Glossary A–ZLetter V
Visual style
Visual style refers to the consistent way in which a sender's photos, illustrations and graphics are chosen and designed, such as subject matter, lighting, colour mood, framing and perspective.
It is part of the corporate appearance and ensures that content is recognised as belonging together.
For screens this might mean: products always cut out against a calm background, people in natural light, no cluttered collages. Because viewers often look for only a few seconds, an image should carry a single clear message. Portrait screens often need their own crops, because a landscape photo loses what matters when it is trimmed.
Operators should write the visual style down so that branches, agencies and in-house editors apply the same rules. A visual style does not replace clearing the image rights. A typical mistake is to reuse images from print or the website unchanged, although they were not made for the format, viewing distance and brightness of a screen.