A picture’s worth a thousand words – May be even more than that. Well it’s not just another proverb one has mucked up for the board exams; every one would have felt the power of pictures sometime or other in their life. So as a blogger one don’t need a ‘How To’ tip from problogger to understand the importance of having pictures in blog posts. Yet the percentage of posts having good pictures is very less in the blogosphere. ( None in the case of Brands N Ads, recently.)
Well, the most obvious reason for that is the blogger’s lack of designing knowledge. If the post relates to a personal story or some kind of a real world incident, which one experiences directly, then a shoot and upload strategy will work fine. But then blogs are more about individual opinions on certain issues and some random thoughts for a better world, so here pictures need to be visual format of such ideas and thoughts, for that having a camera mobile alone is not enough. If one is posting about Afsal’s clemency issue, putting a picture of Afsal won’t speak thousand words. At the most it’ll just be a replacement for a blog title. One has to think broader – of parliament attacks, brave soldiers, lost life’s and design an image so as to create any impact with it.
As writing itself is a creative stuff, one doesn’t need to sit and think separately to come up with a good picture. Sometimes an idea for an image will spark in the mind as you are writing. I have felt this, when I’m writing about a post on Amitabh’s Ad-ventures. I thought of putting this picture – Amitabh standing in front of a wardrobe and looking at his wrist watch to select a dress which have logos like Pepsi, Dairy Milk, Reid & Taylor, and other products he endorsed along with timestamp like 7:02, 7:16, 7:31, 7:34 (Ad timings) in every dress. A picture like that would have acted as a complement to the ideas in the blog post, but I’m not that skilful in Photoshop to try out giving life to my odd idea and ended up publishing the post without any pictures.
I’m sure other bloggers would also have faced this before. Someone writing on a Don film review would have thought about a nice idea to relate Amitabh and SRK someway to convey his view about the film with a single picture. While writing about current affairs one would have thought of a picture to explain our MP’s callousness to common problems but willing to discuss in detail about cricket in the Parliament sessions. But all these ideas would have gone for a natural death due to the lack of skill and time for bloggers.
Designers can plug-in here and help the bloggers design their images by charging a nominal fee. I know there are quite a lot of people in India, who are skilful in designing but earning a meager income out of it. They can setup a shop online and can connect with the bloggers to publish their design. Well one can’t think of a good image for every post and hence it won’t be a steady income generator for the designers. However, to overcome that, they can go for a Service level agreement for a year or so with top bloggers to take care of their designing work. On the high end they can even act as image consultants for professional bloggers, giving their own image ideas.
This synergy between bloggers and designers would be mutually helpful and also can take the blogosphere to the next level. I’m waiting to see such design houses serving individuals and act as an idea to image converter. Will this model be up and successful in reality soon?
I have a friend who is a designer and looking for opportunity like this , i will talk with him and lets hope he would start a website where what u said would be possible .
Anyway good idea yar …
Thats a good idea to get the help of designers….alternatively, you can learn a little of image editing to get petty things done yourself.Some designing can be done as a hobby too.
Krishnachaitanya & Siva kumar – Thanks for your comments.
Siva kumar – Most bloggers are passionate writers only, learning design as hobby won’t fit for them. Writing itself is not the main job for most bloggers, so spending time to learn and do designing won’t workout well. There is a necessity here, so i felt, having a shop online where i can tell my idea and get the design in a jiffy will have good future.
Most bloggers are not professional bloggers, and hence will probably not be able to afford someone else to design for their posts.
Having said that, your points are very valid, and would certainly enhance a blogs readability and its ability to transmit the message it is trying to transmit.
I suppose a free site which has some other model of income (ads?) which would design these images for bloggers.