The Importance of Strong Brand Imagery.

In this designers opinion, one of the foundations for building a strong brand is to ensure consistently strong imagery that represents your brand aesthetic. 

Often, the imagery is the first element of your brand that potential patrons will come into contact with, and so should deliver a clear, consistent message every time. 
Today I wanted to demonstrate this using two brands that hit the button every time for me. I've chosen to show you Zara and H&M, partly because I love their stuff, but also because these are two brands that I feel I can count on to deliver high quality images that capture the essence of the brand and always tell the same story. 

So first, Zara. 

Zara can be counted on to give us fuss free, beautiful assets time and time again. They don't tend to drastically change how they shoot their product and so as a result have built up a strong look and feel for their brand over the years. We tend to see the most deviation from the norm around Summer and Christmas time (remember the animated snowflakes anyone?). 

Their imagery can sometimes come across as slightly hard but the over-arching element is how the product is presented with minimal fuss and with a definite sense of sophistication. 

Now, H&M. Another brand that is renowned for their strong look and feel. H&M Take a slightly different tact to Zara, choosing to incorporate location photography into their offer. You'll find though that both location and studio based photography carry a fairly graphic and bright feel to them. H&M's images tend to look slightly more poppy, and whilst still slick have a more approachable, everyday quality to them.

Despite both hailing from Europe, there is a definite separation between these two brands' photographic approach. The thing that links them however is their conviction to what their brand should look like. There is very little change from season to season but this has allowed them to build a strong relationship with their followers who will always know where they stand with this brand. I'm pretty sure if we lifted the branding from their website most would still manage to identify these two companies in a crowd.

This is a really important element of creating a strong, long standing brand for me. Some of the most prominent brands at the moment don't need to announce their presence straight away and can rely on their imagery to do the work for them (I'm looking at you Apple!). Long story short, bring your images in line, the rest will follow. 

Happy Hump Day!

Svea xo