Photography VS Graphic Design in Marketing (Business Cards and other Marketing tools)

To start off with, let’s be clear with the definitions of both Graphic Designing and Photography. Photography is (Thinkquest.com) “the art of recording an image in history which we find captivating, amusing, or thought-provoking. And, unlike many other mediums, it provides us with a "true-to-life" image, which is not too much different than to what our own eyes would see. This art can only take a split-second to record.”
Graphic Design is (AIGA.org) “the combination of shapes, colours, typefaces, images and words that cause you to react or feel something.”

Because we are creative visual people, I’m going to battle these two with images.

Graphic Design cards: Their aim is to sell, sell, and sell with pictures, words, logos and other types of visual elements. It often has to be simple and attractive; the viewer has to lock onto the business card, banner or billboard as soon as they see it.

Business card 1:
Here we have a Graphic Designer advertising himself, we obviously suppose he’s created his own business card and quite frankly, it’s flat. It has diagonal logos of his initials and that’s about it. Nothing too exciting. He could have created something much more fun and pleasant to the eye but has decided to stick with simple and obvious.
As said previously, their job is to trick the viewer into selling, or attract them in some way that is different and bold however, here, there is nothing to find.

Business card 2: Now this is a shame but this is a Photography Business Card. Some Photographers choose to not put a photo on their business cards to promote themselves but I have seen better than this. At first I thought it was the actual business card of Light Space where we had our exhibition last year but obviously not.
The colours are just again flat and boring. No oomph, nothing too quirky to entice you to call this guy. She’s got her website address on the card so one can hope it looks better than this.

Now the nice ones!

Photography Business cards: Our aim is also to sell, sell, sell but how do we do so without straying away from our domaine that is photos. Some Photographers choose to sell their business using Graphic Design logos, however, some have found very smart ways to fit their photographs and business details onto that little card.

Business card 1: Now I know this guy got his cards from Moo but how cool! He’s a photographer so we have the photos, he’s obviously carefully chosen the ones he thought would sell best which I say was a good move. They’re nice; he seems like a travelling photographer going here and there and we see that. He’s chosen to print out different photos for his business so would hand a certain photo to a client he feels fits that particular photo.
On the other side, his details are written so he’s giving his clients a very simple business card that includes his medium and contact details.

Business card 2: Smart! That is all…But seriously, again how cool! We don’t see his type of photography but he is using his medium to promote himself, it’s not a graphic design type of business card, it has a photo, we can ‘see’! The lens shape card is very smart and well thought of, which is what a potential client likes to see. It’s different, it’s photography.

Business card 3: This is my favourite because it’s clean, neat and simple. The feeling I’m getting from this business card is a classic Black and White Photographer still using film (obviously the subject of his photo lets me feel that), he’s a simple photographer, knows how to attract clients. There’s no fussing around (there never is a need to fuss around with Photography, what you see is what you get), he’s using his own photographs to promote his business. The ideal thing with Black and White photography is that it’s ALWAYS attractive. So it’s hard not to seduce a client with this.

Conclusion; Photography is a very effective way of attracting potential clients to your business. A photograph shows real life, it’s no make believe like logos, or pictures. There is no guessing because it’s shown there in photos.
A Hair Salon has more chance of selling if they promote themselves with photographs rather than logos, a restaurant has more chance of this also! When a products needs to be seen in photos in order to sell, it cannot be replaced by logos. Photography shows reality. And clients want to see what they are buying.

Camille Nicholls 3rd April 2011