Designing Around a Photograph You Do Not Have

How stock photography gets onto a site

Almost nobody chooses stock photography deliberately.

A layout is designed with image slots in it, the build reaches the point where those slots need filling, and the business does not have suitable photographs.

The deadline is close, so stock is bought, and it stays there for six years.

The decision that produced it was made much earlier, when somebody drew a layout requiring images that did not exist.

Ask what exists before drawing anything

• How many usable photographs are there.
• What are they of, actually.
• What shape and resolution.
• Who will take more, and when.
• What will never be photographable.

The last is the one that changes a design. Work done inside walls, in customers' homes, or in circumstances where photography is inappropriate produces a business that will never have a gallery, and designing one for them guarantees stock.

Design for the real number

Which is usually far lower than the layout assumes.

A business with eleven good photographs needs a design that looks complete with eleven, not one with thirty slots.

That means fewer, larger images rather than many small ones, since a handful of good photographs used generously reads better than the same number scattered thinly.

It also means designing sections that work with a photograph and work without one, rather than sections that collapse into an empty box.

Ask for the actual folder before deciding the layout, and count what is in it.

Most disappointment in this area comes from designing against an imagined library.

What works when there are no photographs

Since some businesses genuinely have none and never will.

Typography as the visual element: large headings, generous space, and a clear hierarchy carry a page without a single image.

Colour blocks and rules to separate sections, which is what the typography-led approach uses instead of pictures.

Diagrams or simple illustrations of the process, which can be made rather than photographed.

Numbers presented prominently: years, jobs completed, response times, all of which are visual when set large.

And the work itself in words, specifically, which is what a photograph would have been standing in for anyway.

A worked example

A business whose work happens inside customers' homes had a site full of stock photographs, none of which showed anything they had done.

They had about fifteen genuine photographs, mostly of components and completed detail, and no wide shots of anything.

The rebuild used a typography-led layout with no hero image, three large detail photographs across the home page, and the remainder distributed one per service page.

Where there was nothing suitable, the section used a heading and a short paragraph rather than an image.

The result had fewer images than the original and looked considerably better, because every one was real.

Enquiries mentioned the photographs, which had never happened with the stock.

Make the missing image obvious in the design

A practical technique during the build.

Use a plain grey box with the words describing what should be there, rather than a temporary stock image.

A temporary stock image becomes permanent, reliably, because it looks finished and nobody is reminded.

A grey box saying photograph of completed installation needed is a visible item on a list.

Review those boxes before launch and decide for each: take it, commission it, or redesign the section to not need it.

That decision made deliberately is the whole point, and it almost never happens when a placeholder looks acceptable.

Build a shot list instead

Where photographs are possible but do not exist yet.

List exactly what the design needs: subject, orientation, and roughly what should be in frame.

Give it to whoever is on site, since a specific list produces usable photographs and a general request to take some pictures does not.

Ten specified shots taken on a phone over a fortnight will cover most small business sites.

And design the layout so it improves as photographs arrive rather than requiring them all before launch.

That way the site can go live with six and be better with sixteen.

Allow for bad photographs too

Since what arrives is frequently not what was specified.

Design so images can be cropped to a consistent shape without losing the subject, which means avoiding layouts that demand a wide panoramic crop.

Avoid designs requiring images with empty space for text overlay, which almost no real photograph has.

Avoid anything needing a transparent background or a cut-out, which requires editing nobody will do.

Square and portrait crops survive amateur photography considerably better than wide ones.

Where the photographs will live

Worth settling early, since the practical failure is not taking them but finding them later.

Photographs taken on site end up on individual phones, and the person who took the best one leaves eighteen months later.

Agree one place they get put, with a name that says what each shows, and make it somebody's job to move them there weekly.

That is the difference between a business with a growing library and one that starts from nothing every time a page needs an image.

It also means the next site, whenever it happens, is designed against a real folder rather than an imagined one.

The counter-case

Stock is not always wrong.

An abstract or illustrative image, clearly not pretending to be your premises or your staff, is honest and sometimes the right choice.

Some sectors also genuinely cannot show their work, and a well-chosen library image is better than a page that looks unfinished.

And a business with no photographs and no prospect of any is better served by a good stock choice than by waiting indefinitely.

Count what exists before designing, use grey boxes rather than placeholders, and design sections that work without an image.

Before drawing a layout

1. Ask for the actual folder.
2. Count what is usable.
3. Ask what can never be photographed.
4. Design for that number, not more.
5. Use grey boxes, never placeholder stock.
6. Write a shot list for the gaps.
7. Prefer square crops over wide ones.

Step five is what prevents the whole problem, since a placeholder that looks finished stops being a placeholder the moment the deadline arrives.

The wider ordering problem is covered in designing the page before the content exists.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.