By Derek Prospero, Bayshore Solutions’ Design Team
It’s easy to forget a time when websites struggled to display even the smallest images. If you remember the early Internet days, you will recall tiny screens, limited colors, and slow-loading content – even simple text.
Consider for example everyone’s favorite case study, Apple.com. In case you weren’t there or don’t remember, here’s what it looked like in 1996:
Back then, sites were defined largely by their text and solid blocks of color. Displays were unable to produce sharp lines and curves. Broadband connections were unavailable to average consumers. And so, web design was itself handicapped by technological limitations. Today, many of those limitations are gone.
Flash forward 20 years, and this is Apple’s current homepage:
Increasingly, the best website designs are embracing standards defined by print design decades ago. And with attention spans simultaneously dropping, imagery is shouldering more of the message than ever before.
Less words, more pictures. That is exactly why it’s more important than ever that each picture be carefully selected and purposefully edited to shape the one-thousand-word story being told.
There is much subtext in a picture. Who, what, when, where. Colors, age, gender, expression, race, lines and composition are just a handful of the messages being silently conveyed in every photo. A perfect image is not necessarily without flaws, but rather serves its story and tells it clearly. A website’s homepage imagery will tell more about a company, and quicker, than any combination of words – even the company’s name itself.
Because of this, Bayshore Solutions places the highest priority on selecting and perfecting imagery. Whether custom or stock, there is no reason why colors shouldn’t underscore the brand. There’s no excuse to abandon a great location shot because of a cloudy sky when it can be fixed in post-production. Changing a person’s frown into a smile can drastically change the entire feel of a portrait. Artfully cropping a subject can increase its impact.
In this regard, imagery can be thought of as raw materials from which stories are crafted. It’s more vital than ever, and it will never go back.
If you would like help designing your business website to impress and engage your customers and drive the results you need, Contact us today!