How A Key Visual Gets Built
A key visual is the single image a campaign is built around. It has to work on a hoarding, a print page, a shelf strip, a website banner and a thumbnail on a phone. Building one is less about making a striking picture than about making a picture that survives being shrunk, cropped and placed next to type.
Most of the work is in what gets taken out.
Where a key visual starts
With the idea, not the shoot. Art directors usually sketch many routes, sometimes as rough layouts with stand-in images, to find the composition that carries the thought most simply. The strongest routes are tested at small sizes early, because that is where weak ones fail first.
Only then does the shoot or illustration get commissioned, with a clear sense of what the frame must contain.
A key visual that only works large is a poster, not a campaign.
What the shoot has to deliver
More than one image. A key visual has to be adapted to wide, tall and square formats, so the frame needs room around the subject and the subject needs to read at a glance.
Product placement is negotiated carefully. The brand wants it prominent, the idea often wants it secondary, and the art director's job is to find the version where both are true.
How it gets finished
Retouching, then layout with the line, logo and any legal copy. This is where many visuals lose their edge, as each element added for good reason crowds the image a little more.
The best key visuals are defended at this stage as much as they are made earlier. Someone has to argue for the space.
A simple test helps: shrink the finished layout to the size of a phone thumbnail and see whether the idea still reads. If it does not, the problem is usually something that was added, not something that is missing.
More from Creative Room.