What are you trying to communicate?

Before you design your website (or corporate identity piece), it's very important that you decide who your target audience is, what their problems are (or what they want), and how you can help them. You can't appeal to everyone, and shouldn't even try.

Think about how the goods or services that you provide are different than your competitors and what type of buyer receives the greatest benefit from your unique way of doing things. Then decide on how best to communicate to those buyers what they'll gain by purchasing from your company (and what they'll lose if they don't).

Only after this is done should you decide on what images will reinforce your message and how they should be executed. The photography should be crafted with a consideration of what you want to communicate and who you're appealing to.

You want images that show your uniqueness, are believable, convey quality, work together stylistically and strengthen your brand.

Quote of the day

"If you can't turn yourself into your customer, you probably shouldn't be in the ad writing business at all."

Leo Burnett

Recent project for a website

This is one of many images created during a one day photo shoot for a company's website. I was hired to create images of their staff and facilities. They provide imaging analysis for the biotech industry.

Use photos that show your uniqueness.

Your sales copy, headline, and photos are all made stronger the more unique they are.

We are surrounded by a sea of companies all trying to get our attention, and most of them are just copying what most in their industry are doing because they haven't thought things out.

If your headline and sales copy could be used by your competitors, you're not giving buyers any compelling reason to buy from you. You must emphasize what makes you different.

Likewise, your photos must do the same. They should convey some of the "personality" of your business, and it must be obvious to the person viewing them that these photos are of real people and show your real facilities. That's the only way to foster trust, which is exactly what stock photos do not do.

Your photos should also have captions whenever possible, as they're read much more often than sales copy. This way you can communicate many of your benefits whether all of your sales copy is read or not.

Quote of the day

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Albert Einstein