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Charles Darwin eating a banana.

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What does your profile picture say about you?

The Face-ism Ratio is all about the prominence of someone’s face in an image (in relation to their body). Depending on how much of either you show, it’s likely you will get perceived very differently. 

An nice example would be your Facebook profile. How much of your face can be seen, compared to your entire body? Have a look, it might be saying something about you that you didn’t realise:

Studies show that close-up images of the face are perceived as being more intelligent, dominant and ambitious. However, if the entire body is seen, the opposite is true: we put an emphasis on that person having physical or sensual attributes.

The distance from the top of the head to the lowest point of the chin is the numerator, and the distance from the top of the head to the lowest part of the subject’s body becomes the denominator.

Unfortunately, but predictably, research shows that the media tends to feature more on men’s faces and women’s bodies. And throughout history, different societies showing facial prominence of men has been much higher than that of women. This, researchers believe, could help reinforce the many negative stereotypes of women.

What does your profile picture say about you? Do you think it’s worth changing it to be perceived more intelligent, or more sensual? 

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Can Aristotle help your business?

Aristotle thought any good communicator had three principles of persuasion: ethos, pathos and logos.

Ethos is your moral competence, knowledge and expertise. It’s essentially your credibility on the subject at hand. This is often demonstrated by your technical expertise in a specific area — for us, it’s graphic design. 

Think of the image of a traditional tailor: cuttings of cloth, a measuring tape and patterns everywhere. These stereotypes reinforce ethos. It is important to avoid negative clichés or stereotypes however, and can sometimes be hard to get right first time. 

Pathos is the emotional bond. A metaphor, story or sympathetic attachment: it is ‘putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind’.  And, it’s ultimately decided by the audience; if it’s disingenuous, it simply won’t work. It’s the good-looking face of the company, and much like a person’s good looks reflect their good health, your company’s good looks should reflect the same. 

Logos is reasoning, it’s logic. It’s the strategy and the problem solving. For example, although we typically shop with our hearts, giving ourselves or our partners justification is the hardest part: ‘It’s January sales, prices will only go up from now’. That’s logos (reason) justifying pathos (our emotions). 

If your company is consistently the best-selling, the fastest or cheapest (and you have evidence) say so. It’s tricky to argue against hard data. This is a way to make you look knowledgable and trustworthy, ultimately enhancing ethos. And, if people think you’re the best, everyone else is going to want to know what all the fuss is about. They’re going to be driven by pathos.

So, it might be worth considering how these three principles can help your business: it’s often small tweaks to written, verbal and visual communication that can really kickstart your business. 

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help.

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Something really special.

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The more we see, the more we like...

…or put another way, The Exposure Effect. In short, the effect says that people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.

The exposure effect has been demonstrated with words, paintings, faces, shapes and sounds. Have you ever been introduced to a song and been told it’s a grower?

In studies of interpersonal attraction, the more often a person is seen by someone, the more pleasing and likeable that person appears to be. And that’s exactly the same with brands:

The first time you see a new company or brand, it’s likely you’ll make an instant opinion of it, good or bad. The next time you encounter it, it’s likely that you’ll like it a bit more. 

The exposure effect is a strong argument for great and encompassing branding. If potential customers are able to interact with your brand across many different avenues (everything from business cards, your web design, advertising and social media), and if each time they do your brand looks and acts the best way it can, then that potential customer turns into a repeat customer. 

Have a look at some businesses and people that we’ve helped with their visual identities on our website. 

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Don't be scared of empty spaces

There’s often a dialogue between designers and clients about empty space, white space. It’s invariably along the lines of the client wanting to cram more copy and a bigger logo in a space, and the designer preciously protecting it at all costs. 

The benefits of white space is well known and common practice for good designers. The deeper psychological impacts of it however are slightly more veiled. 

Horror vacui is a latin phrase meaning the fear of empty space. The term is associated with the Italian scholar and art critic Mario Praz, who used it to describe the suffocating atmosphere of Victorian interior design. 

Research suggests that there is an inverse relationship between horror vacui and the perception of value*. The theory goes that poorer, less educated people are attracted to horror vacui (full spaces), whereas rich consumers get used to having lots so therefore expect less.

This understanding is often applied to the design and layout of shops and visual merchandising. Simply put, as the number of items on display decreases, the perceived value of them increases. This can be clearly seen when you look at two fashion stores. Primark piles their shelves using every meter of their floorspace, whereas Berlin’s Four store concentrates on clean lines and white space. It’s clear which one sells the higher price fashion. 

An incentive for value driven shops to show an abundance of products is because their business model requires them to sell higher volumes at cheaper prices.  As a result, showing more products covers the shops’s product range.

It’s not just true for shop interiors either: Research suggests that applying the theory to window displays is beneficial for stores that wish to appeal to more affluent consumers. Here’s an example.

Of course, this thinking doesn’t just apply to three dimensional spaces: Here is the affect of empty space on the perceived value lager in these magazine adverts. Which drink would you be willing to pay more for?

Does displaying less (which requires constraint) give the impression of curation? And does curation imply education, knowledge and/or taste? It’s well worth considering when you look at your your own company’s visuals. Don’t be scared of empty spaces.

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Design Responsibly

It’s all too easy to think of design as something that makes things look good. And often it does. That’s great. But design is a very powerful tool that has the ability to affect our everyday behaviours – our decisions, what we buy, how we vote… So it’s really important that we design well, we design responsibly. 

The phrase dark patterns explains a practice of bad design. Dark patterns (coined by Dr Harry Brignull, who writes a lot about this topic) trick us into doing things that we wouldn’t usually do, and is most commonly experienced online. Bad design in this sense could by anything from deliberately using pre checked boxes on sign-ups to make sure we still receive spam their latest news, to disguising pop-up adverts as buttons you should click on.

There are times when this sort of behavioural psychology can be used positively. Brignull discusses the example of opt out organ donation in many parts of the world, which is really good.

Customers invariably react badly to being tricked or mislead. We’re infuriated by Ryanair’s difficult booking system, we get frustrated when companies make it impossible to find their contact details (especially phone numbers!). There are endless examples discussed on this 90 Percent of Everything thread. 

But because we react badly, through word-of-mouth, or just not using the particular website, business or service again, dark patterns aren’t really worth it. In fact, we would suggest that devious design can make companies loose more profits than it gains. 

So it’s down to businesses to understand that this bad practice can’t carry on. And it’s down to designers to educate their clients.

It’s time to design responsibly.