Photography

Although photography is not the primary image style we use in helping us to stand out, it still has an important role to play. It can help the reader to relate to personal stories/communicate the human aspect of our work. We will still use photography inside many communications, and on the covers of some.

It’s important to remember that on high-profile items (eg posters or leaflet covers) photography can’t help us to stand out from our competitors in the same way that silhouettes can. Silhouettes are our primary graphic device, and should feature as the main visual/cover image on communications, not photography.

We have identified three types of photography which we will be using: (1) general, (2) case study portraits and (3) events and news stories.

Although each of these types has its own particular purpose, they share some common characteristics. We want all our photography to feel:

– natural and honest (not unnecessarily posed or artificial)
– everyday (something we can all relate to)
– engaging and warm (catching a bit of emotion)
– active (people engaged in doing something)

All our photos are of people, or in a few cases other things like buildings, but we don’t use photography for conceptual images. We like to use photos large, and often full bleed - that's across a whole page, right to the edges. We don’t use cut-out photographs.