This is an article we did for Marketing & Creative Handbook.

It’s fair to say, alot has changed over the past few years, placing new and additional pressure on construction projects. A buyer’s first interaction with your project may be a fleeting glance at an image on social media – this is a crucial millisecond for the project.

The quality of your marketing imagery goes beyond click-through statistics, it’s the first step in building the brand of your project. One outstanding image is better than ten weak images, allocate your budget appropriately.

The following five tips are intended to inform all construction and design projects and could have dramatic benefits for you in the 2022 market.

1. Big Investment Requires Big Concepts

Construction is expensive however, concept design iterations are not. Utilise concept visuals to push the boundaries of the project brief. Keep them as simple massing blocks with local landmarks and people for scale and reference. This can empower the design in unexpected ways.

2. Visionary Ideas

As the client or designer, if you have something in your minds eye, source some imagery online and provide it to the visualisation team – an online search or Pinterest are perfect to begin with. This is a powerful method to convey your intentions with materials, lighting, activity or landscaping.

3. Planning Uncertainty

When progressing with the final imagery or animation, we all appreciate some areas of the design may not be fully resolved. The best practice is to highlight this from the beginning or when it arises. Design changes can be factored in from the outset, no-one likes incurred costs and some visualisation companies use this as an additional revenue stream.

4. Output Potential

The final media is usually delivered as still imagery or animations, there are however, alot more options available. Depending on your marketing strategy, the Visualisation Studio may provide additional services which could compliment your strategy. Once the 3D model is created, it can be utilised to generate additional content and may not cost as much as you might think. Bear in mind, this is a conversation you should have at the beginning of the process as production is refined for each output.

5. Social Marketing

When images are shown online, Photographers tend to have their name accompanying their work. It might be an opportunity to negotiate something beneficial with the Visualisation Studio in exchange for showing their name with the images.

Maybe these tips have sparked some new ideas or consolidated some existing ones – the goal is to provide our clients with the best information, imagery and professional services.

Niall Cochrane is the Founder of North Visual Studio, a Glasgow based Architectural Visualisation Agency specialising in the creation of world-class imagery, animations and Visual Effects.