Create a Personalized Clip Art Catalog

Six Reasons to Create Your Own Clip Art Library

(For starters, it's cost effective and you get full creative control.)

1. You'll save time and money by having your own cache of pre-sorted images.
2. You can create the images that you want to see in your next story. Stock photos often lack diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity, class, weight, height or physical disability. Images that do purport to be diverse tend to look rather contrived. Create your own clip art catalog that reflects the diversity and uniqueness of your community, your neighborhood, your reality.
3. By keeping images and style consistent across all your online publishing (website, brochure, newsletters), you'll be visually reinforcing your brand.
4. You'll have original artwork, guaranteed. You won't need to worry about accidental copyright infringement or the embarrassment of seeing the same stock image you chose attached to someone else's article or website.
5. By crediting yourself and copyrighting the photo in your name, you can link back to your own webpage, creating an extra inbound link from your article.
6. Here's one final reason to consider creating your own clip art: getting away from your computer for a few hours and talking a walk around your neighborhood can feed your creative spirit and fend off writer's block. Looking around, noticing small details, standing back and getting a bit of perspective can give you that extra little boost you need to push on through your next article.

Building Your Image Catalog

You don't need to be a master photographer to get started.

• Take photos with your iPhone and use an app like Instagram to change the tone, style, clarity and brightness of the images.
• Take photos wherever you go: restaurant meals, signs, plants, trees, scenery, items around the house.
• Create your own photo montages and still life displays with everyday objects.
• Use Scrabble tiles, fridge letters, wooden blocks to spell out catchy phrases that match the content of your post. Try photographing the words from different angles for interesting effects.
• Try going analog. Do your own freestyle doodles, stick figures or cartoon characters. Scan and edit your doodles for unique, one of a kind images.

Choose Simple Images

Focus on one theme or focal point per per photo.

• Keeping your images clean and simple increases their readability. Don't worry about whether or not the image says everything that you want it to say. By matching the image with a headline, subtitle or caption, you can suggest a link between the article and the image.
• Pick the appropriate size and scale for your images. Your photos need to have good proportions that can withstand being enlarged or shrunken according to the online publisher's specifications. A photo of a dandelion in a field might look clear in its original size, but if the photo's dimensions are significantly reduced, the dandelion might become invisible.
• Use images that are symbolic and universal. It may seem cliché but these images work. They have stood the test of time and people know at a glance what they mean (i.e.; clock or watch = time; school supplies = education; trees and seedlings = ecology, the environment or growth). What will make these images stand out is how you chose to crop, color and tint the images.

Have Fun with Color

Play around with different tints and tones to make your photos even more original.

• Choose bright, high contrast images for added visual impact.
• Or, choose a monochromatic tint for an understated effect. Monochromatic tinting also helps to disguise or neutralize garish colors in your photograph.
• Read up on the effects of color on mood, perception and motivation, and then color or tint your photos to match the content of your article.

Black and White Has Universal Appeal

A colourless palette can be very stylish and dramatic.

• Limiting your photographs to black and white is one of the simplest ways to create a consistent brand image across all your media.
• Change photos into black and white to hide imperfections or tone down colors that would otherwise look rather garish.
• Like a black and white wardrobe, black and white photos go well with almost anything. Sepia tones can also work well as a neutral palette for your photographs.
• Black and white photos can be very atmospheric, lending a brooding or ominous tone to an article.
• Black and white photos can also be very stylish and minimalistic for those people who prefer a simple, uncluttered look.