Let me take you back in time. Back to a world before computers were used by designers. The world in which I began working as a designer at UK Elle magazine. The year was 1986 and photography existed as prints or transparencies. They came into us designers and we would immediately pass them on to our PMT (Photo Mechanical Transfer) operator with some print size requests for us to begin working with. We would then pick up our rough black and white prints which we would then photocopy down to size we wanted for our layouts. Scalpels, glue and card sheets were what we used to compile our pages. We were the masters of the photocopier, resizing images to within a millimeter of what we needed for our grid sheets. The process was one of a highly skilled collageist. To many it was a black art, to us it was our secret creative power. A tactile process based on an understanding and respect for the images and words we were given. It also kept the management away from our department. After all we had knives and our hot wax, lighter fuel and Cow Gum gave off noxious fumes.

In 1989 I was sent on a nine-day-training-course to learn how to use an Apple Mackintosh. The replacement for our knives and glue. The guy who was teaching us explained how we needed to draw a box to put our images in on the screen and how we could then bring our images into the boxes we’d drawn. How do we know what size box we needed? We asked. He couldn’t answer.

Suddenly, the box was more important than the image. The box came first, and the image came second. We knew this was not good. The image was now the content for the box and not the lead for the design.

That was then and this is now and my story may sound quaint and irrelevant. However, stay with me on this. Today photography is dominated by the box. Instagram is nothing more than a collection of photographs in preconfigured boxes. YouTube is the same for the moving image. It is therefore no surprise that many use the term ‘content creator’ when referring to photographers and writers. Those that do in my opinion demonstrate a lack of respect for both disciplines and a love for the box. The box that needs to be filled. The four lines that define the crop, the use and the position of the photograph. The box that an image needs to fit.

I know that some who will read this will say “get with it old man” times have changed and now content is king so why not use the term. Well, younger person let me explain why such a term is not such a great idea. I’ll deal with photography but the same could be said for the written word.

By reducing photography to a box filling entity we dumb down the very act of creating the image. We negate its importance and reduce it to nothing more than a product used to avert the eye rather than inform, delight or educate. In doing so we reject the importance of the photographer. Their skill, experience and knowledge. This is the true impact of the ‘content creator’ label. It describes someone who is controlled by the box. The need to make content. Nothing more, nothing less.

I have always respected and will always respect the committed photographer. I feel the same about the dedicated writer, journalist and broadcaster. As a designer I saw the importance of both and the power that could be created by a respectful creative bringing together a story with understanding. I never saw either as providers of content but storytellers travelling a similar road towards communication.

Content creation is a production line of images, words and speech without passion or heart and it is not for me as a description or process. As the late great Woody Guthrie sang “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, little boxes on the hillside and they all look just the same.”

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

Scott’s book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale now wherever you buy your books.

©Grant Scott 2025