Visual Communication
5 Golden Rules For Your Working From Home Imagery
By Miles Holder - 4 min read
Here's our expert guide to visualizing the global shift towards 'social distancing' and working from home. Find out our top trick and tips for using images to better connect with diverse audiences at a time when powerful and positive marketing messaging is more crucial than ever.
According to Google Trends, there have been more searches for ‘working from home’ this month than any other time in history. Naturally, brands have started creating content and campaigns that visualize the global issue of COVID-19. More significantly, gearing their visual marketing towards audiences that are facing the new circumstances as a result.
Even here at EyeEm, we launched our latest Mission to inspire photographers to capture the beauty of home life. Not only did we receive outstanding submissions, but we also gained new understanding and insights on branding and visual trend mapping.
By following the tips laid out in this article and using photos from our new ‘Working From Home’ image collection, you can ensure that your next campaign will best utilise diverse imagery, speak to broad audiences, and above all else, engage with the masses.
For more information on how to license out imagery or if you would like to learn about our other services get in touch.
1) Be Honest About Working Parents
By honestly representing the current home situation of parents, your brand can show a better understanding of their circumstances and further build trust with your audience when delivering your message.
With school and nursery closures around the globe many parents are now dividing their time between working, caring, and teaching their children. This needn’t be a cause to find images of overwhelmed parents struggling to cope. Instead, you should focus on finding a realistic depiction of what home life truly looks like.
2) A Chair Isn’t Always A Chair
For freelancers who are used to working from home, it is understandable that their home setups would include all the amenities needed for professional home life. However, social distancing has forced many who otherwise wouldn’t be prepared for working from home to adapt their home space into a working environment.
With a wide array of industries adapting to the home environment, we’re seeing more and more images depicting this way of working. It’s important to remember that for many the dining table, student dorm, or living room floor have now been turned into a home office. When it comes to selecting image, don’t feel compelled to use images which display a pre-crisis fantasy to depict a modern-day reality.
3) Work Looks Different For Every Home
By now it should go without saying that showing diversity in your marketing visuals is essential for reaching wide audiences, and the sudden rush for working from home imagery shouldn’t be a time to slip into old traps.
Covid-19 is a global pandemic so brands need to consider what ‘home’ looks like to communities across the globe. People of all races, genders, sexual orientation and religions are now working from home and no community should be left out of your brand’s messaging.
Show your commitment to being a truly global brand by using imagery that reflects your core message.
4) Business ‘Very’ Casual
During this time of uncertainty not everyone is going to be keeping to their usual typical dress code. The aspirational perfectly groomed ‘hipster’, drinking artisan homebrew coffee, and dressed in their coolest clothes for a day of work has been proven a false prophet now that reality of life has hit home for the wider population.
With the lack of face to face contact, it is understandable that workers are now dressing more for comfort than style while in lockdown and we’ve seen a large influx of image uploads showing a more honest depiction of people working under new circumstances.
5) Home Is Still Where The Heart Is.
Submissions from our recent Mission - ‘Where The Heart Is‘ - showed us that there is still plenty to smile about during this time.
The working parents are finally able to make it home with time to spend with their families, the family and adopted family units are now all able to come together and bond. Despite the current challenges we are facing on a global scale, t’s important to remind your audiences that there are still many reasons to smile.
Elevate your ‘working from home’ content to the next level by licencing imagery from our ‘Working From Home‘ collection.