We have a persistent problem at Sugarvet. Many of our users don't have public photos in order to protect their privacy and provide anonymity. It's understandable. From a design perspective across the Sugarvet application, this can present some challenges. A default, anonymous user image such as the one we occasionally load in some public-facing assets such as our forum isn't exactly pleasing to the eye, and even if it were, default images suck. A default image eventually blends into the background and our brains will filter them out. We definitely don't want that.
Instead, we decided to use public domain imagery and art to provide users more interesting defaults. We've been using public domain art for our Blog since we started Sugarvet. Stock imagery is boring, a lot of the time there isn't a justification for custom artwork, and using generative AI to make blog assets is stupid.
All Sugarvet users can now select from public domain imagery sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive.
Sources
The Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA) is a project run by The Public Domain Review (PDR). PDR is registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company (#11386184), "...a category of company which exists primarily to benefit a community or with a view to pursuing a social purpose, with all profits having to be used for this purpose." You can support the Public Domain Review by donating at the following page:
https://pdimagearchive.org/donate/Generated avatars
We've also added support for generated avatars. These avatars are deterministically created from a seed. We will be improving support for these, such as adding animations.
