After our posts on February 2nd and 3rd about the current, and very public, sticking point between Adobe and Apple over Adobe's Flash product, this was a natural post for today.
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple just released an open letter discussing his company's position on Adobe Flash technology.
For those of you who don't know what Flash is, I'll start there.
Flash is a multimedia platform that is popular for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. In layman's terms, it's a tool that web developers use to do things like create animations, display video (i.e. YouTube up until recently) and even create entire websites (although that's not a good idea). Some of you might know it as Macromedia Flash, but a few years ago, it got bought out by Adobe and became part of their product offering.
What Steve Jobs' letter highlights is that although Flash has been a great technology for the web and in many ways, has been the backbone over the last number of years of the growth in online video, it has always presented challenges and these days, different standards are emerging which will allow web developers to do the same kinds of things, but not require end-users like you and I to have to download and install a plug-in to our browser(s) in order to view the content.
These are exciting developments and will undoubtedly shape the future of the web.
We at Electricurrent & AdvancedMinistry are going to be working to adapt our systems to work on the new standards so that our customers won't have to rely on Flash technology in the future. (You will still be able to use Flash, but your site won't completely rely on it for banners, media players, etc...).
We are pleased to announce that you can now stream MPEG-4 / H.264 video files through your media player! Simply upload your MP4 files to your file management / FTP area and link them through your Media Player in the same way that you would integrate MP3 and FLV files.
Monday Morning Misdemeanors is a series of weekly posts written by Graphic Designer, Derek Gyssels. In this series, Derek is going to hone in on a number of common problems that crop up in graphic designs and then give you the tools to avoid them which will give your designs a professional polish.
I hope you enjoyed last weeks MMM. It can be pretty fun spotting Photoshop faux pas on the net, in magazines or large outdoor advertising. When you start to get an eye for it, you notice all kinds of mistakes everywhere. This week we are going to continue improving your eye by looking at perspective issues.
This image is a great example of bad perspective in combination with terrible lighting. There is nothing happening here that makes me believe this man is rocking out hardcore in his own living room. It is a little difficult to put my finger on but the man's position in relation to the coffee table feels quite off and his feet somewhat confirm that feeling. Combine all that with the fact that the lighting on him is completely different than that of the environment of the living room. I also believe the creator knew what they were facing and decided to not even try to attempt giving the man a shadow.
Here we have a girl working on her computer. She is probably being a good student doing her physics homework and saving it to an external drive that does not obey the laws of gravity. If you have good observation skills you would notice that the creator of this piece used the same image of the drive in the desk scene as they did in the bottom right corner of the ad. The hard drive on the desk should be seen from a higher angle. The books beside the drive and the bad shadow on the cord aren't helping matters either.
In this ad we are looking at a car from nearly ground level. Our head would be at about the same height as the passenger side headlight. But for some reason we are looking at the playpen from above. How can this be? I assume the marketing genius probably liked the concept but didn't like the idea of the playpen obstructing the view of the car in anyway. So they forced the scenario and ran this implausible scene.
Here is another car ad that creates a subtle illusion that we would never see with out own eyes. Based on the background they used here we should be able to see more of the top of the vehicle. This is another good example of light and shadow not helping them make a case as the shadow beneath the SUV is completely wrong.
We shouldn't be able to see the top of this cake at all. With the plate being flat why would the cake be angled forward? That was done so they could do a bad job of forcing the little man figurine onto the cake. I think they could have designed this poster without ruining the perspective.
This is a hilarious example of a company trying to recycle a piece of advertising. The middle person has had their head removed and replaced with another for whatever reason. However the guys head in the second ad doesn't even come close to looking natural. Nice try Microsoft! You have the money, take another picture please!
Sigh, why are reflections so over used? These particular reflections don't even make sense. The creator here just flipped the actual car in hopes they would make a good mirror. The reality is that the reflection here would be more of the underside of the car. Then they made matters worse by trying to cover the mistake with a shadow that shouldn't even be there.
This one is subtle but a no brainer. We could never get this perspective of two people in a front seat of a car from a side view mirror.
With all of this on the table I want to ask you a couple of questions. Does all of this even matter? From a branding/marketing standpoint is the message being delivered enough or does it matter that the message is delivered well?
Personally I think those of us that are in the branding and marketing arena have to watch what we are contributing to the world. On the other hand if we are not contributors we need to be aware of what we are living in and absorbing everyday. There seems to be a growing acquiescence when it comes to the many false realities presented to us through advertising and media. When we buy something from a company we are telling them we are ok with what they are doing. But before I get too heavy, I'll close with this one thought.
Examine your heart. Do not be deceptive in your motives for selling. Also be careful who you buy from. Personally it kind of bugs me that I can buy a car for from a company for tens of thousands of dollars and they can't even put together a solid ad. All the examples I presented here are more humorous than anything. I am just suggesting that we all should watch our steps on a very slippery slope.
The other day I was talking with one of our clients and they invited us to discuss their current marketing plan with them. Once there, we realized that they really had their act together and just needed to make a couple of adjustments to make it great. For the next hour and a half, we talked about what they were doing and just improved each execution with small improvements which made all the difference in the world.
The reason I mention this to you today is the fact that many of you are in the same boat. You are on the right path, but just haven't pushed that idea enough to make it great. Take the time to make small improvements to your already good ideas and you will be amazed at the massive difference it makes in response and health of your brand.
Remember – understand your brand fully and let that be your inspiration.
We are pleased to announce "Beautiful Nature", a new AdvancedMinistry template with a focus on the outdoors. You can view a preview of the new template here.
As usual, all AM 3.0 templates are fully customizable including the ability to change the number of columns, colors, fonts, etc. If you would like to use a simplified version of your home page, edit your template, click the Layout Tab and choose "Hide All Columns (Simplified Home Page)". Resource files for the new template can be found in the "Download Materials" menu under "Template Resource Files".
To change your template at any time, login to your AdvancedMinistry account and select “Choose My Template”.
We are going to start dissecting the subject of Photoshop Realism or Lack Thereof with lighting because it is the one area that I was victim of in my early days as a designer. Think about this for a moment. Everything we see, we see because of light. Without light we do not see. So you would think that all of us being experts of seeing things that it would be obvious when something isn't right. Yet so many of us fall victim in Photoshop to creating things that don't look right and quite frankly are impossible! Let me walk you through some examples of terrible lighting scenarios. Notice in a lot of these samples that the problem focuses on the shadows. Light creates shadows and a lot of time the shadow is the indicator of the problem.
While the overall style of this image is nice there is a glaring flaw present. My diagnosis of this image is that the soccer ball and legs were photographed together and the were “comped” (designer slang for composite) into the grass and sky scene. The lighting issue here is that the legs and ball are very will lit from the front but the shadow is coming towards the front of the picture. Why would a shadow be cast in that direction but the entire side of the legs and soccer ball be so well lit? They shouldn't be. It is for that reason that the sky in behind creates a visual conflict. We see a semi-cloud covered sun. I know the sun is the reason the creator put in the hard shadow, but who has a hard shadow when the sun isn't out in full?
In this image I am assuming that the sky, climber and cliff were all separate images. How I know this is there is a sunset image in behind a cliff that is completely lit from the front. Then we have a climber that is back lit but has highlights to their front side while the sun is more towards their backside.
Again we have subject matter that should be a silhouette because of the dark nature of the sky with the back lighting. Let's suppose that you really wanted to use the picture of the geese and wanted to see the detail in them. This would mean that the sky needs to be changed. Looking at the geese you would need to select a sky that gives the impression of the sun being at about ten or eleven o'clock and in front and to the left of the geese. You at least need to start with a sky that holds those lighting properties then you could start to play with it in PS is you wanted it to have high contrast and moody sky like the lighting on the geese.
This image makes me smile because I know the creator of it meant well but there are so many problems here. In this image he have a storm scene with an arm sticking out of the sky that looks like it was photographed under the florescent lighting of an office. Not that its a bad arm to start with but there needs to be the commitment to see the job through. The arm needs a lot of work with other shadowing and light sources added for it to look like it belongs in this environment. If your not sure what you are doing trying to create a piece like this look for tutorials online and learn something new. Thats a better route than putting your name on something second rate.
I really really really dislike images like this one. They are so contrived it makes me feel nauseous. There are so many flaws in this image when it comes to lighting, not necessarily with the direction of the light but rather the consistency of the lighting and skin tones of all the individuals. If something like this is to be completed properly certainly requires a lot of time in PS or all the people would need to be photographed the same day under the same lighting. Then the could be comped together.
To conclude it takes a trained eye to look for and plan for all the considerations that come into play when creating a composite image in PS. It's my hope that this post will help to give you a new eye to see these things. When done right some really stunning work can be created. Good luck and post any questions if you have them.
We are pleased to announce "Radio Waves", a new AdvancedMinistry template geared at youth and media culture. You can view a preview of the new template here.
As usual, all AM 3.0 templates are fully customizable including the ability to change the number of columns, colors, fonts, etc. If you would like to use a simplified version of your home page, edit your template, click the Layout Tab and choose "Hide All Columns (Simplified Home Page)". Resource files for the new template can be found in the "Download Materials" menu under "Template Resource Files".
To change your template at any time, login to your AdvancedMinistry account and select “Choose My Template”.
It's not often that we do two posts in one day, but today I saw a commercial that literally gives me chills every time I watch it. It's a seat belt advertisement created by a company in the UK. Personally speaking, it may be the best commercial I've ever seen. Some YouTubers are hailing it as the "most beautiful commercial ever created".
I would love to see more videos with this kind of creativity in the Christian realm.
I've got a question for all our readers. How do you measure success within a church or ministry?
It seems to me that the more technical and advanced we get, the more every little thing has to be measured because we can. For example, if we are developing a new brand direction for a client, they want to know that brand awareness numbers are being effected positively along with sales.
If we build a new website for a client, they want to know how many people are coming to the site, where people are going on the site and how long they are staying (along with many other metrics).
Do we do the same with church? Do we take attendance to measure how well our church is doing? Do we count the offering/donations to measure how effective our programs are? Do we count how many baptisms we've had to measure God's movement in the church.
People want to know. I want to know. Help me out and share what you are doing in this measurable society.
By the way, I will be measuring the success of this post by how many people respond.
I am going to attempt to cover a fairly large topic, but to do so I will need a few weeks to be properly thorough with it. The issue on the docket this week is “Photoshop realism”. There are a lot of people that have access to Adobe Photoshop and have read some tutorials or experimented a little, but that leaves them far from “knowing” how to use Photoshop properly. Over the next few weeks I am going to examine some of the areas that are common stumbling blocks which ultimately impede the efforts of many well intentioned designers.
This week, a co-worker sent me the image/comic in this post and it had me laughing for half a day. In the comics last frame, Neo has aptly demonstrated some of the most common errors that I will devote entire posts to. Some of the topics to follow will include:
Lighting Issues
Perspective Problems
Thoughtless Cloning and Patching
Clumsy Compositions
Cropping and Extraction Faux Pas
Please keep in mind that as we go forward through this mini-series, my intent is not to make fun of anyone or be critical in a harsh way. My intent is to help people avoid little pitfalls along the way of their branding efforts. The last thing you want is to finish a piece of work and release it to the public, only to see it gaining attention for the wrong reasons.
Come back next Monday to learn about how critical lighting is to pulling off proper Photoshop work.
So there's a buzz on the net today about this new Nike ad.
From a branding perspective, it's amazing.
Nike is one of the few sponsors that stuck with Tiger ever since his sordid lifestyle came to light and took him away from golf for a number of months.
Don't get me wrong, I don't condone what Tiger has done and at this point, don't see him as much of a role model. But at the end of the day, what Tiger does or doesn't do, isn't likely to make me buy more Nike shoes or T-shirts.
What is, is the fact that Nike didn't bail on him. They zagged when so many others zigged and did the unexpected thing by not dropping Tiger. For those companies that did drop him, especially in light of this new ad, they have managed to communicate one thing: “we're better than Tiger and therefore he's not fit to represent us” - a branding disaster.
Nike on the other hand, did what they do best; they communicated like humans...fallible, broken people just like the rest of us, who all need a second chance. That resonates with other humans (note: humans, not consumers make up most of your audience).
To top it all off, they did this in a way that didn't let Tiger off the hook at all. They didn't have the moral authority to scold him publicly and nor should they. Instead, they acknowledged the problem and in an incredibly creative way (by using his late father's voice), let us in on some of Tiger's accountability. It's a win for Tiger as humility will be the foundation of his ability to recover and come back from this situation, and it reinforces Nike's brand of being caring and human.
Nike has something to teach North American Christianity here.
If we were to start thinking a bit more about how our audience thinks and sees stuff, our communications would look a lot different. Nike could have focussed on the outright selling of product here, but instead, they looked at the bigger picture and created affinity in the hearts of their audience...a brand impression that gives them an opportunity to be heard, now, or in the future.
What if our church and ministry communications took the bigger picture as well? Campaigns that highlight fallible, broken people that by the grace of God and no doing of our own, found an answer to life's questions and care enough to want to share that with other fallible, broken people...because after all, that's just what we are.
I think we'd end up looking a lot more like Nike and a lot less like the other companies who walked away from Tiger.
"The events of Good Friday are utterly breath-taking. We celebrate nothing less than this: that God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross" (Col. 1:20)..."
"That is only the beginning of the paradox. This is the day when the Living Water says "I thirst." It is the day when the Bread of Life hungers, the Resurrection and the Life dies, the Priest becomes the Sacrifice, the King of the Jews is killed like a criminal. No wonder we stammer in the face of this mystery."
We hope and pray that you are gripped by these truths this weekend. That this Easter would be a time of deep reflection and wonder that leads you to humbly offer great praise to the God of our salvation.
In observance of Easter weekend, our offices will be closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday.
Follow-the-leader. We all do it, both individually and corporately.
What I want to communicate through this post can be pretty much summarized in the following quote form this article regarding how Microsoft used the Farmville application on Facebook to more than triple it's fan-base on that property:
“Even as advertisers rush to Farmville for a virtual land grab, it’s critical to remember that the campaign worked in part because Bing was first to try it. There is great value in being the first company to test an advertising strategy in any social medium; if [another new application] becomes cluttered with more product placements, users will turn away. In a word, we trust our friends who show us cool things; we don’t trust the friends who are always trying to sell us something.”
It is so popular for people to see a great idea online and to go and copy it hoping for the same or similar results. This is especially true of ministries. But, while “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” (Charles Caleb Colton), it doesn't typically reflect well on the copy-cat.
In fact, it looks lazy, uninspired and contrived. None of these being values that we hold high in any relationship, so why would it be any different online?
Xpiritmental is a resource. It's a place to learn and to share thoughts on marketing, ministry, design, service, the Web, culture and more. We'll start the conversation, but we're looking forward to hearing what you've got to say.
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