You can tell a brand by its photos from across the street, long before you read a word. And yet imagery is usually the thinnest section of a brand book. A page of mood shots, a line about being “authentic”, and good luck.
At a federated organisation, that page turned into a hundred different interpretations. One office used moody black and white. Another used bright stock with perfect teeth. Both were “authentic”. Neither looked like us.
Start with the photos you already use
Before you write anything, gather what you have. Your website is the best starting point because someone already chose those photos on purpose. When Brandbook scans your site it keeps the real photographs, skipping icons and small images, and lays them out on the Imagery page so you can see your visual habits all at once.
Seeing them side by side is often a surprise. You’ll spot the pattern you didn’t know you had, and the three photos that don’t belong.
Make two piles
Sort them into yes and no. Be strict. A good imagery section shows both, because the edge between them is the rule. Then write one plain sentence that explains the difference between the piles. Not “vibrant and authentic”. Something you could hand to a photographer on a shoot.
Describe it like a brief
The best imagery rules read like a photographer’s brief. They cover a few concrete things:
- Light. Natural or studio, warm or cool, hard shadows or soft.
- People. Who is in frame, what they’re doing, whether they look at the lens.
- Colour. Whether the photo should echo your palette, and which colours you avoid.
- Framing. Close and intimate, or wide and environmental.
- What never appears. Handshakes, laptops on beaches, a logo on a busy photo without an overlay.
Let colour do some of the work
Photos that pick up your palette feel like you even when the subject changes. The red-wall shot at the top of this post works for a brand with a warm red because the photo is half the layout already. Write that down as a rule if it matters to you: “Look for backgrounds in our accent colours.”
When you upload a design to Brandbook, the checker reads the colours it’s drawn with from the pixels and compares them with your palette. That catches the off-brand red in a background before it goes out, without anyone squinting at a swatch.
The logo-on-photo problem
The most common imagery mistake isn’t the photo. It’s the logo sat on top of it, unreadable on a busy background. Make a rule for it: a minimum overlay, or the reversed mark, or a clear zone. Brandbook checks for exactly this case and offers to add a 40% overlay when a logo sits on a photo without one.
Help the tools choose
Image models and stock search are now part of most teams’ workflow, and they need words, not vibes. The sentence you wrote for your two piles is the prompt. Keep it in your guidelines and it travels with your brand context to every tool you connect. With an AI key set, Brandbook’s image review also reads uploaded photos against your imagery rules and adds findings to the check.
If you can’t describe the photo you want, you’ll keep getting the one you don’t.
Keep it alive
Your taste will move, and that’s fine. When people keep approving a kind of photo that isn’t in your rules, the rules are behind. When the same kind keeps getting rejected, there’s a rule missing. Brandbook watches for both and suggests imagery updates on your brand’s overview, but you decide what goes in. Look at the two piles every few months and move a photo or two. It’s the most enjoyable brand maintenance you’ll ever do.
