No eye contact in sales page photos?

18 Mar 12 8:29 pm

This is a good lesson.

I learned something similar to this in architecture school.

When you're rendering a picture of a building, you want to put people into the image so that it shows how others will be able to interact with and use the building.

However, you never want to have those people looking directly out of the image or at the viewer.

This only focuses the attention on the people.

Instead, have people looking toward the building so that it draws attention back to the architecture, which is the main point of the rendering to begin with.

Thanks for the tip :)

19 Mar 12 4:28 pm

@Clayton: Thanks for your response, good example from architectural photography.

@Cecille: Yes, it's important (especially on a sales/landing page) that EVERYTHING support and leverage your Unique Value Proposition - that includes images, and all graphical elements - even the color scheme. I have info on color schemes for websites in my 'Art Head Start' ebook.

Besides the more subtle psychological effects of different combinations of Hues, Values and Saturations (the elements people mean when they say "color"), there is a stronger effect of "Busyness/Restfullness" for layouts and color schemes on web pages.

Imagine you're an interior decorator. How would you paint the interiors of: Hospital Recovery Rooms Vs Fast Food Outlets Vs a long corridor to the Departures gate of an airport?

By the way:
Hue = the frequency (or frequency range) of a particular color - think "rainbow"
Value = the intensity (even if you turn your sample into a gray, it retains it's Value) - think "brightness"
Saturation = Purity - think "grayness" or "muddiness"

By the way 2:
Do you realize that you are a sub-microwave radio receiver? Yes light is electromagnetic energy, no different from other electromagnetic waves/particles - except in its frequency. Electronic Engineers like to say "DC to Daylight" to indicate a very broad spectrum of electromagnetic energy.

We perceive something less than 1% of the known electromagnetic spectrum with our eyes, the part called "visible" - starting at red (just above Infrared) and going up to violet (just below Ultraviolet).

Also, there is no such (academic) word as "purple". "Purple" is slang and detested by many color experts. Therefore, the EM range above Violet is NOT called "Ultrapurple"! But we'll never be able to stamp it out of existence - no matter how hard we try, lol.

Hues:

A 3D model of a Munsell Color Tree I made (will have to animate it for a video tutorial one of these days):

Electromagnetic Spectrum:

my custom images from 'Art Head Start' ebook

[Sorry - "Once a teacher, always a teacher"]

19 Mar 12 8:20 pm

Yummmy page!

A Glimpse into the Meaning, Symbolism & Psychology of Color

By the way:
I came up with a fun way to get inspiration for color schemes. Was kinda beating my head against the wall thinking up different color scheme versions for a client. While approaching their front door for a design session, I walked through their extensive flower garden [shazam!] All you have to do to find dozens of beautiful color schemes is look at flowers.

By the way 2:
A useful little program for Windows is "Pixie". When you run Pixie, any pixel you hover your mouse cursor over is read out by its color code, so you can copy that color elsewhere. Free from Nattyware:
http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.php

15 Jun 12 9:45 am

This article is great! I didn't know that symmetry and direct eye contact can have so much influence on other people, but when I think of it.. yes you're completely right- especially your example of the lion is true! I really would agree on this point. I also thought that colors have a huge influence on people and photos in general! eg I would definitely prefer visiting a seranata florist than a gothic shop! Do you know what I mean? It's more friendly!

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