19. JStock: The Jewish Designer’s Marketplace
As a designer working on creative print and Web projects for Jewish organizations for well over a decade, one of the issues I encounter frequently is the need for high quality design resources — stock images & video footage, illustrations, fonts, commercial music, HTML templates, etc. While the Web is by no means devoid of materials for those working on Jewish communications, there is no single resource that gathers the best of these materials together into a single, efficient and affordable repository, nor which provides an open marketplace for creatives looking to hawk their creations to a Jewish market.
With thousands of Jewish organizations around the country churning out marketing materials day after day, hundreds more freelance designers working on projects for Jewish clients, and untold numbers of Jewish photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, typographers, musicians and Web designers looking to earn a living from their creativity, I’m quite certain that I am not the only one who sees the need for such a resource. So I came up with JStock: The Jewish Designer’s Marketplace.
JStock would offer free and commercial:
- Stock images, video & vector illustrations of Jewish objects, symbols, rituals, individuals, institutions, current events, archival materials, etc.
- Hebrew, Yiddish & Jewishly-inspired fonts for Mac and Windows
- Commercial Jewish music for video and audio soundtracks
- HTML, Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla templates for Jewishly-themed Web sites, including synagogues, community organizations, fundraisers, weddings, b'nai mitzvahs, etc.
- Indesign, Quark, Illustrator, Word and Publisher templates for Jewish calendars, bentshers, haggadahs, invitations, etc.
By reaching out to Jewish publishers (like Davka), creative agencies (like Flash90) and archival institutions (like the Center for Jewish History), as well as offering a marketplace wherein independent creatives can sell their wares (similarly to iStockphoto), JStock could assemble a rich and diverse collection of materials that would be available for direct download. Users could immediately download free content for free, or purchase download credits to acquire commercial content. Creatives can directly upload their original creations and, if approved, immediately start earning profit from the sale of their contributions. JStock would thus save Jewish designers countless hours wasted hunting down quality resources, while offering today’s Jewish creatives an easy way to profit from their work.
