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Lesson 7: An image suite

Put down your pens (or typing fingers): we’re doing things a little differently this week! You’ll find these lessons are a lot shorter than those that came before, and there will be no new workbook activities or videos.

Instead, in this lesson, you’ll be dusting off your camera* (a smartphone camera is fine), heading out into your home or neighbourhood, and building a suite of images that you can use in your brand. This will include:

  • Branded image suite: general “on-brand” images that you can use on your website, in your newsletters, in social media and in e-books, online courses and brochures, to add colour, interest and beauty to your content

  • Maker images: that is, photographs of you doing the thing you do

  • Storytelling products: photographs of the things you make, curate or sell, showcased as “moments” to help your right people imagine having them in your lives

  • Descriptive products: photographs of things made, curated or sold, this time designed to provide accurate descriptions of the colours, sizes and textures of your objects

  • Free stock photos: a short list of Creative Commons image sites you might want to dip into, if you are not ready to create your own

Once you have this handy image suite, you’ll be able to dip into it whenever you need to, to populate images for your website, newsletters, blogs, e-books, social media, and more. Naturally, you’ll also be adding to the images here over time, after Let it Grow finishes, but our goal this week is to set you up with images that are immediately workable, and very practical.

*Of course, photography is not your only option; you may wish to illustrate your brand in other ways, including paintings and drawings, patterns, infographics, video, and more. But photography is the easiest, most commonly used and most accessible visual resource, so that’s what we will focus on in this lesson. If you later choose to create visuals in other mediums, most of the guidelines you’ll find here will still apply.

 

“Don’t shoot what it looks like.
Shoot what it feels like.”

— David Alan Harvey

Set up folders

Before you begin the activities in this week, create some folders in your computer so you can keep everything neatly organised and easy to use:

  1. Create a new folder in your computer, called “Photography”

  2. Create a sub-folder called “Bio Shots” (drag your self-portraits into it)

  3. Create a second sub-folder, and call it “Branded Imagery”

  4. Create a third sub-folder, and call it “Maker Images”

  5. (optional) Create a fourth sub-folder, and call it “Products”

Photography guidelines

Read through these Photography Guidelines before you attempt any of the activities or challenges in this lesson: they are basic tips and tricks that will help ensure your brand and all your beautiful work are given their best chance to shine through.

  • First, go on the hunt for locations, props and clothes that align with your Visual Style (page 6 in your Brand Style Guide)

  • Aim to have at least one colour from your colour palette (page 6 in your Brand Style Guide) in every image

  • Always use natural light. Move furniture around if you have to, even if it means setting up pretend “rooms” beside the open front door

  • Shoot wide (ie, zoom out). This gives you the option to crop in if you want to, but also provides you with more editorial flexibility

  • Shoot square (ie, leave equal space above, below, left and right). This way, you can adapt the image to portrait or landscape formats according to your needs (and it will look good on your Insta grid)

  • Follow the rule of thirds. This means having the subject of your image either a third to the left or right of the image, rather than right in the middle. Or having your horizon line at the one or two-thirds line, rather than cutting your image in half. If you forget the rule of thirds when shooting, as long as you’ve remembered to shoot wide and square (see above), you’ll be crop your image into a “thirds” frame later on

  • If you’re photographing yourself or other people, ensure there’s nothing weird in the background that appears to be sticking out of anyone’s head, and nothing distracting in the shot (often, our eyes miss the “distracting things” and we don’t see them until we look at the photographs), so make the effort to check and shoot again if needed

Action station

Take yourself through the following activities,
starting at Activity 1.