Components of a Visual Brand - Casting the right Imagery for your brand
Welcome back to another session regarding the components of your brand. So far we have covered how to come up with the unique logo that will be the face of your brand, as well as how to navigate and choose the colour palette that best evokes your brand’s personality. So what comes next?
Visuals have a huge impact on audience engagement. There is plenty of research proving that content with relevant imagery gets more views than content without. Think about the amount of visuals we see everyday, both in the digital and physical worlds. Imagery is at the base of any marketing strategy. Now more than at any point in history, thanks to social media and smart devices, people are far more likely to share visual content than content with no visual support.
So how do we properly use images? How can we deepen that emotional tie between a costumer or potential customers and your brand? Clients and designers alike can struggle when it comes to finding the right imagery to accompany a given marketing strategy. Here are a few pointers on how we tackle this challenging branding phase.
Brand in Mind
Remember your brand’s core values and how arduous the process to achieve the succinct list of 5 words was? Well, this is where they will come into play once more. Your visuals need to tie in with these core values. They need to translate into visuals the perception you want you customers to have about your brand’s look & feel. That is why you choose your images with intention.
Create an Emotional Connection
Emotional connections are fundamental when speaking about effective communication. To have a big impact, your images should tell a story and evoke an emotional response from your audience. This doesn’t mean you have to make them cry, just to be clear. Your images might make them laugh, they might inspire them, motivate them, or even cause them to rise up in anger.
Quality Matters
Real life photography is a very popular medium for many brands. However, clients and audiences are savvy; they can see through images that are generic or cliché and unfortunately will not engage with them. Strive to use the highest-quality images possible. This means you might have to spend some money on your images. Hire a professional photographer or purchase high-quality stock images. Consider it a worthwhile investment into your brand.
Follow the Rule of Thirds
Choose photographic subjects that have been shot with the rule of thirds, especially for your social media campaigns. Clean, decluttered photos with lots of negative space generally get more engagement than ‘busy’ photos. The rule of thirds is a well-known photographic technique which breaks an image into a 9×9 square grid. This technique places points of interest in the intersections or along the lines. People’s eyes tend to naturally head for the intersection points, rather than dead centre.
Colour Coordinate
Once you have a selection of imagery that is on point with your brand’s values and evokes an emotional response, you are ready to think about colour coordination. While you don’t need to limit yourself, you should favour visuals that best carry off the colour palette chosen for your brand. Remember, colours carry a lot of psychological weight and emotional associations, so keep them in-line with your brand.
Keep tuned in, as we will be addressing the other brand components during the coming weeks!
Did you find this helpful? Are there any other questions regarding branding that you’d like us to tackle? Please leave all your comments below. We can’t wait to read them!
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Happy Musings!!
