Product Image Assets Best Practices

Blanket statement: The best product photography are the images that work for YOUR product, and your market segment. These are just a few of the assets that we need from our experience building websites, advertisements, videos, and running social media campaigns.

Image Logistics

Rainfactory uses your image assets to create everything. Not a single image will be wasted: campaigns will be won or lost solely based on your team’s ability to produce quality images.

• Image should be on the left side of the photo and facing right.
  • This mimics the left-to-right reading motion of most consumers.
  • This is counter-intuitive for most photographers but trust us, we need it to be this way.
  • Seriously. Stop putting products to the right of the photograph.

• Make sure to not show people’s faces. Keep to backs of heads, Heads cut off, silhouettes.
  • Consumers are alienated if they don’t identify with the face selling the product.
  • Cut off all faces, heads, eyes, and only put the product in the scene.

• No people looking and smiling at the camera. Should be natural.

We need to have as many images as humanly possible. Advertisements fatigue so easily. Some campaigns need to be refreshed every other day, so we need a very large image asset library to pull from.

Overall

Logos:

• PNG or SVG format
• White
• Black
• Color
• Icon (Square sized)
• Horizontal, Vertical
• Favicon (square sized, 16 pixels square)

Brand guidelines if they have been created:

• Preferred fonts – title font, H1, H2, H3, Paragraph
• Hex Codes for colors, including link colors & call-to-action colors.
• Other design elements

PSD files of existing website if they exist.

Product photography

• Product alone, from all angles

Lifestyle photography

• Product artfully staged in ways that people would use it

Team Bio Photos

• Include all Team members, titles, and what they do for the project
• Images of team members collaborating or working on the product

Images of Prototypes

• Sketches, components, PCB boards, whiteboard drawings

Artwork and illustrations

• Renderings
• Component Renderings
• Line drawing of product with components xxposed
• Illustrations of product

Product Photography

• The product on white background in additional angles for use in product specs section
  • Left facing
  • Right facing
  • Top-down
  • Straight on
  • back angle
  • open, closed
• Close ups of the product over a clean background
  • not white, could be a colored background, but clean
• Product in focus, or some specific parts, and the rest blurred out.
• Prototypes
• Any photos of ingredients or components

For Products with Apps or Products with Simulated Screens

• Don’t take a low quality photo of the screen with a camera, the screen may look pixelated.
• Screens may need to be added to the television/Tablet/smartphone screen afterwards
• Please provide as many screens as possible
  • Start with six screens and increase from there
• Smartphone App Images
  • In the latest version of iPhone and Android Phone, etc.
    • Held by people with attractive hands
  • Motion of people navigating from one screen to the next
  • Ability to stage the app in a real phone for demonstration
  • Also send the raw PNG or PSD images from your comps

Lifestyle Photography

• People using the product
  • One person
  • Two people
  • Family
  • Friend Group
• Close-up on hands with the product
  • All different angles
• An open air shot with the product on a landscape
• A cool location with the focus on the product and the rest blurred out
• Product set in someone’s home
  • Kitchen
  • Living Room
  • Play Room
  • Bedroom
  • Dining Room

Concept, Filler Images

• A cool location with the focus on one portion of the image and the rest blurred out
• Texture photography, like wood, metal, glass, paper.
  • This is good for background layers
• The elements of your product: air, sky, woods, forest, grass, carpet, ocean, etc.
• General scenery images so we can photoshop the images later

Team Photography

• Team members in the workshop
• Collaborating over a whiteboard
• Pointing at spreadsheets
• Working with a soldering iron or a 3D Printer
• Laughing together while holding the product
• Discussing product features, in the setting of where the product is being used
• Proudly presenting the product while looking at the camera.
• Bio Photos composed all the same way
  • Usually putting everyone into black-and-white
  • Looking at the camera or just to the side

Who shouldn’t take photos

• Your videographer
  • Adds too much time to the production schedule
  • All of your images will look the same
  • Motion blur affects photos (Don’t take screenshots)
  • They are not professional product photographers

• Your iPhone
  • Blurry, shaky, poor lighting