165 design references

Rent The Chicken · oval product portraits

Reel by Andrew Chornyy

Cut three unlike photographs into the same oval, and give each the same blue label, so renting hens, hatching chicks, and renting guinea pigs read as one set of offers.

Visit website · Rent The Chicken

What to look at

Three tall ovals sit in a row on white, under an orange torn edge. Left is a boy in a yellow plaid shirt holding a hen, then blue underlined RENT CHICKENS and "Hens in your backyard for fresh eggs." Middle is chicks under a brooder on wood shavings, labeled HATCH CHICKENS, "Indoor 5-week hatching program." Right is guinea pigs on a towel, labeled GUINEA PIG RENTALS, and a line about a 5-week hatch or cuddle-buddy stay. The pictures do not move. Andrew draws a red circle around each oval and scrolls until the boy starts to leave the screen.

The live row on 2026-11-13, without Andrew's red circles: the same oval, the same blue underline, and a different sentence under each offer.
The live row on 2026-11-13, without Andrew's red circles: the same oval, the same blue underline, and a different sentence under each offer.

Why it works

The shared oval is what ties the row together. Nielsen Norman Group's similarity principle says items that share a shape are read as related, even when the pictures inside them are not the same. A boy with a hen, a brooder of chicks, and a pile of guinea pigs are different subjects. The repeated oval, and the repeated blue underline, make them one group of offers. Each oval is also a boundary. The same group's common-region principle says items inside a boundary are perceived as one unit, so the photograph holds together and the label belongs with it. The sentence under the blue name is the extra cue. Information scent is the guess a person makes from the label, the nearby words, and the picture about what a click will open. "Hens in your backyard for fresh eggs" says the offer in a way the two blue words only start. The shared shape has a limit the same similarity research names: when items look alike, people can overlook the small text that says they are not the same thing. Renting a hen and renting a guinea pig are not the same stay.

Try it

  1. Mask every offer photo with the same oval, and set the offer name in the same blue underlined type under each one.
  2. Add one plain sentence under the name that says what the person actually gets, the way "Hens in your backyard for fresh eggs" does.
  3. Place the animal or the person inside the oval. Do not leave the subject in the corner the mask will cut off.
  4. If two offers are different animals or different jobs, make the first word of the label different, so the shared shape does not make them look interchangeable.
  5. Keep a text path in the header as well. This page already repeats Rent Chickens and Hatch Chickens as orange buttons there.

What it costs

A shared shape can slow the very difference you need someone to notice. Nielsen Norman Group reports that when indicators look alike, people take longer to see how the items differ, and that a shared shape can make them overlook the label. The oval also throws away the corners of each photograph. If the animal sits in that corner, the picture stops helping the label. The red circles in the reel are Andrew's drawing, not part of the page.

Words worth knowing

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