Short-form Video’s Time To Shine

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Short video is taking over the online world. It’s both beautiful and grim.

Everyday, online video is getting easier to access, and even easier to create. Because of apps like Vine and Instagram, videos are becoming one of the main reasons people even log onto the Internet. According to AdAge, over 40 million people are on Vine, while 150 million plus are on Instagram. That’s a lot of users.

Twitter and Facebook own Vine and Instagram respectively, and people are leaving the text-based social media for their quicker video counterparts. Pop culture has even seen these apps’ relevance. Trends, memes, slang, and even social groups have appeared from this medium. It’s truly marking its place in history, but why?

It’s because short video is both the fastest and the most alluring way to convey a message. If you manage to entertain your audience while telling them about your service or product, you’ve got a memorable and potentially viral advertisement on your hands. Major brands have been doing this for months now, be it the stop-motion animation of Dunkin Donuts’ paper flower or Trident Gum’s chewing-face close-ups!

That is where the beauty of accessibility to online video lies. Any person can make any video about anything. In fact, it is so easy that you could accidentally hit the record button while pulling your phone out of your pocket and make a short viral hit. It makes video accessible.

On the flip side though—it’s ruining our attention spans and giving us an unhealthy addiction to Internet’s speed. We’re becoming so accustomed to this short format, that anything over 30 seconds almost seems too long. People are clicking out of longer videos on YouTube, closing web pages that take too long to load, and going insane over buffering streaming content.
It’s hard to decide whether Vine and Instagram are helpful ways to communicate, or detrimental to our already short attention spans. Time will tell, as the number of users of these appsare predicted to grow even more in 2014.

Tony’s Illustration Technique!

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Some people around the office have asked me about how I make illustrations. I figured I’d break down my technique and show you all how you can go from a simple idea on a napkin, to a full-colored piece! One of my latest works will serve as an example. Everyone, meet Fuzzy Ferndale the dog!

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Yeah, I don’t pick the best names. But he was first conceived as a fuzzy Dr. Seuss-esque character on a napkin at a Denny’s. If I still had the napkin, you’d see it here. But I opened up photoshop and went to work with my drawing tablet. I sketched out several head shapes.

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Smiles, weird smiles, and even weirder beaks galore. I usually fill the digital canvas with a color to keep me in the mood to draw out the entire character. That’s why the background is a warm yellow. Even with all the awesome tryout sketches, I ultimately decided to go with something entirely different—a dog making a funny face. I started to sketch that out.

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Then I went in with a blue color for a more thorough sketch. Traditionally, blue is used for sketches because when photocopied, the blue wouldn’t show up. The final dark lines would be inked on top of the blue lines and when scanned, yields a beautiful result. Even though this is photoshop, I still use the blue method.

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I go in once more with more detail.

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Then I add the final lines. It looks great if I do say so myself!

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Now let’s add color for fun. I’d like to do a watercolor pattern. And voila! It’s complete! Here’s a little video compilation of the process.

I hope you learned a bit, and use this method to make some awesome illustrations of your own! Try it out, and post it as a comment under this blog!

Visual Data Infographics

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What does your business do? Why does the customer need it? Do they know that yet? Most importantly: Does your product/service need a simple, sharable, and visually awesome explanation? That’s where we come in, with infographics!

 

Infographics are used frequently all over the net. You’ve seen at least one. You can’t log into the internet without stepping across one. Maybe it was the awesome Batman one that was passed around twitter and Facebook for a couple of years now. That’s because it’s a great way to show data. It presents information in a beautiful, but purposeful and simple way. It serves two purposes—looks good and tricks you into learning. Those kind of go hand-in-hand.

 

Here’s an example of one of the many infographics we’ve produced for our clients.

There are four ingredients that make up any successful infographic. These are Data, Design, Why, and Shareability. If it’s missing one of these elements, it won’t reach much of any audience. Think of it as a table… a table of info. If you remove a leg, you’re not gonna have an amazing table. Each aspect is essential. So don’t go without these four things:

 

Data:

It’s he backbone of the infographic. The entire reason you need one created is so you can display your data in an easy and simple way. You want everyone to understand. Data without the rest of the elements is boring, and flat out invisible to everyone. Gather your findings and be ready to have them represented in a beautiful fashion!

 

Why:

Well, you’ve got your data all ready to be shared, but what for? Say you’re looking to educate people on your product or service. You’d state a problem, and the purpose of the infographic is to explain how and why your business is the solution. Here’s where you make yourself important; here’s where you deliver your message.

 

Design:

Here’s where you take your what and why from above and make sense of it. Design puts everything in order and educates the viewer. Several points are to be touched upon: the information must be displayed clean and simple, it must look great so as to encourage reading, and there must be purpose to it. Meaning, you display your info in a fun, simple and creative manner that shows you know what you’re talking about. Bring eyes to your data.

 

Shareability:

Okay, your infographic is almost complete! What’s left to do is load it up with links to you and your social media outlets. You must let the viewer know where this image is coming from. Which brings us to a big decision: where do you put it? Of course you’re going to put it on your twitter and facebook, but where else? SEO will help, and as long as this is floating around the internet, it’ll grab eyes and bring attention to your business. So proper placement is key. Besides creating the infographic for you, we here at MOS are also able to put it in the right places.

 

Get a hold of us, and let’s visualize your data together!

-The MOS Creative Team

Check out our other Tumblr!

Reviews Matter

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While you may feel your company/brand/service/product’s awesomeness speaks for itself, you’re only half right. Good work only goes so far. Online reviews, yeah those matter.

You’ve used Yelp once or twice before, right? You saw how useful of a tool it was and you found that sushi restaurant in record time! That was a good dinner too. Maybe you ought to review the place. A higher rating pushes them up on the list, bringing them more business and ensuring the chances that you’ll get that California roll again. After all, good ratings and reviews brought you there in the first place.

So you’ve seen firsthand how beneficial positive feedback can be. Why not for your business? Over 90% of people who’ve researched a business on Yelp agree that positive reviews lead to purchases. Check out this infographic from Mashable.

Being the 30th most visited site on the web, small businesses are the ones that benefit the most from Yelp’s exposure.  Increased customer awareness directly affects sales. Additionally, it’s a great way to get feedback from clients, with the ability to respond back to them! Create a dialogue! Seem like a business run by real people.

Though there is a bit of cautionary wisdom we’d like to bestow upon you: what’s worse than negative reviews are none at all. Don’t just start an account/claim your business on rating sites and let it sit stagnant. Actively encourage customers to leave reviews – there’s no downside to it. Perhaps you could get some inserts or packaging designed and printed to go along with your product, asking customers to write you a short review. In addition to Yelp maintenance, MOS Creative could design you up some snazzy printwork on top of it ;)

Get a hold of us at MOS Creative, and we’ll help YOU stand OUT!

 

-The MOS Creative team

Check out our Tumblr!

Throwback Thursday: North Point Builders!

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Hello everyone! This Throwback Thursday, we want to show you a site we’ve created for North Point Builders.

We’ve come up with a slanted theme that’s prevalent throughout each page of the site.

Every aspect falls into this style.

Not only were we focused on keeping the same feel, but we also had fun with it. The navigation bar shows this.

Even the dropdown menus followed this slanted style

Notice how the Portfolio page keeps this up

We even implemented a map to show locations that this company has done work.

Like what you see? We here at MOS Creative can create an awesome site for you too. Ya’know, just ask!

-The MOS Creative Team

PS: check out our Tumblr!

Motion Graphics: Melding Graphic Design with Animation!

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Animation, it makes your marketing seem alive, vibrant and vivacious! There are many kinds and styles of animation ranging from stop-motion to cgi. But motion graphics convey a certain feeling. They’re as quick and informational as they are beautifully designed and animated.

Motion graphics are a great way to advertise yourself because of the simplistic, often minimalistic visuals. Here’s an example of our work that we’ve done:

Don’t forget to participate in the contest mentioned in the video! You’ve seen this style of animation everywhere; Motion Graphic is used frequently to this date. Most commercials, online tutorials, website ads, and more utilize this method. One of the best things about this style is it’s relatively quick to make, especially compared to a fully animated cartoon. With that being said, remember our animation post from before? With youtube being the 3rd most popular site on the web, it’s a good idea to get something on it to spread the word about your product/service/company! 200 million potential eyes on you? Sounds like a deal to me!

Remember, animation is able to do whatever you want, and is 100% editable. Motion graphics is no different! So perfecting an animated video for you is just one of the many things we at MOS Creative are proud to do for you. We’re graphic designers and animators. We see a production from conception to completion, all in-house! Pretty versatile if you ask me! Give us a shout and see what we’re about.

Let’s captivate your audience together. We want to help you stand OUT! (We’re awesome at it!)

Here’s 3 quick reasons why Motion Graphics might be perfect for you and your business:

1. Quicker turnaround than most methods of animation.
We can and want to do a Disney-esque animation for you! But you may not want to wait that long for a final product. We understand, you’ve got weeks, not years. Well, motion graphics doesn’t need to take so long to create! We can have a beautiful finished product to you, lickety-split!

2. It conveys your message in a simple, user-friendly manner.
One of the most useful aspects of Motion Graphics is the fact that it lays out everything in a visually-stimulating manner, while keeping it simple. It’s usually accompanied with a voiceover to help convey your message. Though just because most motion graphics are often minimalist, it doesn’t mean we can’t get crazy with it. Animation is limitless, and we LOVE challenges!

3. Infographics, the still version of Motion Graphics.
Infographics are a great way to explain yourself. They’re all the rage these days, and motion graphics are very similar! Essentially, motion graphics are the moving version of infographics! Both are visually enthralling, but Motion Graphics gives us a little bit of awesome added to the mix. Contact us for both!

Our jam is that we love helping you stand out. That’s just what we do, and we’re happy to do it for you. Get a hold of us and let’s see how we can set your motion graphics into… motion.

-The MOS Creative team.

 

PS: Check out our blog! Also, sorry for saying “jam”. It was dorky, but needed to be done. 

Animation: Putting Motion Into Your Marketing!

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You thought logos, slogans, SEO and hashtagging were all that went into marketing? Well, there’s much more than that! Those are sort of static; we need something a bit more ALIVE! This is where we utilize a little technique called ANIMATION!

Be it a tv commercial, online ad, or a simple video on your site—animation can be implemented into any marketing strategy. With Youtube being a prime source of entertainment (AND the 3rd most popular site on the web), you’re going to want some presence there. I mean, only 100 million internet users check out online video a day. That’s 200 million potential eyes pointed right at your animation. With more than 3 billion hours of video views per month, you’ll want to get your foot in that door.

Why animation though? Well, animation, above all, can be made to look however you’d like. You can do whatever you want with it! If you can think it, it can be created. Another great thing about animation is, it’s 100% editable! Plus, there are many styles in which to captivate your audience with–motion graphics, hand drawn animation, stop-motion animation, cg animation, cutout animation… well, the list goes on and on. There’s so many styles, so many techniques that can be utilized to create a completely unique and original piece that helps YOU stand out.

We here at MOS Creative are quite the animators ourselves. We see a production from conception to completion, all in-house! We’re pretty dang versatile! Check out our blog posts about animations we’ve done for Bumblejunk and Foodem! Get a hold of us and see what kind of animation we can do for you!

Here’s 3 quick things to keep in mind while creating an animation:

1. Consider the style.
With many options out there, you’ll need a style not only intriguing, but also one that fits your brand. You wouldn’t want a cartoony character hopping around the screen while speaking about your Mixed Martial Arts training program. Keep in mind your audience, know what they’ll respond to.

2. Length of the piece.
Animation, while quick to watch, is not quick to make. The more content you want in it, the more time it takes to animate. Though one thing MOS Creative has perfected over the years is a quick turnaround on animated projects. We pride ourselves on that fact!

3. Make it fun!   
Animation is a limitless medium, so don’t be afraid to get crazy!

While you’re here, please enjoy one of our animated projects, a quick little toon about Mosaic Power!:

 

 Check out our tumblr at moscreative.tumblr.com!

-MOS Creative Team

 

Throwback Thursday: Bumblejunk!

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We work on many projects here at MOS Creative. Do you have too much clutter? Need it removed? Well, we know just the guys who will help you out with that. This week, we want to highlight one of our favorites: Bumblejunk Junk Removal!

We’ve created many things for these guys. Here, we’ve got businesscards, yard signs, postcards, a vehicle wrap, and even an animation that ran on television!

We did all the work in-house, utilizing one of our designers, John as the voice. Tony then animated it all together. This was super fun.

The businesscards were a fun project as well. Here’s the front:image

And here’s the back:
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We love how well the light blue and the bright, vibrant yellow play off of each other. 

While the Bumblejunk guys are out at a house, removing junk as they do, they place a nice sign in the lawn.

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Bright, happy, and hard to miss!

The residential postcards were also a treat to make:

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As we see in this postcard, there’s a Bumblejunk vehicle driving around. Here’s our vehicle wrap design!

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We had a ton of fun creating this. Give Bumblejunk a call today!

-The MOS Creative Team

Check out our blog!

Behind the Scenes: Foodem.com

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We here at MOS Creative have done many projects, and here’s one of our recent ones, an animation for Foodem.com!

Our animator, Tony, cranked away at this animation. Here are some sketches of the chef character:

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None of these made the cut

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As you can see, our winning chef was born here! Tony then took this design, and made a full body. Then, the phonemes, or mouth motions had to be made. Here is a sketch sheet of the “happy” phonemes used in the animation:

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These were all scanned in and drawn over in Adobe Flash. The animation was then completed with this full motion puppet!

This is just one of the animations we’ve made. We here at MOS Creative are capable of many different styles of animation/film/video and any other motion graphics projects you’d ever want! Remember our slogan: “We help YOU Stand out!” and that we do.

-The MOS Creative Team

check our our other blog, at moscreative.tumblr.com!