Local Stock Art Can Excite Imagination...

We have too much visual clutter -- too much junk mail, trade floor show clutter, inbox madness, ads on park benches, sides of busses, etc.

Question: How much of it really excites your imagination or connects with your soul?

Ban the Cliches. Give hackneyed visuals and clip art a rest.

• Got two hands shaking to represent a partnership? Purge it from your PowerPoint.
• A smiling group of yuppies with laptops & cell phones leering at the camera to represent your company's tech-savvy team spirit? Get them off of your website's homepage.
• A lightbulb representing your bright ideas? Banish this evil from your ad campaign.

Seriously re-think your images. Don't go to the same old stock image sites that deliver the same tired metaphors. Do something different.

Here's a thought: Step away from the computer! Go visit new and interesting local places where you can feel a real emotional and spiritual connection. Creative people and their output come from all over the world, not just one or two big, fat American cities.

For example, I'm going to a gallery opening in Grand Rapids this week. The gallery is called "Eyekons" and the show is called "Listening with Your Eyes" --- which sounds compelling enough on its own. But go visit the gallery's stock art section, and you can download unique stock images that are anything but average.

We need more specialty creative sites like this. There are too many me-too stock photos online that look exactly alike, that cater to the same tired metaphors.

No matter where you live in the world -- go find a local art gallery. Don't just see: touch. Talk. Listen. Connect. Experience art with all five senses. Give some of the large corporate stock image sites a rest. After all, creative people live EVERYWHERE - and they don't all work for the same large company, in the same big town.

Go local: and get a universal perspective on the nature of your very soul! ¶ 9/12/2005 02:17:00 PM