Digital Directions - Columns

Immediate Clip Art
It's late. Your deadline is tomorrow. You really need a photo of an antique radio... and you need it right now!
No problem. If you've kept your America Online account.
Certainly there is clip art available all over the Internet. But finding it and downloading it can be more difficult than you need right now. Clip art libraries are often unfortunately stored on Windows or Unix servers with names that don't tell you what the image is. And searching for a specific image subject is near impossible.
But on AOL, there's this wonderful utility called File Search. By using Keyword (command-K) and typing File Search, you can find whatever you are looking for, whether it's clip art, software utilities, discussions or companies.
In our example of an antique radio, you might type in "radio art." Up will pop a list containing all pict, gif, eps, and tiff files containing the description "radio." You can then double-click on any listing for further information, then click on "download now" or "download later."
The "Download Later" option is great if you are collecting a list of files to download. After you have selected several images for "download later," you can go to your "Download Manager" (accessible under the File menu), and start the files downloading to your computer while you go get that much needed coffee.
Copyright free? In the description of each file is mention of whether or not the file is copyrighted. Most of the time I have looked, I haven't run into too many images that are copyrighted. Some artists just want you to credit them, and some like minimal payments.
Quality? Quality unfortunately is sometimes a trade-off for this immediacy. Many artists upload whatever files they have because uploading gives the author free online time in exchange.
So, for $9.95 a month, five free hours, you can get immediate art and make your deadline with AOL.

Other Sources
Be sure to check all your design magazines and computer catalogs for mention of stock photos and art that's available via online services, the internet, or a proprietary bulletin board. Save this information on a Rolodex card or somewhere and be sure to call the company during business hours about how to access files late at night if you need to. That little bit of planning can save you, as you can imagine!