Cinemagraph is a technique of blending the effects of images and videos.
Essentially it’s a sophisticated and refined version of creating animated GIF’s with an artistic goal A big step from the dancing bunny and flashing lights that use to prevalent on websites a few years back. It was introduced by a New York fashion photographer Jamie Beck, in collaboration with motion graphics designer Kevin Burg.
In an upcoming post, we’ll tell you how to make one…check back!
Artists, bands and businesses…
IF…
You may Want to Think Twice about it.
Why ?…
1: 60%
The Internet is composed of over 60 percent video. Every minute another 24 hours of video is being uploaded onto YouTube and over 2 billion of those videos are being watched every day! There is no end in sight. YouTube and video on the Internet, in general, has created an audience expecting video. Artists and Businesses who ignore this fact are missing a huge opportunity to speak to a large portion of their target audience in a way that is more personal and effective in establishing relationships and brand loyalty .
2: 80% / 52%
Did you know that 80 percent of people who land on a website with video will watch the video? Of the 80 percent who watch the video, 52 percent of those viewers will take some form of action such as placing a phone call, subscribing to your list , dig further into your website, or even purchase your products and services.
3: #2
YouTube is the NUMBER 2 search engine on the Internet. This fact surprises most people. When talking about search engines, most often, names like ‘Yahoo,’ ‘Bing,’ ‘Ask’ and, of course, ‘Google,’ who is the 800 pound gorilla of search engines come to mind.
Google, who purchased YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion, is primarily a text based search engine. With YouTube you can engage your target audience much more effectively through video than a text based ad could in the past. Chances are your target audience is now searching for you, your products or services on YouTube. If you don’t have a video marketing strategy that incorporates YouTube, your are putting yourself at a disadvantage.
The numbers game of accumulating Facebook Friends/fans and Twitter followers is all well and good, but in today’s market, marketing directives are becoming more personalized. Engagement, connection and story are the new forms of promotional art. Your fans and prospects want to connect with YOU! Speaking through video creates a bond where fans and prospects feel they get to know you, like you and trust you, beyond the daily faceless obligatory Tweets, Facebook posts and music player widgets. Thus they will be more apt to buy your music or products and more importantly become Loyal Fans not just a number.
This is one of those shortcuts that once you know it, you may find yourself using it all the time
By simply pressing the F key inside of Photoshop you can cycle between Standard Screen Mode, Full screen(with menu bar) and Full Screen Mode – as seen below.
FULL SCREEN (WITH MENU BAR)
FULL SCREEN MODE
Full Screen (with menu bar) hides the start bar (on Windows) and desktop wallpaper (on Mac). This is useful for two reasons:
Full Screen Mode hides all tools, windows, start bars and desktop wallpapers so that you can concentrate on your image. This screen mode typically uses a black background however tr ychanging this to grey so that it doesn’t affect how you perceive colour and contrast. You can do this in the preferences menu.
The TAB button on your keyboard is a shortcut that toggles between showing or hiding the palettes, tools and options toolbar. It’s a simple and fast way to remove the clutter and get right into the action.
This shortcut is especially useful when zoomed in and doing high level retouching with the brush or clone tools because it gives you a larger area of the screen to work within. It is even more useful if you know other shortcuts because it means you can stay in this viewing mode without having to keep returning to the other windows.
Shortcut
You may be saying that you knew that one already. But did you know that Shift + TAB is the shortcut that only hides the windows or palettes on the right hand side of the screen? So if you find that you don t need to access them all the time but still want to keep the tools and toolbox options available then Shift + TAB is the shortcut for you.
Marketers and agencies have been using sex as an advertising tactic from day one, but does it really work?
Is it Sex that Sells or… is it Attention that sells!
Getting people’s attention is the ultimate goal of putting attractive people in front of products to sell them. Advertisers will use many gimmicks to gain attention; humor, shock and awe and of course sex. But once you got this attention your product still has a lot of selling to do and the bigger issue to address…how do you earn the customers trust?
Successful companies are good at gaining attention and earning trust not just one or the other.We’re surrounded by advertisements that desperately compete for our attention. Everywhere we look, we find ourselves inevitably drawn to images of scantily clad attractive men and women that are supposed to somehow inspire us to purchase products they endorse. Sure, this attention-getting strategy is popular. But, is it effective?
Here is an example of a TV ad from the 1960s selling aftershave. Would it make you buy this aftershave?
Take a look at this modern day ad for Axe Body Spray. Notice the similarities, but still ask yourself would this ad make you buy this product?
http://youtu.be/I9tWZB7OUSU
The misuse of sex appeal, however, can be costly to a brand. Many campaigns deemed offensive have started brand boycotts that affect sales and damage brand reputation. Abercrombie & Fitch and Calvin Klein have been involved in several such scandals
Sex in advertising has and will continue to stir controversy for many years, an advertiser must be careful when incorporating it in a campaign. Great advertisers consider not only the attention-getting power of an advertisement or commercial, but also what kind of emotional response it provokes in customers. Studies show that the attractiveness of the endorsing model provokes positive responses. Nudity and graphic erotic content, while still increasing consumer’s attention, doesn’t really generate positive feelings among viewers. In other words, advertisers must be careful to avoid the “cheap shot,” which may negatively affect a brand’s image.
To avoid that, the sexual content in advertising should be appropriate to the product category and have a proper underlying message, not for just the sake of using it! ..like the GoDaddy commercials, for example and this one by JC Penney.
What does footage of Phobe Cates at 18 years old have to do with JC Penney selling Van Heusen clothing?
Nothing you say…but did it get your attention?
Does the “sex sells” tactic show a higher return on investment?
With the birth of Internet and digital advertising, in the form of Google Adwords & Facebook Ads, we can now tell exactly when certain advertisements generate a return. There are many more tools afforded to us today to measure these Ad ROI’s
Let’s Take A Look At Facebook Advertisements
Here are some quick Facebook facts:
With that many active users, Facebook has become an emerging option for online advertising. Businesses can choose their target demographic and Facebook will display their ad to those users. In this new approach to advertising, can we still find marketers using ads that use sex to sell? Yes.
But Does Sex Really Sell?
According to somerecently conducted case studies more than 60% of users click on the ad that contains a female. The researcher showed samples of users’ 5 different pages of Facebook Ads that allotted to a total of over 200,000 page views.
Clicks are great, but did they sell?
In fact, these ads did. The campaigns showed that ads using “sex to sell ” performed with a high click through rate, but more importantly, the traffic converted into leads.
What should you do?
If you have a small picture framing company, should you go out and hire a bikini model for your ads? Of course not!
Our Commentary
It is our belief and experience that when advertising agencies cannot think of a good concept, they try and get hold of a celebrity. When the client cannot afford a celebrity, they get a skimpily clad woman instead. Conversely, as long as money is being generated from ads containing sexual content, you will continue to see them. This is not the only answer, for it it was all ads would contain sexual content and be void of innovation and imagination. We would have never seen some of the crestivity thst we have seen over the hyears from compaines such as Coca Cola, Budweiser and the latest E-trade commercials.
Remember the following:
If you are not comfortable with the answers that you receive, then it may be time to seek out a new agency. Contact Us!
In Design, you should always be encouraged to take a good look at the lines in a photograph that you’re trying to combine with text and graphics.
Repetition is one of the most important design principles and this is a natural implementation of that idea. By analyzing the photo and following its directionality, you sometimes can find incredibly easy ways to make your graphics and text look truly integrated, as if the image was created expressly for the purpose you’re using it for, a great illusion !
The first step using the lines in a photo is to analyze the image’s content and use any hard lines to help align your artwork in a very literal fashion.
It is important to note that not every image will lend itself to the technique. However, learning to be more aware of how the existing content in a photograph can be used to guide and inspire you to create unique designs that break away from the cookie cutter mold that’s so easy to fall into.
Let’s take a look using first, some easy analysis
The bricks in this photo form natural blocks. Headlines are set conventionally and stacked, making complimentary blocks.
Next , a long tail blouse, plunging V-neck, and a sweeping, fluid pose yield a beautiful sleek top-to-bottom line which gets amplified by the vertical nameplate.
www.chicos.com
Lastly, we’ll be using a method that’s very similar to the repetition methods above, but in a more complex manner.
If we think about the strongest natural lines in this photo (below), they don’t really stretch across the image like those in the previous examples. Instead, we see a very defined pyramid take shape.
We can use this shape as inspiration for how we place our text on the page, just as we did with the bird photo. To do this, draw the lines that make up the triangle, then copy that triangle and place it in the area to the left. Finally, use this new triangle as a guide for text placement.
Notice that, in the final result below, we didn’t actually continue the pyramid shape all the way to the bottom. Instead, my lines of text seemed to naturally conform to an almost diamond shape, and that’s completely acceptable. Once again, you’re making the rules here so feel free to distort and rethink the natural lines in the photo rather than simply taking them so literally.
Photographs by Daniel Zedda