Your brand via photographic images

And why you should be using photography with care.

You must include no imagery in your identity and brand presentations that create any form of negative. A negative is any visual signal or association via that signal that works counter to your known visual values.

And here is the subtlety that most of us don't immediately understand: your values for what you SHOW, TELL and DO will usually NOT match the 'brand values' that a marketing company may typically present you with.

The values for visual elements, all visual components, are unspoken dynamics, auto-suggestions that perfectly tune all your presentations. Rather than complexity, the aim is to make things decision-making simple. For example, your choice of typefaces, colours and shapes will all conform to this formula. So will your choice of media, even your choice of sponsorship. Nothing is left to chance or placed into position without a complete understanding as to why. This includes factors previously mistaken to be intangible. Now you can evaluate all your marketing-related decisions with immediacy and clarity and from a formula so simple you can carry it around in your head.

This technique frees those in the creative process (as well as those previously considered outside of the creative arena) to purposefully challenge, enhance and further expand these values, and therefore the reach and power of your communications, in ways that might otherwise never be considered.

Sadly, and though this is a generalisation, it must be said that the majority of organisations and their agencies unwittingly stifle creative thought, because there is no workable understanding of values that can be articulated or shared either efficiently or rapidly. Instead of unleashing the minds of those paid to be involved involved, teams can all too easily become 'safe' and fall far below their potential to explore and intelligently develop with confidence.