Best Images, Best Impressions

The annual Ontario Universities’ Fair was recently held in Toronto. This annual event invites students from across the province to come to an enormous convention centre to visit with all of the universities in Ontario under one roof. Our head of consulting, Arthur Stephen was there and he picked up the promotional materials from all of the schools. It makes for an interesting read. Some of the university promotional materials are impressive. Some don’t do their school justice.

We have always believed that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Your website, the view book that you hand a prospective student at a Universities’ Fair, and all your other introductory promotional materials are vital tools in the program to separate your school from every other alternative in an applicant’s mind. One of the biggest differences among promotional materials is photography. In today world where everyone has a camera in their cell-phone, there’s a tendency to forget that a quality image requires more than a snapshot. We have always hired the best photographers, and asked our educational clients to invest the time necessary to capture images that tell the story. It requires time, careful lighting and cooperation from students and faculty.

The image above was part of a photo shoot at Sheridan College with the famous Canadian photographer, Doug Hall. Doug graduated from the photography program at Sheridan and has spent many years establishing one of Canada’s foremost photo studios. We spent many days visiting all the departments at Sheridan capturing a library of new photography that they can use in their promotional materials. It takes time. It takes planning. And it takes talent.