Can You Spot Good Brand Photography?

One of my favorite things about doing a brand analysis is looking at their photography. Often times people can easily recognize a brand by colors, fonts, or logos, but what about photography? Photography is an integral part of marketing and brand building. It is important to have a consistent style of photography that customers can begin to recognize.

Have you ever done a photography audit on your own brand? What about other brands? Looking at brand photography and making collages is a fun exercise to do. Not only does it allow for a spark of creativity, it can also help you see how important it is to have consist photography practices. I like to look a brand's Instagram, Facebook, and website to create a photography collage. For the examples below. I used Canva to create a collage of the photos I found. Let's look at two fun examples.

1. Free People Movement

Free People Movement is a great brand to study. As you can see from this collage I have made, they have a very consistent brand identity that is showcased in their photography. As the name implies, there is always movement in their photos. They like to showcase their models in beautiful poses. If the model themself is not in motion, typically the fabric or the material of the garment is. Their photography feels very airy and light. Free People is also known for creating very stylized outfits across all of their brands. This is another element we can see throughout each one of these pictures.

2. Disney

Most people are familiar with the Disney brand. As you can see from this photography collage, Disney always makes sure their photos have a "magical" feel to them. The quality is always very high and they use bright and cheerful colors. With the added brand recognition of familiar character faces, there is no mistaking what this brand is when looking at the photography. For a large company like Disney, I am sure that it can be a challenge to keep photography consistent across the brand. However, I still feel like they do a good job of staying consistent.

I hope that these brand photography audits have inspired you to look at other brands and create some collages of your own. Maybe your brand would benefit from a simple collage like the ones above. Let me know in the comments what other brands you would like to see, or if you try this exercise yourself!