos.com/en/
  One of many stock photo subscription sites (basically you pay them a fee and they provide you with unlimited access to their collection). The subscriptions range from 1 month ($140) to a year ($600), this would be a great option if you use enough images to make it worth it.

Alternate options:

This is where is gets fun. These are free and/or alternate options to typical stock photos.

• http://creativecommons.org/
  Creative Commons is an alternative to copyright. On their site, they have a searchable repository of different types of digital works that are licensed under that would allow you to use them almost always for free (if you don’t use them on commercial projects and you say who created them)
• http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/
  With the advanced search on this site you can search the popular photo community flickr for images that are published under Creative Commons. If you find a picture/artist you like, send them an e-mail and see if you can use their work for your project.
• http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html
  Library of Congress’ Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. LOC has digitized a ton of their prints and offered them up online for the taking - the majority of them are out of copyright.
• http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
  The American Memory Project is just like the Prints & Photographs but focuses on the “American Experience.”

Feel free to add to the list at the AcademicPR Forum under “Marketing and PR”

Collage Images is a flickr group that is a great collection of vintage copyright-free artwork that you can grab and use as you wish.

I really hope that we can see more of this in the future. Take a few minutes and explore the collection, they have some really great and obscure images. Believe me, these images are a much better option than using clip art, and a lot cheaper than hiring a designer.

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P.S.
You do have to register with the group before you can view the images.

No I am not talking about the song from Footloose sound track but our very own Jonathan Silberman who was recently interviewed in the May/June edition of Print Magazine:America’s Graphic Design Magazine.

The article was written by CORY DOCTOROW who is an author and a blogger, most notably one the of the editors of Boing Boing, an award winning blog that started out as a zine.

The article titled Some Rights Reserved is all about the use of Creative Commons in the work of designers. Jonathan was interviewed because we licenced all of our marketing material under a creative commons license. This enables people to use our marketing plan and most importantly Jonathan’s designs as long as they give attribution to the creator. One of the best lines in the article is “as an author my biggest problem is not piracy it is obscurity”

This quote could also be said of libraries or as Oscar Wilde says “Imitation is the highest form of flattery” We should all be involved in this new emerging form of communication. It will enable us to learn and share with each other and truley create a “learning commons”

I want to give a shout out to Gwendolyn Reece, intellectual and librarian extraordinaire for introducing me to the idea of Creative Commons.

If you have interest in Creative Commons you should read Lawrence Lessig and Siva Vaidhyanthan