Image Libraries

These are some of my favorite libraries to search for blog and social media images.

While there are many free images, some of these sites also host paid images. So be careful to select the right license for the proper use… and give credit to the original artist when you use a freebie whenever you can (as you see below).

https://pixabay.com/

https://unsplash.com

http://foter.com

https://stocksnap.io

http://gratisography.com

http://freedigitalphotos.net

http://www.flickr.com

http://www.picsearch.com

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images

http://unrestrictedstock.com

https://freerangestock.com

http://pdphoto.org

http://www.fromoldbooks.org

http://www.clker.com

http://www.stockvault.net

http://openphoto.net

http://superfamous.com

http://picography.co/#

http://getrefe.tumblr.com

And still more links to deeper libraries…

https://designschool.canva.com/blog/free-stock-photos

https://www.koozai.com/blog/content-marketing-seo/61-places-to-find-free-visual-content-marketing-resources/

Photo by Norbert von Niman on Unsplash

Do you mean Style or Functionality?

old-door-lock

My lovely wife and I own about half of the vintage (old) cedar-sided house where we live in Lilburn. Like an idiot, I painted it a nice chocolate color, so it virtually screams, “Chew on me!” to every nesting varmint in my neighborhood. Decisions have consequences and, yes, I digress.

In the master bath we have a shower stall with sliding doors. It’s a simple affair with chrome trim (aluminum, I’m being generous), a towel bar that doubles as a handle, and semi-frosted glass. Not the fancy frosting they have today but the old warped glass they used circa 1980. You know — the kind that looks like the glass maker messed up? No clear section at the top. No laser-etched roses. Just your basic two sheets of glass that move back and forth, hanging from little plastic rollers at the top.
[bctt tweet=”Do you mean Style or Functionality?”]
The doors work pretty well now, but they’ve had issues. Did I drop the vintage hint already? A couple of years ago they were sticking rather badly when you tried to roll them and the results were not stellar. Sometimes, I would come into take a shower and find that the doors were completely jammed — as in pulled off the track and immovable. This was the result of my charming bride (remember her?) getting frustrated with the sticky doors and jerking them upward. Now a semi-violent upward motion, as you might guess, is not the “as designed” movement for a sliding glass door. This pulls the rollers out of their tidy little groove at the top and causes them to, well, not be rolling any more. Instead they are jamming. This is good for guitar friends but bad for shower doors. After a short sigh, I would reset the door by hoisting it up and gently guiding the rollers back into their familiar groove. Somewhere around iteration ten of this cycle, I decided to look more deeply into the matter.

Turns out the rollers, and not the dirty track at the top that I had wiped out several times, were the issue. Obtaining new ones from my trusty Amazon account (any fans in the crowd?), I installed them in about twenty minutes and rehung the doors. Problem solved.

If you toured my home as a potential buyer, and overlooked the clarion call to birds and squirrels, you would eventually look in the master bath. Correctly, you would deduce that the shower stall is quite out of style. The chrome trim is old and starting to corrode around the edges. The glass is boring and there are no special touches to remember fondly to your spouse upon your return home. If you closed your eyes, however, and slid the doors back and forth, you would think these are brand new doors, so smooth is their operation. They are highly functional, but not stylish.

Which brings me, at last, to my point. If you are half as persistent as the birds dwelling in my siding, you are still with me and the payoff is at hand.

Suppose I replaced my shower door frame with something in a nice bronze color, and updated the glass to be clear at the top with a pretty laser-etched drawing in the middle. The shower would look very different. That is, it would have a more modern style. But it would work exactly as it did before. That is, the functionality would be identical — sliding doors hung from plastic rollers. If I changed the doors out to use hinges instead of rollers, the door would then work differently, even if I kept the same style.

Now for the application. You knew there would be one, right? This isn’t a fine art site, after all. The next time you’re in a conversation about software, whether it is a website or an accounting package, and someone confuses you with talk about changes or new features, ask them this question: “Are you talking about the chrome or the rollers?” When they cock their head at you like the RCA dog, clarify with this: “Are we talking style or functionality?” Are we changing the way it looks or the way it works?

  • Look = Style
  • Work = Functionality

Programmers and User Experience experts make things work the way they should. They make software useful and efficient. Graphic Designers and style experts make it look beautiful and be consistent with your brand. Occasionally you will find people who do both.

Hopefully this little trip through my antique animal sanctuary will help you use the right words in your next debate about style vs functionality. I wish you smooth rolling.

 

Photo credit: Atelier Teee via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Avoid Technical Extortion

tied-manHave you ever had the sick feeling of being held hostage by an outside expert? Perhaps you felt helpless that you couldn’t regain control of your project. Maybe you felt angry because the budget kept creeping upwards. You probably wanted a project-sized “undo” button!

In the course of a technical career spanning more than three decades, I have asked customers pay more than they expected for products that I delivered. They felt a bit ‘taken’ and I felt bad for putting them (or allowing them to put themselves) in that situation. We can find ourselves in this mess for a number of reasons.
[bctt tweet=”Are you being held hostage by your technologists?”]
Technical people tend to underestimate projects. It’s not that they don’t want to be accurate, but rather that estimating a complex project is difficult. It often feels more like a black art than science. I’ve seen it done well, fair, and poorly but I’ve never seen it done perfectly. Most experts agree that estimates are almost always wrong.

Another factor is impatience. As engineers, we like to give customers what they want right away, so we tend to rush the process. There is also a natural fear that if we don’t trim our bids to the bone we will not get the business. The net effect is that we sometimes disappoint customers later by failing to meet deadlines. Schedules slip and costs increase because development takes longer than planned.

Then there’s the whole client management challenge. We should always manage a customer’s expectations so that they are not surprised, but explaining to them that something they want will cost more or is “out of scope” can feel like intestinal suicide. We are not all people-pleasing cowards, mind you, but it can be very difficult to disappoint people. Avoiding confrontation, of course, is a great way to create unhappy customers later.

In addition to being the provider, I have also bought software, websites, and other technical products produced by others. I have been a victim and I know firsthand the pain of cost overruns, disappearing vendors, and shoddy workmanship. By and large, the vast majority of technical people you meet will have good skills, a genuine desire to please, and reasonable prices. That doesn’t mean that your project will succeed. As a buyer, you have a big part to play in creating a favorable outcome.

My hope is that the scar tissue that produced this article will help you to:

  • Plan better
  • Buy smarter
  • Succeed with projects

Continue reading “Avoid Technical Extortion”