02 Nov How high-quality photography will elevate your brand
Imagery is a key elements of your visual identity
People don’t read, they scan. By scanning, imagery is the most obvious element of your branded visual system and will be noticed and unconsciously analyzed by your audience.
You have put so much energy into building your product or service. If you are proud of your work, you should transmit it through high-quality imagery, whether your identity includes illustration, photography, or both.
imagery is the most obvious element of your branded visual system
Transmit the quality of your service/product with good imagery
There is nothing worse than bad photography or old fashion illustrations. It will only make your potential customer think that if you haven’t updated your imagery, you probably don’t look to improve the quality of your service.
Elevate your brand with photography which reflects the quality of your product!
Help your customers project themselves into the result of using your service/ product.
People are looking to improve their lives by using your service or product. There has to be a happy ending to the story and you are the one who has to showcase it.
Photography or illustrations is another way of adding colour, texture or light to your visual identity.
Define what kind of imagery your brand needs? Are you trying to convey space, tranquillity? Or maybe you want to add colour without using a bright and colour palette.
The quality of the photos you use reflect the quality of the service or product you are trying to sell!
You don't need a huge budget.
Identify what needs to be tailored to your brand, and what doesn’t.
Good quality imagery doesn’t always mean you have to have a big budget to dedicate to it. If you can’t afford a branded photo shoot for all your imagery, think of what images or the most relevant to get created by a professional photographer or illustrator. If you are selling a product or you own a restaurant, you might want to prioritize high-quality product photos which will convey the quality of the materials, the textures, or even the smell of what you are trying to sell.
On another hand, if you are selling a service, you might want to have really good portraits of your team members to convey their expertise, friendliness, and will to help the customer. Humans connect with humans and if they are about to trust your company, they will want to know who is behind the scenes as well as who they will be talking to.
If you don’t have any budget at all for imagery, there are loads of free libraries available online. However, it is important to check image rights, stick to a style of photography and see if you can customize them with branded patterns, colours or graphic elements.
If you can't afford a branded photo shoot for all your imagery, think of what images or the most relevant to get created by a professional photographer or illustrator.
Vendo’s Brand is probably one of the most complete project I have worked on so far. After having defined the Brand fundamentals and then designed their visual identity (See the whole project here), I worked on the design of their website.
During the first discovery phase of the project, they told me that they had run research and had identified that their customer service was one of their main strengths. They have been recognized and praised for having a very close caring, and personalized relationship with customers and that’s what made them different from any other payment processing service.
If we mainly used free imagery which we customized with a colour layer, at the moment of designing their Company page, it was obvious it needed to include authentic photography of their team. This is when I suggested a branded photo shoot with professional photographer Sylvia Gutierrez.
Free images customized with colour filters and branded pattern
Branded photos for team portraits
This is when I suggested a branded photo shoot with professional photographer Sylvia Gutierrez.
Let’s work on making your idea visible.
I like to divide my branding process into 3 distinctive steps. It allows us to be aligned and communicate during the whole time and therefore to be more efficient.
Discovery
Defining your Brand fundamentals.
The first step to good branding is for me to understand why we are here, what you value, what the brand wants to transmit and what makes it different. We will go through the brand fundamentals during a collaborative workshop. You’ll be surprised how these exercises can be revealing.
Design
Creating your Visual identity.
Thanks to the discovery work, I will be able to work on visual proposals which will include the main visual elements of the Brand Identity (Logo, typography, colours, patterns, photography, iconography).
Each proposal will be illustrated with its application to a limited number of materials depending on your business. For example: a web site home page, business cards or social media feed.
Production
Producing all deliverables.
Once the Design is approved and agreed on, I will work on producing all the elements of the brand identity to deliver them in the formats and files which best match your needs.
Can Julley
Brand Strategy, Logo & Visual System Design, Marketing Collateral Design, UI Web & Design
Labstone
Brand Strategy, Logo & VIsual System Design, Marketing Collateral Design