Tips To Improve The Consistency Of Your Web And App Images

For web and app development companies, it is important to take into account the brand for which they are designing as well as the target audience. A balance must be found between these two important factors since the website and app represent the brand and that brand must be aimed at the target audience previously defined. Both the design of the brand and the website should be seen as part of a whole. That is, the app and website must be consistent with the visual identity of the brand.

This coherence is often achieved using the same palette of colors, patterns, textures, and typographies that have been used for visual identity. But that is not all. In order for the app and website to really look like a unit, you must work on the images. Not only is it enough to carefully choose the images you will use on the website, but you must also work to ensure consistency in your photographs or illustrations. In this article, we tell you how to achieve it.

Define the proportions

Although it is important to work with exact measurements when you are designing a website, the recommendation is to first know what kind of ratio you are working with. By checking the layout, you can see the type of standard ratio you are using.

Working with proportions can be an ideal option when designing an environment for devices of different sizes because, in many of them, the proportion could be maintained. It all depends on the fluidity of the layout you are working with. So before thinking about the exact measurements, check the proportions of the areas where you will place images. This way you make sure you make a good frame when you crop the image.

Crop the image to modify the composition

Once you have the perfect image, you should think about the layout of your website and how the images will look. In many cases, it will be necessary to crop the image to slightly modify the composition and the focus point of it. Also, you should verify that the focus point remains the same in the various screen sizes available.

In certain cases, you must make an extra crop in photographs for mobile devices so that the focus of attention remains the same. Otherwise, the message can be confusing to users. Remember that both the title and the images you decide to use on the home page are part of the same message that you want to transmit to the target audience.

Do not be afraid to make changes to the original composition of the photograph. Talk to your client honestly and explain why you have decided to make these changes.

Check how the thumbnails look

In the case of image galleries, you should not only make sure to modify the composition using the “Crop” tool, but you should also verify the views in thumbnails. When the user sees the complete image, he can see all the details, process it and understand it.

But in miniature views, it is often not a great idea to place the images in full size in other dimensions as the details may be lost. In these cases, it is better to check the dimensions of the thumbnails and cut out the images so that the most relevant part of the photographs is seen.

As the name suggests, thumbnails are a preview of the full-size image. In order for the user to click on one of the images and be able to see it in full size, the thumbnail view must be attractive enough to capture the user’s attention and motivate them to access the full view.

Define the type of image retouching that will be used

Not only the layout, typography and the colors or textures applied to the website and app serve to unify the composition, but also the treatment of the images. Unless you have decided to take a photo shoot or hire an illustrator, it is likely that the images you use are quite different from one another.

It is inevitable because you will look for images in several photo banks or even if you find all your images in the same bank, it is quite likely that they are from different authors.

But there is a way to unify different images. The first step is to change the composition by a simple cut. The second step is to find a suitable photographic style. There are several routes you could take either rotate the photo to grays, apply duotone or gradients, apply a color filter, blur the background, etc.

The photo editors programs offer a great series of tools and filters that you can apply to your images. You only have to decide which is the most appropriate for the brand.

In conclusion

All these steps are part of creating a style guide for the photographs, images or illustrations that you will use on your website and app. This guide describes the type of photographs used, perhaps even identifying the perspective from which the photographs are taken and the way in which the frames are made.

This guide is like a small brand manual and is an important part of any brand. All the details concerning the images are specified. However, they are often quite general and having a more specific guide on the selection and treatment of the images would be beneficial for any brand.