Stay clear of the metaphor — photo branding
Smartphones, Instagram and Getty Images have made photography ubiquitous in our lives. Consider proposing a corporate brochure without photographs, or a website. Your clients and bosses might hyperventilate at the mere thought of it.
Yet it could be the gutsiest thing you do this year. And a smart one. Unless the reason you choose to use photography is specific to its medium. In other words, avoid using photography because “we need a picture here.” You don’t.
A photograph is worth a thousand words. But why do you need a photograph to say the exact same thing as the text? At the dismay of photo editors and designers, most clients look for the hand shake to illustrate collaboration or “can you find a metaphor for success?” No, I can’t, because they’re all awful.
So, whenever you see “illustration” or “metaphor” creep up in your brief, stop in your tracks. An illustration is, in today’s terms, a graphic to help assimilate complex information, ideally augmenting it by giving a specific interpretation or additional information with smart colour and hierarchy choices. Some of the best examples can be found in “Information is Beautiful,” a book which needs to sit on your desk if you’re anything close to a creative.
So, unless you use haiku in your brochure, your concise, well-written text should suffice to bring across your message. Otherwise we have a different problem.
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two things to highlight an aspect they share. In branding with photography it’s so common that it has become condescending. You really think I’m going to believe you are strong because you add an image of a lion? You sell yourself as long sighted with an image of a far away castle and trust this will reassure me?
After years of working as a photo editor and creative producer for shoots with commercial and fine art photographers alike, I’ve come to respect photography for its sophistication and depth. That’s why I love using photography and, equally, hesitate before I do so.
So when should we add images? And what kind? Create a photo strategy for your document and stick with it. This includes style, texture, tone of voice. Then use images that somehow seem to enter a conversation with the text. This sounds esoteric, but you can apply a few simple rules to avoid common visual traps (in addition to the above mentioned deadly sins):
- If it looks familiar, avoid it.
- If it seems the obvious choice, discard it.
- If you’ve found it on the net or on free stock image sites, know that anyone else, including your direct competitors, might use it, too.
- Create a visual link, a story, throughout the photographs of your communication product. Think of it as an exhibition rather than an adornment to each page.
- Use your space wisely. Try cutting the number of images in half and see if you can improve quality and resonance.
The last advice I want to give — provoking you, I hope — is to use photography for one of its strongest characteristics: to shock. This is not to say use shocking material to scare your audience. Benetton did this superbly decades ago, owns this visual device since then and made all new attempts to use it a sure failure.
But shock your audience by using photography for its own worth. Choose it because you think it’s brilliant, beautiful, transcendent and memorable. Know that some people will hate it, others will love it and admire you. But everyone will speak about it. And isn’t that the point?
