When a business should commission illustration rather than use stock

The problem with stock is not quality

Stock photography and illustration are often excellent. The problem is that the same excellent image is available to your competitors, and increasingly to anybody generating something similar in seconds.

Where a picture is decoration, that is fine. Where it is meant to say something about you specifically, it undermines the thing it was hired to do.

Where custom illustration earns its cost

Anywhere a customer is deciding whether to trust you. Packaging, a menu, a shopfront, the one page somebody reads before buying — these carry weight that a stock image cannot.

It also earns its cost anywhere you will reuse it. An illustration commissioned once can appear on a bag, a sticker, a card and a sign, which changes the arithmetic entirely.

• Packaging and labels
• Menus and price lists
• Signage and storefronts
• Anything reused across several products

Where stock is the right answer

Internal documents, a slide deck, a blog header, anything short-lived. Spending on those is how a budget disappears without anything customer-facing improving.

Commission for a system, not a single image

A set of illustrations that share a style is worth far more than one good drawing, because it lets everything you print look related. Brief it that way from the start — a style, then pieces within it.

What to give an illustrator

Say what the business does and where each piece will appear, at what size, and whether it needs to work in one colour. An illustrator can adapt to almost any constraint told early and almost none discovered late.

Commission for reuse and the sums change

A single illustration priced against a single use looks expensive. The same illustration across packaging, a bag, a sticker and a sign is cheap, because the cost is fixed and the uses are not.

Brief it that way from the start — say every place it will appear, so it is drawn to survive all of them.

Style consistency is what makes it look intentional

One striking illustration among stock imagery looks borrowed. Several pieces sharing a hand look like a decision somebody made about the business.

If budget is limited, commission fewer pieces in one coherent style rather than more pieces that do not sit together.

Budget for the second piece

Businesses commonly commission one illustration, discover they need three, and end up with two more drawn by somebody else in a different style.

If a set is likely, say so at the start even if you only commission one now. A designer who knows a family is coming will draw the first piece so the others can follow it.

How to start

Everything runs through one place. Artists sign in at the artist studio, upload work, choose which products each piece suits, and see what they have earned. Customers browse the artwork, pick a design, and choose what to put it on.

Nothing about it is exclusive. You can sell the same work elsewhere at the same time, and there is no listing fee and no minimum.

• Apply with three pieces so we can see how you work
• Choose which products each design belongs on
• Get paid by bank transfer on what sells

Common questions