Imagery should convey information,
personalize the experience of using your app or provide delight.
Your use of imagery will strongly reflect and reinforce your branding.
So if you're brand is bold and dynamic, then use imagery in the same way.
If your brand is playful and informal, then maybe a more illustrative style.
If you're chic and refined, then tell that story visually.
But what types of imagery can you use and when are they appropriate?
The major classes of imagery you can use for
somewhere on a spectrum from photography to illustration, to iconography.
Let's take a look at each of these and when they might be appropriate.
Now photography is great when it's specific to your content.
If you're showing information about a particular person, place or thing,
then photography can quickly and beautifully communicate that.
Conversely, if your content if more abstract, we don't have imagery specific
to the content, then photography might feel off the mark.
Here in this example, we're showing details of the London Eye and
then having a specific picture works very well.
But if you're showing information about another place,
here Waterloo station, which is near the London Eye, but not the same place and
then the image doesn't connect in the same way and it feels off.
As another example, if I'm showing content from other people like this
messaging type app, then showing a photo of a the contact immediately
communicates far better than a label or a generic graphic might.
When presenting photography,
make sure you have sufficient quality images to avoid pixelation.
If you do have great quality imagery,
then don't be shy about using it immersively.
It's perfectly acceptable to use imagery as a backdrop
to set the mood of the screen.
Always considered the different ways that images might be cropped
depending on different layouts of size of the device.
Think about the aspect ratios, scale types and
focal points that is important to maintain.
We're going to go into much more detail about this later on in lesson five.
Illustration is great for communicating abstract concepts or
metaphors without getting hung up on the specificity that comes from photography.
Take these three examples.
The first two communicate the concepts of syncing photos or
doing a brain training game without the specific images of people.
The last image helps on board users without having to have imagery for
every specific device.
When creating illustration, aim for
clarity instead of being overly decorative.
Have a focal point and a message that you are trying to communicate.
While the exact style of the illustration is up to you and
your brand, do try to stay consistent within a series of illustrations to keep
them connected.
For example, using a consistent perspective, color pallet or
using textures.
Iconography provides clear way finding.
Its goals are almost the exact opposite of illustration
to succinctly explain their meaning and get out of the way.
They should be easy to identify and interpret in your UI.
For this reason, it's best to use the platform iconography for common tasks,
such as search or share as your users will already be familiar with them.
The material design provides a wide range of icons that you can use in your
applications for creating new icons, then check out the extensive style
guide, which is linked in the instructor notes.
And there's a great community starting to pop-up and
create more icons in the same style at materialdesignicons.com.
So those were the main types of imagery you can use in your app.
Picking the right one really depends upon the feel of your brand and
the content you're showing.
No matter what type of imagery you use, it'll help to create
an immersive experience and can be a great way to introduce motion.
For example, this music player eases the transition between states and
has an incredibly immersive feel for its use of imagery.
The images themselves can introduce motion using videos,
scrolling effects like parallax or other other types of animation.
We'll expand on using motion in lesson four.
Once you've picked the imagery that works best for your brand, you can use
it to make your application experiences more immersive, personal and delightful.
Let's hand over to James now and
get into how you'd implement this in your app.