Shutterstock rebrands as it goes all-in on generative AI

Fast Company

5 hours ago

If you ask the average American what Shutterstock is, they'll probably tell you it's a company that collects stock images. And back in 2003, when the brand was created, they would have been right. But now, more than 20 years later, Shutterstock is attempting to transform into a creative company that can also produce advertisements, generate AI content, and train large language models. To clue in the public on this change, it just got a sleek new look.
This week, Shutterstock rolled out a rebrand that includes a new logo, updated typography, a brighter color palette, and a modernized website. The look is clean and streamlined—everything you might expect from a leading-edge creative company. It takes Shutterstock from a visual identity that was reminiscent of the 2010s to one that reflects the company's growing ambitions.
Over the past several years, Shutterstock has expanded its stock library to encompass video and audio. It opened its own production arm called Shutterstock Studios that's created ads for La Roche-Posay, Lenovo, and Carhartt. And more recently, it has gone all-in on generative AI.
To that last point, Shutterstock has licensed its image and video datasets to tech companies including Open AI, Meta, Google, and Amazon to help them train LLMs. According to Bloomberg, Shutterstock made $104 million in AI licensing deals in 2023 alone. The company also collaborated with Databricks in 2024 to make its own user-facing text-to-image model, trained specifically to avoid copyright infringement.
So far, these moves appear to be boosting Shutterstock's business: In February, the company reported that full-year 2024 revenue was up 7%, to $935.3 million, compared to $874.6 million in 2023. Now, as Shutterstock leans into content creation and GenAI, it's giving its branding a makeover to match.
Rebranding from 2010s to 'business sophisticated '
According to Allison Sitzman, Shutterstock's VP of brand strategy, the company conceptualized this rebrand as a kind of 'reintroduction' to the public.
'I think our rebrand is really meant to introduce Shutterstock for who we are, which is not just a creative content provider, but really a full-scale creative partner,' Sitzman says.
That process started with rethinking the company's logo and wordmark, which formerly featured a sans-serif font with a stylized 'o' designed to mimic a camera's viewfinder. The concept made sense when it was first introduced in 2012, but became a bit dated both in terms of visual presentation and what it implied about the company's core offerings, which have since become much broader.
With the rebrand, the wordmark font has been updated to a wider, rounder type called Haffer, which is also used in various weights throughout the branding. Instead of the former viewfinder, the 'o' now features a kind of radiating ripple effect, which Sitzman says represents Shutterstock's widening impact.
Also on the chopping block was the brand's former color palette, which centered an intense red along with black-and-white accents. Now Shutterstock is turning to a core palette of neutral tones, accented by pops of red, orange, green, blue, and purple. Per the brand's updated visual guidelines, these hues were inspired by everyday office tools, 'like highlighters, file folders, and sticky notes.' In all, Sitzman characterizes the brand's transformation as an identity that's 'more business sophisticated.'
Doubling down on generative AI
Alongside the rebrand, Shutterstock is reinforcing its commitment to GenAI with a new 'Generative AI Pro' tier built for businesses. According to a press release, Generative AI Pro allows users to enter a text prompt and generate 4K visuals using 'a multi-model system made up of both Shutterstock's own models (built in collaboration with Databricks) and trusted third-party models from providers like Open AI, Amazon, and Google.' Essentially, Shutterstock's own AI-powered model recommender takes the written prompt and chooses which LLM to feed it to for 'more relevant, higher-quality results.'
To Sitzman, new AI features like these are part of the company's larger plan to 'remove any friction possible' from companies' creative processes.
'GenAI is not coming; it's here,' Sitzman says. 'I think we do ourselves a disservice, our teams a disservice, and our customers a disservice if we ignore that. At Shutterstock, our approach has always been: This is emerging territory. How do we approach it, just doing the best that we can to try to take care of the needs of our customers and . . . creators?'
The final deadline for Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Friday, June 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.