Which headshot really says me?
What we can learn about visual narrative strategy from AI, Simu Liu, and the MS Society
A couple weeks ago, while updating his LinkedIn profile, my husband thrust his phone under my nose and asked: “Which headshot do you like best?” I started scrolling through legions of men who looked eerily like the one I’d married—if he’d had a ton of plastic surgery by an admittedly deft surgeon and a preppier wardrobe tailored to expose what romance novelists might describe as “the strong column of his throat.” For reference, this is what he actually looks like. Turns out, these headshots were courtesy of Try it on AI, an app that uses old photos to generate “portrait studio quality photos.”
I advised Mark not to use any of these portraits. Not because of the AI-induced glamor, which I don’t begrudge him, but because none of the photographs actually reflect his personal or professional story, which is this: Mark grew up in a rural midwestern town, started an economic revitalization org to help his hometown when it lost its biggest employer in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, and has brought his affinity for rural communities into his work as a regional economist ever since. In contrast, these AI-generated headshots suggest the story of a generically slick urbanite who might work at any of a million office jobs, ranging from investment banking to selling insurance.
Admittedly, it’s hard to tell a rich story in a 400 x 400 pixel headshot. Mine is pretty generic. But the habits and mindsets behind generic headshots—they should just look “nice” or “professional”—are often the same habits and mindset behind the rest of the visuals we use in organizational storytelling. “We need to break up all the text on this PowerPoint or on this website, so let’s just grab some nice graphics from Canva, a couple photos from Shutterstock, or a vector drawing from Adobe Creative Cloud.”
Speaking of stock photos, I was thrilled a couple years ago when Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings catapulted actor Simu Liu into mainstream stardom. Before he became a Marvel superhero, I’d known Simu from the Canadian sitcom Kim’s Convenience, where he plays the estranged son of a Korean-American convenience store owner. And before Kim’s Convenience, Simu modeled for stock photos, all of which went viral after his big break. Here’s one. Look at Simu facilitating a discussion of random pie charts and bar graphs among his diverse colleagues with such handsome glee!
But I digress. The point is: Simu’s stock photos had appeared in a variety of advertisements, on textbook covers, and informational pamphlets. Their versatility in being able to illustrate so many different campaigns for so many different companies in so many different contexts is proof of just how generic they are, and how little they actually do to advance the storytelling of the organizations who use them.
For all the care that we in the social sector give to our words, we rarely think about how the pictures and colors we use advance the story that we want to tell about ourselves. Education organizations cycle through photos of children raising hands, apples sitting on stacks of books, or graduation caps being tossed in the air. Early childhood favors a bright primary color palette, K-12 favors navy and white. Environmental organizations cycle through images of plants cupped in hands or planet earth. They favor a green, blue, and white palette. Mental health organizations cycle through photos of solitary people looking out windows (how did this become such a go-to image for mental health!?!) or people with their heads in their hands.
In fact, other than a growing attention toward racial and ethnic diversity among people pictured, social sector organizations seem to have little to no criteria for the images they use beyond fitting the general gist of an issue area (e.g. education, environment, mental health)
Images matter. As anybody who’s ever flipped through the ads of a magazine knows, people often take the time to look at pictures whereas they might not take the time to read words. Sometimes, their decision of whether to learn more about a product or program by reading the accompanying text hinges on the impact of that picture. So as we invest in our organizational storytelling, we need to consider our visual narrative strategy.
Specifically, we must consider:
What do we want our audiences to think about our mission and our work?
What do we want our audiences to feel about our mission and our work?
What do we want our audiences to know about our mission and our work?
What kind of visuals will help us accomplish these narrative goals?
for example…
Mike Marques is the founder of Marques Creative, a studio that has designed visual narrative campaigns for nonprofits like the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society and social movements like Make Music Hartford.
While Mike is an incredibly talented photographer, nowhere on the Marques Creative website is there mention of the word “photography.” Because in this day and age of AI platforms and high-tech phone cameras, Mike knows that anybody can take a photo. But Mike also knows that visuals have the power to tell incredible stories, in a way that a random photo—no matter how crisp or filtered—cannot.
After several years of working with the Connecticut MS Society, Mike proposed a photo essay of people across the state diagnosed with MS. At first, the org was hesitant, because—like almost every social sector org I’ve ever worked with—they thought of storytelling as piecemeal, attached to specific fundraising campaigns. But Mike argued that, instead of thinking myopically about each discrete campaign, the MS Society needed to think about its overall organizational story—which would ultimately help their fundraising. He said: “Let’s create an authentic body of work that will better represent how MS is affecting our neighbors.”
His partners were convinced, and the I am a MoSaic project was born. Over the course of three years, Mike photographed dozens of Connecticut residents battling MS. The project link is worth checking out, because not only are the photos gorgeous, but it’s immediately apparent how they individually and collectively tell a story. In fact, let’s run through the visual narrative strategy prompts I listed earlier.
What do these photos make CT MS Society storytelling audiences think about the org’s mission and work? Community! Given the breadth of people, settings, and contexts photographed, the collection immediately evokes the idea that the MS Society builds community among residents living with MS, and that it has developed deep local connections with and among the people it supports. In fact, one of the organization’s firmly held beliefs is that “together we are stronger.”
What do these photos make CT MS Society storytelling audiences feel about the org’s mission and work? Hope and respect! The collection depicts people running, playing musical instruments, and learning at school—essentially, people “still living the life they wanted to live despite their diagnosis.” In addition, it evokes the feeling that the MS Society interacts with people living with MS with deep respect and humanity—versus, say, voyeuristic pity.
What do these photos make CT MS Society storytelling audiences know about the org’s mission and work? The photographs convey three important pieces of knowledge:
The community of people living with MS in Connecticut ranges across all ages, races, genders, and abilities (as portrayed by the diversity of people photographed).
Symptoms and conditions vary (as portrayed by the diversity of contexts photographed).
Investing in medical solutions, whether it is to alleviate symptoms or develop a cure, is critical (as portrayed by portraits like the one of Karen, whose symptoms made a holding a book too hard and so required her to use a Kindle).
long story short…
There’s not much more to be said about visual narrative strategy here except that organizations need to have one!
So instead, I’ll end with the admission that—of course!—I had to try the AI portraiture app myself. I uploaded ten recent photos to the platform, and chose the themes “business professional” and “floral.” This is what I look like in real life. And here is a sample of my AI-generated headshots.
Yikes, right!?! I’ve written before about how AI is limited by patterns of existing data. That includes racial bias, so it’s no surprise that while Mark’s headshots resemble a weird parallel universe version of him, “my headshots" look nothing like me —or even like the same person—but like a pool of unrelated Asian women sporting super-time-consuming hairstyles. Typical.