Photo guidelines

Imagery

The imagery should feel natural, genuine, balanced and Nordic. The mood and people in the pictures are confident, joyous, calm, and approachable.

People can face the camera with natural contact. Situations and moods are real-life and authentic, never fake or forced. The stories should present dynamic and optimistic mindset. The gestures and reactions of people, however, should always be natural and believable. Settings should not be over-arranged.

Avoid stereotypes.

People appearing in photographs should have a genuine, personal look and be used to standing in front of a camera. Diversity of models (age, gender, nationality) should be promoted.

Colour balance and richness of tones

The tones should be natural and fresh. Overly saturated colors should be avoided, especially with the brightly colourful elements in the photos. The colour balance should be kept relatively neutral. So, avoid too warm overall tones and in the other end too cold tones. To match with the primary colour greens, a tiny bit of green in the colour balance would be good.

Avoid over-using brand colours in the photos as this underlines the colour palette unnecessarily much and makes the image feel staged.

Options to avoid visual chaos:

  1. Use strong colours 30:70 with light and neutral colours
  2. Use only 1-3 strong colours in one image
  3. Changes in depth of field can be utilised to create balance

Composition

Do not worry about leaving empty space around the center of action. This adds versatility of use and a possibility to be cropped for different purposes later. It also harmonises the composition and emphasises the main theme.

The feeling of space can be created using light and neutral tones without eye-catching details or using the depth of field, bringing the main theme into the focus. Use this especially with images of people, in call-to-action theme.

Angles, perspectives, compositions, and cropping can be utilised to create interesting, almost graphical images. Go very near or very far from your subject to discover new shapes, angles colours and structures. This comes useful when images are used in photo groups in layouts.

Lighting

Aim for capturing an authentic moment whether it’s in the morning, during the day or late at night.

Keep the light natural. Let the daylight be daylight and shadows be shadows. If the shadows are in a dominant part of the image, the shadows must not form too dark areas.

Avoid images with light leaks or over-exposure.

Clarity

Images must be clear and simple in what comes to idea and composition.

Avoid images that feel full and busy. Prefer images that have some clear space to achieve calmness as well as a clear focal point.

Architectural images should look clean, harmonious, and streamlined. Images with people should have a clear focus on the person/people.

When shooting for new images, make sure to get a balanced composition with some air and empty space always present.

Professional quality

All images must create an impression of high quality and well-thought-out ideas. Especially images used in marketing communications should be made by professionals.

Motifs

The motifs are a combination of genuine soft humanity, sharp shapes, and interesting patterns of nature. Strong lights and shadows are recommended.

Photo retouching

We aim for a natural, clean, and genuine image look. Self-confident images rely on strong shapes, interesting compositions, and natural light. They require no heavy retouching.

The key driver for the photo retouching guidelines is authencity. We want to keep the photos as natural looking as possible.

No over-saturated colours, not too much contrast and no artificial effects like flares or colour layers are allowed.

Do's

Always use photos with natural and realistic situations and setting.

Use credible and authentic images of people working.

Use striking images of different energy forms that are clearly located in our market area.

Use simpler nature images as backgrounds under a text.

Use images of people in activities in a clean, diverse natural setting.

Use images with clear space and interesting composition.

Use abstract close-up photographs from our own or our customers fields of work.

Use images that look and feel Nordic.

Use abstract close-up photographs from our or our customers field of work.

Use images with interesting graphical lines and/or striking architecture.

Don'ts

Don’t use images that look clichéd, staged, or fake.

Don’t use photos that look ominous, dark, gloomy, or polluted.

Don’t use images where people look sad or worried.

Don’t use images with strong light leaks or lens flare as it looks fake.

Don’t use images that feel self-righteous, patronizing or preachy.

Don’t use complex and busy images under text or logo.

Don’t use images that are very conventional and surreal.

Don’t use images with heavy overlay of different elements and images piled.

Don’t use images that are too far from our market area.

Don’t use images that have our competitor’s colours combinations.