Directing attention with picturesby Patricia Mayo

In the first installment in this series on communicating a message with pictures, I introduced this concept and talked about the purpose of a picture, how to use images to draw attention, and putting the reader in the picture’s shoes.

This time I get to dig into one of my all time favorites - directing attention. The nuances of this use are just so much fun to me - not that I take great joy in fiddling with people’s heads. I just like figuring out each case and exactly how your eyes will be influenced by a picture.

What Are You Looking At?

Optical Illusion

It is basic human instinct to be curious about what someone else is looking at. This dates all the way back to man’s hunter-gatherer nature and self-defense mechanisms.

What someone else is looking at could mean life or death for us, so it is a top priority to see for ourselves what is so interesting to someone else.

However, just any ‘ol eyes looking at something you want seen won’t do. There are a few key components to using this technique to its highest potential.

1. The Whole Face: Just a pair of disembodied eyes doesn’t quite have the same effect as a whole face. The key is to make it look real and natural.

2. He’s My Friend: The overall appearance and body language has to say “friend” or at least “on my side.” So shoot for an attractive picture that represents your target audience.

3. Subtlety Rules: The best marketing is completely invisible to the marketed. A great big fake smile with hands pointing obviously to the object is too blatant. Just the eyes looking at it is plenty.

The Good and The Bad

Directing attention with an alien eye

Excellent - Unbiased.co.uk: With huge amounts of white space all around, Unbiased has made these alien eyes the primary focal point of the entire page. You can’t help but see this cute little dude right off the bat, and it says “hey look here” with extreme prejudice.

The awesome thing is - you don’t even really know just how much power mister alien has over you. It is ever so subtle to the conscious mind, but subconsciously that iris being slightly up and to the right makes “Independent Financial Advice” the most important thing in the menu, and “Why do I need Independent Financial Advice?” the most important thing on the page.

Second to that is “Latest News,” which is what the second little eye is looking at. The mouth is even pointing at it, which kinda says “this is what people say about us” or “this is what you should say about us.”

Look at something besides the camera

Epic Fail - DerekScholl.com: Looking straight at the camera may be a great way to evoke confidence, but the way it is used here just fails miserably.

Every single picture has Derek looking right at the camera. Overuse will make any tactic lose its effect and, in this case, changes the message to “vanity” instead of “confidence.”

On top of that, very few of the pictures even bother to use his body language to direct attention toward the text. If anything, Derek’s body language says “look at me, not the text.”

Poke around his web site, you’ll see what I mean pretty quickly.

Asides:

You should test whether a picture of you (or your brand mascot) or a picture that represents your target audience would work best. Every case is different, but try not to confuse a bad picture with a bad concept.

In other words, if the picture of you sucks, it’s obviously not going to work as well as the picture that represents your target audience - even though it might work better in that case to have a picture of you.

And lastly, the more subtle, the better. Think of visitors as a smart building. If you trigger “ad alarms” with your web page, then security will have to get involved and your web page will no longer look innocent and friendly.

However, if you keep it very low key - even amateur - you’re more likely to capture the common consumer. Business to business marketing also uses tactics that are basically the exact opposite, but keep in mind they are a “common consumer” too.

Subtle Shifts - Using “Focal Order”

However, there are a couple things the Derek Scholl images almost did right, so let’s take a second look at them.

Look at something besides the camera

The perspective in the top image could have been used to a much greater advantage.

If you move Derek further forward in the frame, and put the text behind him “on the wall,” then you have successfully used what I call “focal order” to direct attention.

In other words the perspective of the image pretty much forces you to “read it” right to left - because the “background” is in the left.

So if you put what is naturally most dominant (a human face) in the naturally most dominant position (the far right for this image), then it’s natural to progress to the left and read the text.

As it stands right now, the picture is trying to have two focal points of the same relative importance.

It’s OK for something to be “less important” - in fact, that tends to mean it will actually get noticed!

In the second image, the angle of Derek’s head could have been far more advantageous. Again, move Derek over to the right and the text to the left.

Then angle Derek about another 15 degrees counter-clockwise so that his whole body is pointing at the text, in a sense. That way he’s “leaning on it” and “looking at it.”

You have to be careful putting people and text together. No matter how big the text is, the people will always be the most dominant object in any picture.

Work with the fact we are inexorably drawn to the human face, not against it. If it helps, just remember “face first, facts last.”

Asides:

Focal order can be determined by any number of things. I have already mentioned perspective and the dominance of faces. Most of the others are fairly obvious - color, size, and density (i.e. how much white space is around it. Lots of white space = very dominant, little white space = insignificant) for example.

But there is one other trickier one - overtones. You can ask a professional photographer to give you more detail about this one, but photographers often add barely visible swirls of lighter colors to add subliminal interest and flow to their photos.

Look real close sometime and see if you can find them. Most commonly you will find these mysterious swirls in landscapes or any super-simple photo. Some painters use them too.

Don’t be afraid to ask any questions you might have - I know I didn’t cover absolutely everything but I hope this explains the deeper aspects. Keep an eye out for the next one in this series about using pictures to describe a product.



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