The unbelievable chokehold Unsplash has on beginner developers

I remember the first time I fell in love. It was with a man, but not just any man.

The man.

I’m not the first person to say John Doe is a godly specimen with peak physical performance, but phew - he’s even more beautiful when you enlarge the photo.

If you recognize this man, you’re not alone. If you’ve used this photo before and are still using it, you’ve got a problem.

40% of developers use this photo somewhere in their websites, either for testimonials, hero images, and avatars.

John Doe is the face of Unsplash, and for good reason - he’s at the top of the page when you search up “people”.

But your potential employers won’t like seeing John Doe. Choosing the first photo you see off of Unsplash presents you as unoriginal, lazy, and uninventive.

But nobody who sees a John Doe photo says, “wow, this guy is lazy and unoriginal.” They’re more likely to think, “yeah, I’ve seen this before.” Which to be honest, might even be worse.

Imagine you have a stunning three-js website with 3D Torus Geometries whizzing through the page. A potential employer has his jaw dropped down in awe, but then he scrolls down and what does he see?

John Doe. After you see him once, you never want to see him again. All the magic in your website instantly dissipates. The illusion breaks. Your once potential employer, who is an experienced coder, knows how you got that picture of John Doe. He knows, and suddenly the magic trick isn’t so magical anymore.

If you remember your early days as a web developer, you’ll know those were the glory days. Everything was new and exciting. Like Indiana Jones, you discovered secret after secret, uncovering the inner workings of websites in plain sites.

Before, everything was magic. Websites like Google and Facebook amazed us. Now? Facebook runs a PHP server that queries Mark Zuckerberg’s giant SQL database, relaying all that data to a React Native frontend.

You’re proud when you know how a website works. But you also start to look down on it when you know you could make the same thing yourself.

I know this post might be biggest nitpick you’ve ever seen, but I wouldn’t have written it if it wasn’t true. A single known element of any magic trick ruins the magic.

On the surface, being a software developer looks boring. But you’re so much more than a nerd who drums on the keyboard. You’re an artist. You’re a magician.

Your job is to create a stunning illusion of beauty and functionality. Abstracting away all the databases and API calls, you create such a seamless user interface that normal people can only call it magic.

John Doe has no place in our illusion. A professional like you shouldn’t use him.

Conclusion

The reason why you have to avoid using common Unsplash photos isn’t because your users will notice, but because other developers will notice.

And often, those developers will be potential employers.

Using uncommon photos enhances the magic trick, and we’re more like magicians than knowledge workers.

If you treat web dev as magic rather than a set of instructions, you’ll end up with amazed users. And even better - amazed employers.