Our everyday environments are so filled with advertisements that we barely even notice them anymore.
Endless stock photos, generic slogans and overly-orchestrated designs have made the original purpose of advertising – to stand out – ironically redundant.
As brands race for that immeasurable sense of ‘uniqueness’, they’re often doing the opposite, blending their identities into a blanket background of marketing campaigns that are all just trying to do too much at once.
Sometimes, it really is a picture that speaks a thousand words
Photography – and good photography at that – doesn’t come cheap.
But there’s not much that can replace a powerful photo, and that has to count for something. Especially when it comes to getting your audience’s attention.
Whether it’s a beautiful project photo or an in-depth shot of a complex product, bespoke photography can tell a brand’s story in a way that stock imagery just can’t compete.
When the CRUSH team worked with McMillan Coppersmiths to develop their brand and marketing, photography played a key role in portraying the beauty and heritage of their work.
Not only do their photos reflect the McMillan brand as a centuries-old, traditional Scottish coppersmithing firm, but they are completely unique and ownable to them. When you look across McMillan’s materials, be it their website, brochure or and social media, their photography serves as a thread that runs throughout their brand’s identity and design.
Effortlessly cohesive.
Developing your photographic identity
A bespoke album also provides a great basis for how designers can then treat and edit stock photos to align with the look, tone and moods of your brand’s photographic identity.
By putting in that extra little bit of effort, you can keep your brand’s imagery up to date with a blend of bespoke and stock photos that don’t look so different.
Standing the test of time
Often, people just see the upfront cost of photography and overlook its potential long-term ROI.
But when shots from a 2010 photoshoot are still being used across brochure designs, website pages and social media posts today (and still looking as fresh as they did when they were first taken), that has value.
And especially when it comes to design, having a good set of on-brand, high-res and unique images to work from is a saving grace – taking a brochure design, an exhibition banner, a website page and or even a social media post from a 6 to a 10.
Unthank came to us looking for some support after they grew tired of struggling to communicate their community-led sustainable farming mission through generic stock photos.
Visiting in the autumn of last year, we captured a suite of photos on the small, family-run farm that showcased them, the care for their animals and the love they have for what they do.
This wasn’t just about developing bespoke photos, but about showing real people, in real settings.
Not stock, not AI. Human!