Carnegie: Blurring the picture

A piece of darkroom trickery transforms the impact of standard work situation images.

The Site

Carnegie, the Nordic investment bank, uses stylised photographic images on its home page and the ‘landing’ pages of main sections within its website. While the subject matter of the images is largely conventional – people in business clothes and locations – they have been treated to appear slightly out of focus. They have also been posterised (a process of tonal separation to produce a less-graduated colour range and thus a more graphic effect).

The Takeaway

Carnegie has inventively resorted to a piece of darkroom trickery (almost certainly, these days, done in plain daylight using Photoshop) to give a distinctive feel to what are at base a set of standard work situation images. The techniques also serve to blend the pictures into the page, making them less the focus of attention than would be the case with sharper images.

While most websites use photography on their top level pages to make for a more visually interesting look, many cancel out the hoped-for effect with their choice of image. This is particularly true in the service industries, where one set of offices and people going about their business looks pretty much like any other. Rather than opt for more abstract subject matter or dramatic composition, Carnegie has found an unusual treatment that presents the pictures as the same but different – happily reinforcing the way it would want to be seen in the marketplace.

First published on 19 January, 2006