May, 2011

Motion Graphics / Uncategorized / Video — 5 Comments
30
May 11

A Stock Image to Flash Animation …

Creating an animation for our very own homepage was probably one of the hardest jobs we have done lately.

Struggling for inspiration we consulted with Getty Images library and found a vector image that looked very similar to our Grid City buildings that we use in our logo. See image below.

Our starting point ... Pink City

So we downloaded the pink and baby blue city and Matt got to work.

A colour change, a sun, some broadcasting signals and a Grid City sign transformed the image. See below.

Goodbye Pink City ... hello Grid City

From here this we then made 6 different videos transitioning from morning through the next morning. You can view an example of our night animation below. For this one Matt used After Effects to add some flashing lights to the side of the building, some lights to the aeroplanes along with sound effects – techno music, cicadas and the sound of the moon snoring.

It just shows you what you can turn a pink city into :)

Email marketing — 2 Comments
27
May 11

Grid City Email Marketing Tips

Database marketing remains the most cost efficient method of reaching your customers and as such we thought we would share a few tips. Many of you understand the amazing value of regular contact with your customers and we again stress the value of adding new contacts onto your databases. For those still pondering how best to manage your customer database the tips below will show you how to unlock the sales potential of your database.

How do you get more business?

Trying to find a new customer? Trying to find a way to unlock sales without committing to expensive marketing programmes? The answer lies in your very own customer and business contacts database. This database is your businesses most valuable resource.

Many businesses fail to maintain contact databases or if so contact their customers is a haphazard and irregular manner meaning their efforts are lost in the “noise” of modern life. Databases are untapped goldmines and the Grid City team can show you many simple and cost effective ways for you to market your products and services to your database.

The most popular method that we assist our customers here at Grid City with is email marketing. We know only too well that tasks likes this can be put on the back burner which is why we manage email mail outs on behalf of our clients from the initial design through to the compilation and distribution. Some clients provide us with content, some clients employ us to find the content but most importantly if its set in the diary to go out at a certain date we make that happen.

Below are some tips to help you if you are thinking about email marketing or already doing so;

Storage of Contacts
• You don’t need any fancy programs, Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Outlook provides a great platform store your contacts details.
• If you are starting out, it is important that you split first names, last names and email addresses into separate columns or fields.

It’s Not Just About Sales
• Use your newsletter to ask questions of your customers, find new staff, or even use them as a test before you take a product to the market.

Entice With an Offer
• If you make an offer – make it a good offer.
• Also include a call to action!

Frequency
• Research indicates that it takes that most people have to receive a minimum of 7 marketing pieces from a company before they will even consider buying from them. Don’t expect that you will get instant results. You need to send your email newsletter at least once a month for 6 months to see results.

Email marketing with Grid City

Below is a set by step guide to our email marketing process.

Set-up

Step 1
We design you an email newsletter template

Email Newsletter Template Example

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2

We set you up with an account that you will be able to login to and update your contacts.

Step 3
We design you an online form which we will send you each month prompting you for content.

Step 4
You will provide us with a CSV or Excel file of your database which we will upload for you.

When you are ready to send out

Upon receipt on your order form we will compile your email newsletter. We will check that all the links are working, images are in the right place and run a test through both Mac Mail and Explorer to check that it displays correctly.

Upon confirmation we will distribute your email newsletter to your database.

Reporting

Once the email newsletter has been sent, you can login and see who has read your campaign, how many times they have viewed your campaign and what links for files they have clicked on.

Reporting

 

Don’t be afraid to contact your clients using email marketing!  Informative information is not spam! If you users do not want to receive the email newsletter they can unsubscribe using the unsubscribe button at the bottom of the newsletter. And finally … don’t remove anyone off your database unless they specifically asked to be removed. Contacts are gold.

Until next time

Donna :)

Motion Graphics / Video — 9 Comments
27
May 11

Matt Simons on Motion GFX

I would like to share a helpful hint when it comes to creating motion graphics. Simple is often better. Too many times I have found myself building something ‘fantabulous’ only to cut it right back till I like it. So why not start simple and build from there? I recently worked on a motion graphics animation for Projectmanager.com, this is a perfect example of starting simple and building from there.

Firstly it might help if you watch the finished product below

To create that I used

  • Photoshop CS4
  • After Effect CS4

Side note: It doesn’t matter what ‘CS’ is used, just like it doesn’t matter what car you drive or what hand bag you wear. It still gets you from A to B and carries all your stuff.

I was given

  • A Projectmanager.com logo
  • Various icons they currently use on their website
  • A script

With those things, I went into Photoshop a did this:

  • Placed a two tone blue gradient down for a background
  • Placed the logo and 3 of the icons I was given on the page

Done! Simple. I now have an opening to the video “welcome to project manager.com” Now to ‘build from there’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This looks cool right? But it’s a bit flat, not a lot of oomph! At this point I have no idea what I want to improve. So I find things I already like and see if I can make them a wee bit better. I like the gradient background, so Ill change the blues and see what happens. I like the icons so I make them look a little bit more three-dimensional by adding reflections. And I like the logo how it is. In retrospect my design decisions are primarily based around the logo, it’s one of the most important references I have for my overall style decisions. After those few changes are made this is what I’m left with.

I’m stuck now; I want a busier background because I know it’s the only part of the animation viewers will see for the entire time. At this point I need some inspiration. Luckily I’m really awesome and came up with an idea in minutes. What did I use for inspiration?

The default desktop from Mac OS X Tiger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So my current design plus inspiration equals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It may not look like much of an improvement but trust me, some flowy lines that move ever so slightly can make the difference between the client saying “I don’t like it” to “great, send me the invoice”.

Now all that’s left is to animate. I’m not going to go into detail but instead give a few pieces of advice. If you view the opening of the video all you will see is the logo and icons moving on and off screen, nothing special, some scale and position key frames is all. The trick is to make it flow, and keep the timing right. I can’t teach timing but I can let you in on a couple of secrets to help make it flow.

Technique #1
I am going to assume you know a little bit about After Effects, and know what key frames are used for. A setting I use regularly when animating key frames is the ‘Easy Ease’ option. This means to ease speed coming both into and out of selected key frames. So rather than a constant speed from one key frame to another the change begins slowly, speeds up and then slows before stopping at the second key frame. This provides a more smooth transition. You can make your key frames Easy Ease by selecting them and hitting ‘F9’ or by right clicking and under ‘key frame assistant’ hit ‘Easy Ease’

Technique #2
Lets say you are animating that bar graph icon on the right. You want it to enter the screen and stop where it is, you know easy ease key frames will help it look better, but what else could you do? Make it more realistic maybe? Find a ruler. Hold it still. Now give it a flick like your trying to catapult something at the guy or girl you didn’t like very much at school. See how it doesn’t just go from one point to the other? But it flexes many times before coming to a stop. Try and incorporate that kind of realism when animating. I’ve provided two examples here. The first using easy ease key frames as well as the ‘realism’ technique and the second with standard A to B key frames. You can decide which flows best.

Example 1


Example 2

 

Small things make all the difference :)