Creative Content Development Tools

Creative Content Development Tools

As creative content director, my focus is on more graphic and visually driven blog entries.  That way you, my loyal readers, can enjoy not just my witty and clever insights into the world of Inbound Marketing, but can also glean that information without having to read a novel. With that being said, I would like to not only give you a list of the different types of graphics I create, but the tools I use to create them.

Adobe Photoshop

This is my go to graphics program. When it comes to designing the arsenal of Pop Results graphics, this is where it all begins. The full Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is in my toolbox, but I find for most web graphics, I gravitate towards the mother of them all, Photoshop. I find that creating the different sections of Infographics and then merging them into the masterpieces you’ve seen throughout the months, you really can’t beat the flexibility of Photoshop.  As an infographics tool, it is tough to beat.

Uses:

• Infographics
• Charts
• Diagrams
• Photographs
• Static Custom Graphics
• Adding Logos and URLs

Adobe After Effects

This is the other main piece of software from the CS is After Effects. Most of the animations and video titles that  I create come out of this software. It has terrific integration with Photoshop, as well as the ability to use easily lights and the Z axis to create more dynamic effects. I prefer to use this application for shorter videos as well as for just transitions and parts of longform videos.  You can view a few examples at the Pop Results Inbound Marketing YouTube Channel.

Uses:

• Animated Graphics
• Video Transitions

Final Cut Pro 7

While we’re talking about video, Apple’s Final Cut Pro 7 (FCP7) is where the magic happens. It is like the swiss army knife of video, working with all different formats and codecs, as well as with still and video together. It is very adaptable and the live preview feature comes in extremely handy when turning around a longer edit. I would say majority of the videos created for Pop Results and some point in the edit process go through FCP7. I tried their newer version FCPX, but they really seemed to dumb down many of the functions that I relied on and so I, like many other editors, have reverted back to version 7.

 Uses:

• Long Form Videos
• Format Conversion
• Slide Shows

Apple Preview

I am a Mac guy, so when someone says Adobe Reader, I hear Preview. This is a piece of software that comes free with the MacOS, and it is an extremely handy application. From a personal standpoint the ability it gives to not have to print, fill out and rescan emailed forms, but rather just fill out and even sign forms right on the computer is invaluable. For Pop Results, the quickness and ease that it allows me change the format, resize and crop images is awesome. I also use it when creating the multipage SlideShare presentations, as I will export each slide as a PDF from Photoshop, and then use Preview to arrange them into one document that can be easily uploaded to SlideShare.

Uses:

• Format Conversion
• Resize
• Rotate
• SlideShare Preparation