Hypothetical: what do you do with terrible material?

[the tree]

I just got the attached leaflet through the post and had to laugh at the way the guy with the mop looked like he'd just stepped out from the set of Shawn of The Dead. Then I figured that it propably wasn't really the designers fault, they had terrible photos to work with and I doubt many cleaning companies have fantastic leaflets anyway. So, given said photos and copy, how would you have approached it?

[the tree]

file attached here

[sparq]

Whats the problem? He looks like every janitor ive ever seen! HAHAHA!

[mtgentry]

Tree,

Im currently having this problem. The marketing people here at my company insist that I use these lame stock photos to "spruce up" our website. I resisted and fought them for several months and now theyve got someone else in charge of the website. He gladly puts up those crappy photos.

You could try to explain why the photos look bad but I dont think its worth it. I would have just tried to design the thing w/o the photos.

[Seraphaine]

The longer you work in web and print design, especially for freelance clients, you will find many of these projects. They want something that looks good, but cannot provide decent looking content.

Your best bet is to go to free image sites like http://sxc.hu/ to find something better or use creative cropping to focus on the parts that aren't so terrible. On your particular example I would have suggested focusing on text and design details and then used smaller pictures where the images focused on the service (as with the second image from the left in the top row). In many instances, good use of vector graphic design details to effectively show the product being sold will help alot more than a crappy photo of a guy with a bucket.

If you have some cool friends you may even bribe them to model for a few shots. Pizza and beer should suffice.