I am working on a small web site which has traditionally presented small (300 x 388)px thumbnails of their event posters, which are linked to the full, tagged PDF.
The majority of their posters are simple portrait-orientation letter pages. I've just been sent a tri-fold brochure which the client would like added to the site in the usual way.
This brought to mind a question I saw on UX several months ago: Is clockwise or counter-clockwise rotated text easier to read?.
My question is related. Given that the tri-fold brochure is the second thumbnail in my examples below, for the sake of consistency, should I:
(A) Rotate the image on its side and present a 300 x 388 thumbnail
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
(B) Present the brochure thumbnail as a 300px wide landscape image in its readable orientation:
In either case, the text is not intended to be legible on the thumbnail. I'm merely curious which case would be more pleasing to the user. I'm leaning toward (B).