White Washed Stock Photography

Every graphic designer knows that searching for stock photos is an essential part of the job. It ranges from entertaining - how is a lady with spaghetti hair relevant to anything? Or why is that guy using his laptop in the pool? To utterly frustrating - why is every photo so white washed?

It doesn't matter what your search is, the lack of cultural diversity on stock photography websites is a reoccurring problem that surely must be troubling to more than just this solo little grapho. There is some content out there, but it's a little bit like Where's Wally trying to find the token non-white person. You literally have to search for 'diversity' or 'Asian' 'African American' 'Aboriginal' etc for people of different ethnicity to appear in photos, and that is not the world we live in.

Then there's the way in which women are represented - you guessed it - predominately sexy. In my 10+ years of working in the industry I have never purchased a 'sexy' stock photo for client work. As a woman I find this representation degrading, and as a graphic designer I find it useless.

So here's a call out to all the stock photographers out there. Take photos of non-whites. Take photos of diverse groups. Take photos of women NOT being sexy and please take photos of people that don't look like models. Give us a fair representation of the world around us so we can all make a positive difference to the advertising industry.