We spent 2 years researching the types of photos people use and how they use them. We did this with a cross-disciplianry team so we could also gain knowledge about photo use in various professions. We also tested cross-culturally to make sure it has applications with other cultures besides Euro American.

We divide our VisualsSpeak ImageSets up into 4 categories and 12 subcategories. This was a long, involved process of deciding how to come up with the categories. Life, Nature, People, Things.

After the initial research, we then went out and spent a year photographing the types of images we wanted to use in our products. The reason for this is because of copyright issues. Its OK to cut and laminate a magazine photo for a single use, but you cannot reproduce them without permission and usually without paying a lot of money for their use. We took 20,000 photos and narrowed them down to 200 for our VisualsSpeak ImageSet. ( http://www.visualsspeak.com/how_it_works/imageset.html )

No, the images are not tied into a specific project. The beauty of this approach is that the images can be applied to a wide range of needs without being specific to a particular company or org. We will be developing add-on sets or products so that people can customize their ImageSets based on the needs of their audiences.

Here is a link to another post with more detail as to how we developed our tool. http://christinemartell.com/2007/05/03/designing-the-visualsspeak-imageset/

Thanks for your comment

Tom Tiernan
VisualsSpeak

Great points about finetuning the brainstorming process — thanks for sharing Brian’s article and leaving your comments on BNET too. Can you explain some more about the types of photographs you use to help promote a creative approach? Are they tied in to the project at hand?

Thanks,

Leslie Leite
BNET