brendan's stuff

Worth a Thousand Words

October 6 2008, 8:58pm

Context is something that we web and graphic designers deal with on a daily basis. We juggle color, typeface, imagery, C.R.A.P.(Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity) to convey a particular message or tone.

Our clients aren’t watching as we sift through two hundred pages on iStock or play with seemingly indiscernible color variations in kuler to find just the right photo or palette to set the mood of their homepage. We don’t do it to run up the hours, we do it because we care, because we understand how powerful a single image or choice of color can impact people. Yes, I’m going somewhere with this.

Reading through my nightly routine of news sites to see what’s going on in our world, I came across an article about the Pope criticizing the pursuit of money and success in regards to the current financial mess. But I never got past the headline. Why?

I have a hard time taking someone seriously, the Pope included, speaking about the evils of wealth and material possessions when framed with a picture of that person decked out in ornately decorated robes, a bejeweled mitre and holding a staff of gold.

While I’m positive that whoever paired that image with the article clearly just grabbed the first stock photo on hand, it’s clearly completely contradictory to the context of the article. I’m sure the BBC has more than one photo of Pope Benedict XVI, it’s just inexcusable that whoever posted that news item on a massive professional journalism website didn’t take 30 seconds grab a more appropriate photograph for the message.

Instead of a potentially introspective take on the current banking fiasco, we get a “let them eat cake“ moment that’s just embarrassing to the BBC and the Pope.

One wrong picture is really all it takes to warp your message. It’s worth the extra few minutes.