Do you create everything from scratch?

gcol90

Junior Member
Curious about this one. Back in uni, unless I was doing something with stock images, everything I did I drew out myself. I'm not too good in Illustrator, that's still a bit of an ongoing learning curve, but I generally used that to come up with something myself.
A friend of mine - who is now working in the industry - often used royalty free stock vectors/templates/resources etc. save him drawing out something himself. Do any of you guys do that?
 
Simple tip for business...
if you can get something to save you time for a few quid (or cheap) which does the job as good or better than you can do it yourself, while allowing you to complete the main job on time/early for more money then it's a no brainer lol
You do it yourself of course :p
 
Sometimes it can happen to bump into very generic, cheap, and quick gigs which don't require a particularly customized work. Exclusively in cases like this, stock resources may be convenient.
 
I use stock stuff a lot. Whether it be photo's, vectors, patterns etc.
I'm not a photographer, or an illustrator so why would I attempt to create them? It would take me an eternity and they would look terrible.
Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with using stock pieces in your work as long as the final composition at the end is original and fit for purpose.
 
Nothing wrong with using stock images as long as it fits the style and saves you time without costing too much money. Though if you can do it yourself then it's worth doing so.
 
When I worked in agencies, there were always stock images/vectors etc used. Sometimes free, sometimes paid for. It was useful especially on quick turnaround projects.
There were cases where we used stock images as FPO only because we would be doing a photoshoot for said project but just wanted to get an idea of what sort of imagery we wanted to create and that was the easiest way to convey it to the client.
Now that I am illustrating full time, everything I do is hand done. I only use stock photos as references if I need to draw something from a certain angle, I will look at the stock photo and reference that for the angle only.
 
As most have said, I think we can summarise the answer to your questions as it depends on the type of job you have or project that you're working on.
If you're working as an employee at a design agency or something, then there is going to be more of an emphasis on turnaround times and so stock images are going to be used a lot more when the time-frame of the project is limited.
The priorities are different when you work for yourself, I think, and you can charge for that extra time to make a project look stunning. That's my experience at least. I usually do everything from scratch when it comes to design work, although some times I used sites like www.thenounproject.com to use as a starting point or for reference for icons.
 
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