Forum Moderators: not2easy
My partner and I are building a site for our consulting company. We are trying to determine what images to use. In general, what do you think of sites that use graphics of people? Is this a good way to "humanize" the site -- or is it a little risky in that you may turn people off who don't identify with the image. Examples of sites that do something like this are:
[atlasdmt.com...]
[changesciences.com...]
What does everyone think -- thumbs up, or thumbs down?
Thanks!
Suka
If you're selling me something, it's reassuring to know what you look like, makes you more real and human. If you use the impersonal web to put up an impersonal picture of an unknown person, it doesn't help.
Using photos of people in advertisements & websites is without a doubt a tried-and-true element that should not be overlooked. Yes, you should definitly use photos of people on your website.
We've litterally had candidate clients chose us for their work because of our use of people photos.
Treeline's comments are quite valid however on using the *right* photos. And this is the hard part.
Everyone but the people who you are photographing agrees that you should use photos of the people you are representing. Company owners, executives, sellers, telephone people, etc. are all good candidates to be displayed. You absolutely CANNOT get away with a quick photograph that someone in the comapny took with the camera of the day. These photos require a professional photoshoot and makeup artist. This does NOT mean a "Glamour" photo you get at the mall. Anything outside of a professionaly done photoshoot will look amateure-ish and do more to hurt the company image than help it.
Photoshoots are expensive, however. And the candidates to be photographed sometimes aren't willing. And company employee turnover requires updates to any material using new / changed people. Two alternatives are using a model and using stock photography.
Stock photography is widely found on the net. A low-resolution photo (72 dpi) can be had for about $39-$125 depending weather it's royalty-free or not. The problem is, you'll find other sites using the same photos. While you can get away with this if the photos are used on inner-site pages in small sizes, you do not want this for larger, main-page shots.
Getting a model is a great solution since you will not only own the rights to the shots you take, but you are getting someone unique. And you can always have that model re-shot for different situations or as your company evolves, but still providing the company a "branded" face that will eventually become known (hopefully). Care must be taken in selecting the right model. This involves a good target audience review in determining your model's apprearance, age, ethnicity, etc. Another important factor is the model's ability to look "normal", as Treeline pointed out. The right facial expression can convey so much on both the concious mind and subconcious level, so having a professional model that can vary and create warm expressions is priceless.
I hope my brain-dump here helps you any!
While they are not cheap to initially purchase, they are better than the alternatives and you can reuse them for other purposes such as printed materials.
Make sure you use a diverse variety of people. While you can't use pictures of every possible ethinic group, you want to show that you do not discriminate.
