Imagery
Purpose
Images can convey meaning and emotion. Preserving these characteristics is the primary focus of this guideline.
Guidelines
- Ensure images have the appropriate resolution for their containers. Don't scale images beyond their native resolution; they will end up fuzzy or pixelated.
- Don't be afraid of larger image sizes. Images are most effective when they can be seen. Tiny images lose much of their meaning (unless they are specifically crafted for small sizes).
- For example, consider a large contact photo (left) instead of a tiny thumbnail image (right). People recognize faces faster than names, therefore, making an image bigger, will connect with the user faster and make it more recognizable.
- Captions can be placed on the image (left) instead of outside of the image (right) allowing the image to be larger and the content to be more immersive showing belonging.
- Use a scrim behind the caption text to preserve contrast for legibility.
- Try to preserve the image aspect ratio. If preserving the aspect ratio is a challenge, consider cropping the image to fill the container instead.