Digital image library Curation & Strategy

Creating a Cohesive Image Library.

Throughout my career as an experience designer, I’ve cultivated many skills, and let me tell you, becoming an expert at image selection has proved to be one of the most valuable.

I’ll start by saying that I empathize with the challenges associated with building an image library. Image searches are time-consuming. Defining business cases can be difficult (though I hope this process makes it easier). The subjective nature of the work alone can result in some of the most challenging feedback we receive as designers and content managers.

But ultimately, having a cohesive image library will streamline content management, support visual design, and increase brand recognition. When you have the right image at the ready, your team can put more energy into making a thoughtful, polished design.

Evaluate Your Needs and Audit Your Existing Images.

An image library should contain custom photography that suits your needs, with stock images sprinkled in between to fill the gaps. Images will include your website images, but may also contain images that fulfill print needs, training guides, social media, or other collateral. The number of assets and the nature of the content is largely business-dependent and shouldn’t be confused with a Digital Asset Management system, or DAM.

Regardless of what experience or collateral you’re working toward, start by evaluating your needs and consider what is already available in your existing brand assets. If you don’t have an icon set, for example, now may be the time to consider adding it to your list of image needs, as most stock photography sites also have vector assets.

And again, don’t neglect your existing assets — taking a look at what you need and what you have provides a starting point in your search and helps define a visual and tonal direction.

Create a List of Image Priorities.

Understand where there are gaps in your existing image library, create a list, and organize your assets. If you primarily need imagery to accompany social media posts and fill out your offerings decks, create a list of the categories or ideas that are in need of assets. As a highly visual person, I find that it helps to create folders for each list item nested within a project folder, then organize existing images into those folders — but do whatever works best for your team and systems.

The image library typically lives within the “Brand Assets” folder within the asset manager. Regardless of where your library lives, the idea is to establish a system that can be handed off to anyone, so that no one’s digging through masses of folders to locate that one image you know describes “lifestyle” just right.

Keep Evolving Your Image Library.

Once you’ve dropped the assets into their coordinating folders, your image library may feel like it’s complete, but your job isn’t quite done. Your image library should be an ever-evolving and growing resource — much like other digital assets and processes. By committing to evolving your library over time, auditing your existing assets, setting up clear priorities and folder structures, and searching wisely, the image library curation process becomes an iterative, scalable, and useful effort.