In my silent travels around the internet, (read: lurking), I’ve come across a recurring topic of conversation that seems to come up every few months regarding the use of a photo or logo as your social media avatar and what the best practice is for doing so.
I’ve decided to weigh in on this debate as someone who’s relatively new to the design scene and as someone that consumes a large amount of information from some of the web’s largest (and not-so-large) twitter feeds, facebook pages and blogs.
To quickly run through the core arguments for both using a photo and using a logo, please see the following:
Photo
- more personal, if a little formal perhaps
- everyone can do it
- not everyone is / can afford a designer
- people recognise faces, even after a long time
- people with highest twitter followers tend to use photos
Logo
- represents your brand and business
- often well crafted and memorable
- more room for creativity
- ties your blog / other social media pages together
- more easily recognisable among sea of avatars
- if you already have a logo for your business, your avatar is practically already done!
While I may or may-not agree with some of the above, it seems that these are the general arguments presented for both sides.
If we take the time to examine the reasons as a whole for each category, we begin to see that they both serve a very different purpose…
Using a photo, (of yourself, you as a child, your pets or favourite animal, etc.), shows a personal side to your online profile. It shows that you want to connect on a personal level with other users and that you’re not afraid to be yourself. It also shows a level of trust, giving out your image to the online world, just like extending a hand to be shaken by anyone that walks past; you never know who’ll stop to shake it.
A photo, however, might also be bit too hard to recognise – take Twitter, for example:
The default size for a Twitter avatar on the live stream is 48 x 48 pixels, hardly enough room to breathe let alone present a decent quality picture of your head and shoulders. What if the only photo you have access to is a low-quality image that looks really distorted when displayed at that size – what does that say about you or your services?
This isn’t to say that you can’t have a really effective photo avatar, especially if you know someone with some mad photography skills! Here’s some examples of some of the people I follow that (I believe) effectively use a photo for their avatar:
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| Maria Elita |
Chris Spooner |
Fabio Sasso |
Preston D Lee |
Bill Gates |
Kevin Yank |
Collis Ta’eed |
| Self |
SpoonGraphics |
Abduzeedo |
Graphic Design Blender |
Self |
SitePoint |
Envato |
There’s various different styles of photo avatar here, as discussed in this article by Joel Postman on Social Media Today.
Overall, it’s my opinion that the Photo Avatar is best used by two types of people in the social media sphere:
1. Personal profiles / accounts used mostly for personal information;
2. Professionals that are either the sole face of the business or an integral part of the overall team that interacts with the general public.
Sometimes, however, it is in the better interests of your business to use your logo, especially when you have a unique design or name that is easily remembered…
Often nestled snugly in the top left/right corner of our website, we find the “logo”.
A pictogram that defines our business and brand, this logo is often the most remembered thing from our whole interaction with clients – indeed, a well designed logo is supposed to do just that: Stand out in someone’s mind to remind them of your business over all others in your particular field.
For those in business, these logos are often designed by professional graphic designers to capture the essence of your business and what it does in a simple yet creative way, so much so that it is unmistakably yours and not just a part of the ocean of common / cliché logos out there today…
Some great examples of effective logo (and brand) designs are below, which are generally recognised the world over.
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| McDonald’s |
Starbucks |
BMW |
General Electric |
Microsoft |
MasterCard |
Coca-Cola |
Stepping it back a little from the globe-dominating brands / logos, we have some fine examples within our own community of folks using their sites’ logos to represent them in the social media sphere:
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| SitePoint |
Graphic Design Blender |
Design Informer |
Campaign Monitor |
Colorburned |
Smashing Magazine |
99 Designs |
Now, some may argue that a logo can be impersonal, cold or even stale, something nobody running a business wants for their public presence.
While this may be true in some instances, but what you need to ask yourself is this:
Am I in this for the numbers, or am I content to let the people come organically?
If you’re going to be extremely active in the community and really wanting to drive your follower count up, and you want to appeal to people from all walks of life, then perhaps you would choose a photo avatar.
If you’re happy to just have a regular schedule for updating your various profiles, allowing the people genuinely interested and likely to become a paying conversion and permanent follower, perhaps your company logo is the way to go.
That doesn’t mean you have to settle for one or the other though…
Rocking a combination of your company’s logo and you / your staff’s photos is a great way to combine the power of the two individual avatar methods discussed above.
Not only does it allow people to “see” who they’re connecting with, (especially if there’s more than one of you representing the company), but it also brings it all together by showing people where you’re from.
For someone to know that they’re talking to a person from “Company X”, and to also have a face to put with this name could potentially be the way to grab people from both camps: those that prefer a photo, and those that prefer a logo.
I’ve gathered a couple of awesome examples of Combo Avatars as an example:
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Chris Coyier
CSS-Tricks |
Chad Engle
Fuel Your Creativity |
Scott Monty
Ford |
Gareth Coxon
Dot Design |
Well now that I’ve written this article my opinion may have changed*…however I can say for certain that I, personally, prefer the Logo Avatar style.
Photos, while useful to create that personal connection, are lost on me because people generally look very similar, no matter the way the photo is taken. I’m also one of those people who really only remembers people when I have constant interaction with them, and moreso when it’s in person.
In my mind, a logo is much more memorable because quite often they’re so very different to the two avatars on either side of them in the “stream” that they do indeed ‘stand out’.
A string of posts, especially on Twitter, from folks that use plain Photo Avatars can become a little confusing and I find I’m often looking at the name of the poster, rather than the avatar.
Personally I see the avatar as a visual representation of the name of the poster, hence you shouldn’t have to look for the name written out in full after becoming familiar with the avatar; you should be subliminally aware who the tweet / status update / etc. is from from a quick glance at their avatar.
My current avatar that I am using in every social media profile I have is a personalised version of the Adobe CS3 product avatars in my favourite colour. A little cliché I know, but I have been told that I am recognised among the masses on the various places that I frequent around the web. I am planning to update soon however…watch this space ;)
* – By “may have changed”, I’m now considering getting my business logo designed professionally so that I can then update my avatar to a Combo Avatar – I really thing that this could be the way ahead for a lot of businesses, especially those with more than one staff member blogging / tweeting / updating on behalf of the company.
Hopefully you’ve read all the way to the end of this article to see if I’m going to provide some insight into which type you should use for your own avatar and I sincerely hope you won’t get upset at me when I tell you, “It’s your choice entirely!”
Having presented my opinions and personal understandings of each type of avatar above, I’d like to leave it up to you to choose which type is right for you. Ultimately, you know your business / situation better than anyone else, so your own opinion is something you should take very seriously.
Is there any need for consistency?
As designers, should we all follow a trend whereby we all have similar avatars displaying one type or another?
When you comment on a well-known blog and your comment’s avatar is the default generated “monsters” or geometric shape patterns, do you feel that you’ve let your own business down by not proudly displaying your photo or logo?
Should we expect the same from the wider community?
I’ll be listing my sources below for some further reading so you can get a better idea of where I’ve gathered a lot of data for my post.
Hope to hear from you in the comments – I’d love to have some discussion on this much talked-about topic.
