Searching for Graphics

Okay, so you don’t have a resident graphic artist to do all of your artwork.  Where do you go?  You cannot just copy any graphic that you find, because there are copyright laws prohibiting that sort of thing.

One option to consider is searching a royalty-free internet site like “Bigstock.com“.  We recently had a “women in ministry” conference, which we called “Side by Side.”  We found an adorable picture of three girls walking on a beach, hand in hand.  It perfectly depicted the message of the conference, namely that women’s ministry is not a one-woman show.  We need each other as we serve side by side together.  Since the girls were walking on a beach, the event decorations revolved around a beach theme.

Bigstock.com and other similar sites usually have a fee to download the graphic, and a few rules that come with usage.  These differ from site to site.  The prices can range from free to $9 or higher.  Some sites are ones where you join and for one fee you can download a certain number of graphics.  You can “lightbox” or “download” the images.  When you go this route, you do not need to worry about copyright info and giving credit.  When we purchased the photo of the girls, we paid once and used it multiple times.  One restriction limited the size of reproduction–we were not allowed to make a poster-sized copy of the image.  Of course, we were not allowed to send it to someone else electronically to be used for a different event.  None of the images are sold or used to make a profit.  They are strictly used to enhance our theme.

If you go this route, please make sure you carefully read the rules of the site you choose.