Introducing Creativity Labs, an experiential learning community. Join creatives at Accent Interactive in a fun way to enhance your own creative potential. It’s for people who take their creative gift seriously enough to nurture it, to challenge it, to take it out on a date. If your creative work is important, then Creativity Labs (or something like it) may be for you.
Get more information at www.creativitylabs.us.
Announcing a new 6-week class: Photoshop for Designers and Photographers. This class is designed as an introduction for beginners and intermediate users. If you have dipped your toe into Photoshop and wanted to go deeper, or want to expand your skills to become more marketable, this class is for you.
Our project-based curriculum covers:
Hands-on training in a small class is the best way to learn at your own pace.
Wednesdays, 6:30–8:30 pm
January 22 to March 5, 2014 (6 sessions + 1 snow day)
$190 due at signup. Bring your laptop with Photoshop loaded and ready to go.
To sign up, contact us at 410-771-1718.
Update: this class is now half full but we have a few more spots left. Sign up now to reserve your space.
If you don’t have Photoshop CC, you can get a free 30-day trial, or sign up for a monthly subscription at www.adobe.com.
The photo shoot should have been a breeze. All our client wanted was an exterior shot of a particular building. No people to herd, no tricky indoor lighting to manipulate. We had enough sun to be helpful, but no so much that it would wash out everything.
Yet Vienna, our photographer, struggled to get a website-worthy shot. If the building looked good, the sky did not, and vice versa. The time had come for a lesson on HDR (High Dynamic Range).
In photography, dynamic range is the difference between the lightest and darkest regions in a photograph. When dynamic range is limited, highlights wash out to white, or shadows deepen into dark blobs. HDR techniques expand the range of a camera to capture shadow and highlight details at the same time.
HDR is accomplished by bracketing shots—that is, taking three to seven shots of the same subject but at different exposure settings. Shots range from overexposed to normal to underexposed. A conventional camera on a tripod can accomplish this. We use the Nikon D800, which has an auto-bracket feature. We then use software like Photomatix Pro to selectively pull the most interesting details from the different bands of exposure to create a single image. All that’s left is to crop and insert a high-quality image into your website, brochure, or video.
See for yourself the difference HDR makes. Too bright: This image shows detail in the building, but loses the details in the bright sky. Click to enlarge:
Too dark: Now the sky is nicely textured but the building is dark and murky. Today’s cameras can’t get everything in a single exposure.
HDR gives the best of both worlds.
After Vienna saw what HDR technology could do for a business project, she wanted to experiment with its creative potential. She also wanted the benefit of immediately using a new technique to drive home the learning. Here are the results.
Let us show you what HDR can do for your next photoshoot.
Happy Thanksgiving from the Creative Team at Accent Interactive.
“Gratitude”
Original commissioned painting, mixed media and acrylic, by Chris Valotta, Accent Interactive web and graphic designer and fine artist.
David Shulman is a professional musician turned physical therapist. And his training in both worlds led him to a revelation: “Practice, practice, practice” may not—as the old saying goes—be the sure-fire route to Carnegie Hall.
In fact, 70 percent of professional musicians will be forced to stop playing—sometimes permanently—due to injury caused by repetitive overuse. For years, Shulman worked one-on-one with musicians, treating their injuries and showing them how to avoid future injuries without sacrificing proficiency. As the demand for his specialized knowledge grew, Shulman created an interactive workshop that combined treatment with education. Participants raved: “You need to get this workshop to more people. You are the music profession’s best-kept secret.”
But Shulman was a physical therapist, not a marketer. He didn’t have time to talk up his workshop. And he wasn’t sure how else to get the word out.
Hands-on marketing for the Injury Prevention workshop
We created a flyer to do the talking for him. In an age of electronic communication, a printed flyer was a refreshingly personal way to reach the music world’s gatekeepers at symphonies, music schools, jazz ensembles, and beyond.
The flyer features a photo-illustration of a violinist’s hand with pain points highlighted as in a clinical diagram. Classical music meets high-tech medicine. The message stresses the workshop’s uniqueness—prevention, hands-on demonstrations, and participants’ enthusiasm.
When clients, designers, and writers function as an ensemble, they make beautiful music together, with a message that’s in tune with the intended audience.
Some marketing consultants want you to obsess about your brand. I think that’s a mistake.
A brand is fundamentally what people think of your business—your reputation, your promise. A brand serves a purpose—it’s a mental image of who your company is, what makes you different, what value you offer. It’s meaningful to customers because it helps them make decisions about when to hire you for one of the many jobs to be done (Jobs to be Done, Clayton Christensen). But customers care more about getting their job done than they care about your brand.
The problem with spending time and energy on your brand/reputation is that you don’t have direct control over it. Your reputation is the sum of what you deliver—what you do, what you make, how you interact with your customers.
Instead of focusing on your brand, focus on delighting customers. Find out what job they hire your product or service for and get busy improving that. Make them so happy they want to talk about you. And create good marketing materials that help them do that.
Let your customers handle your brand.
And get back to work.
Bobbie, the owner of BDunn Interiors, came to us with a plea: “There are too many words! In my head and on my site. When I’m drowning in words, I can’t create. Feed my right brain with images, flow, color.”
We love it when our goal for a website is that clear from Day One. Our writer took on the challenge of making every word count—and eliminating the rest. And our designer set about creating a site where pictures told the story.
The photographs are the stars on BDunn Interiors’ new site.
We wanted to display Bobbie’s work like we’d display fine art in a gallery. So out went the busy backgrounds and embellishments. A subtle linear background serves the same purpose as bare walls in a museum, letting the transformed rooms be the stars. Typography and color guide navigation without the clutter of too many small icons.
With a single click you can explore the design details of this bathroom.
Against that clean background, the interactive photos become the main characters. The visitor enters the story of each room, drilling deeper and deeper into the details of the redesign: the tile backsplash, the patio fire pit, the window treatments, and so on. “Before” photographs show where the story began. “After” photographs show how the story ended…happily. And in between, the site visitor gets a good sense of our client’s artistic vision and range of skills.
The goal: a site as colorful and contemporary as our client.
Our client requested a website that felt content rich without using lots of words. We ran with that goal but added to it. We wanted visitors to this site to get a feel for what Bobbie is good at, what she’s passionate about, what they will get if they hire her, and what it’s like to work with her. What do you think? Did we tell her story well?
How do you feel when faced with a “blank slate?” Scared? Excited? Challenged? Our blank slate was a two-car garage, and it brought out those emotions and more. But after a few hectic, dusty, noisy months, that blank slate is a functional and fun creativity studio.
Our new studio means we can serve you in a whole new way. Instead of telling you about it, here’s a guided tour to show you what we mean.
Most offices are not conducive to photography. They lack open space, a good spot for a large backdrop, and flexible lighting. You want a photographer whose space makes the photos great.
Almost no office is quiet enough for a sensitive microphone. Yet quiet is exactly what you want when creating a video to promote your business. You also want high ceilings and ample space that’s free of cord and cable clutter. And easy and flexible set-up for mics, lights, and backdrops. Add an interruption-free zone and you have the ideal environment for your video project.
Creative work thrives in a flexible work environment. At the beginning of the creative process, the space should encourage brainstorming and free association of ideas. During heads-down creating, artists need freedom from distraction and the ability to concentrate. But they also need easy access to team members who can get them out of a jam. And in the final refinement stage, a collaborative environment can energize the critique and give a fresh perspective on the project.
Over the years we’ve noticed that the space we work in with clients has a dramatic impact on the projects we create. Good flow in a room promotes a good flow of ideas. Clients can now walk around, write on the board, and access ample monitors. Furniture can be rearranged in a flash to promote focused one-on-one consulting, brainstorming trios, or room-wide eye contact. Accessible tools ensure that ideas get captured. The environment is set for asking good questions, proposing / defending / capturing ideas, processing, summarizing, and assigning tasks. All this plus a good beverage selection!
Gone are green chalkboards and wooden writing desks. Today’s learning environment for creatives must put the right technology in the right hands at the right time. Creativity students need to see what others are working on and be able to show the class what they are doing.
Nothing kills the creative process more than an interruption at the wrong time. When the main studio is jumping with the energy of a video shoot, a writer or designer can retreat to the office for quiet and concentration.
We also use this space for creativity coaching. Clients appreciate the confidentiality provided by a private space with sound-proof walls.
Function trumps beauty, but beauty inspires. It’s important to bring inspiration as close as possible to the hub of creativity.
When we first stood and stared at that empty garage, we envisioned a space that responds to the changing needs of business and enlivens collaboration.
We hope this space can help generate the energy and ideas that will grow your business not just today, but into the future. We are looking forward to working with you here soon. Bring us a challenge.
The old Sea King site
Sea King—a seafood market, carry-out, and caterer—is one of our long-time clients. They came to us recently to upgrade their website’s content management system. As we added CMS features for them, they realized their site’s visual design could use a fresh look. Their business was growing and invigorated, and we wanted to help capture that energy online.
Sea King’s original home page featured a photo of a fishing boat on the bay, a classic Maryland scene. Yet the page fell short of capturing what Sea King was about.
Sketch for the underwater theme
On our first pass at a redesign, we were still stuck in our nautical rut. We went deep into an underwater world. But scenes of fish in the sea only took us farther from defining Sea King. The result was certainly more artistic than the old version, but it wasn’t grabbing us.
What were we missing? What made people flock to Sea King?
Food! When you enter Sea King’s market, you smell the sweet brinyness of the oysters, you see and feel the texture of the crab spices, you hear shrimp sizzling in the fryers. How could we capture that sensual extravaganza on their website?
Sea King’s new website
From the rough wood siding in the background to the vivid photographs of food, Sea King’s new site looks more like an authentic seafood shanty. Casual. Inviting. If you’re a seafood lover—and you probably are if you’re visiting Sea King’s site—then your imagination automatically kicks in with the sound, texture, taste, and aroma of that shanty. It’s as if you are there, holding one of their party platters in your hand.
And what do you do next? You buy. And you eat. That’s how a creative appeal to all the senses can drive business!
How many of the five senses does your website appeal to? How can you access each sense to evoke a response from your customers?
Hereford Bed & Biscuit came to us needing a sign for their newly revitalized company—a dog kennel in North Baltimore County. But if you don’t yet have a logo, how do you design the sign? What would it be like to design the logo with the sign in mind?
Our solution blurs the line between sign and logo, creating a logo that sits like a sign wherever it goes. As such it emphasizes that a dog kennel is meaningful for its presence in place and time. Hopefully a place where your dog can have the time of his life.
