Today’s Site of the Day is Schtock, a collection of cleverly assembled design using Corbis Stock imagery. The site was launched on September 5 by an anonymous employee who tells readers that he/she has put together work from the previews that any member of the public can find at his/her unnamed site. Here, for example, is a redesigned treatment of Joe Strummer, lead singer from The Clash.
The anonymous designer gives us the impression we’re seeing something illegal and unknown to his/her employer.
“I work at a major stock photo company cataloging images. The majority of the stuff I work with will never see the light of day for no other reason than that most people don’t know it’s available to them. It’s a shame which I’m trying to remedy with this site. As an amateur designer, I occasionally can’t help but play around with the images I see floating across my desk on a daily basis. This site contains the results.”
“For legal reasons (using the images is already illegal, but I don’t want to really screw myself by using hi-res images from the database), all the images you see on the site were created with the preview thumbnails that anyone can access. I’m also refraining from stating specifically what stock company I work for for the simple reason that I don’t want to potentially lose my job over this.”
The Denver Egotist went searching for clues as to where the stock images came from and discovered evidence that Schtock is an elaborate viral campaign for Corbis.
Al the images featured on Schtock can be found fairly easily with some intuitive searching on Corbis.com. The phone number given on the Schtock blog, +42-20030449, is the reference number for “Bingo”, an image at Corbis.
The site launched with fifteen images and now is up to 21. It’s worth a visit, viral campaign or not.