Our creative landscape is changing, quickly!

Trends & tools for (online) visual content creation

At the moment, a huge development is taking place when it comes to online tools. The Adobe family is the holy grail amongst the design tools, but thanks to the rise of the many online tools, this is slowly changing. Designing is accessible for non-designers. Take Canva, for example: this tool has already gained more than 15 million users.

In this blog, read about what visual content is, why it is important, how to create it and how to become even better at doing so! Want to read along?

Generation Z is a master of using smartphones and online tools. This generation can easily create a video or a nice Instagram visual. It’s hard to keep up with this. In creative professions, such as designer, marketeer and communications specialist, the time of spending hours or even days on developing visual content for traditional platforms is over! Digital platforms have changed the way of interacting and communicating, and therefore also the way in which companies reach their customers. This has led to a shift in creative elements – from how digital content is being created to how and where it is being used. Artificial intelligence will change this landscape even faster. Have you even taken a look at Adobe Sensei?

I can hear you think: ‘Shall these new technologies take over my job?’ Absolutely not! In the future, it will be all about creativity. Your duties will certainly shift with the changing landscape. Employers who have the necessary technical knowledge and can be creative, will excel at work!

Visual content creation

Visual content is a type of communication which transfers a message by means of image. The strength of visual content is that it is more accessible and more appealing than text. It is an extremely effective way of communicating. This is because images are processed 60.000 times quicker by our brains than text.

What kind of visual content?

• • Photography: Use pictures in combination with text and convince! (Remember: no cliché, no bad quality, no talking images – a journey can be visualized differently than with a map)
  • Video: Videos are effective in presenting a problem and showing the solution that your product/service can offer. Also, you can transmit your brand better because it evokes an emotion. Video is booming!
  • Infographics: Showcase data and statistics easily or just to simplify complexity
  • Presentations: Presentations are used for bigger/multiple subjects. Very effective to keep people engaged to your content.
  • Illustrations: Clean or playful, an illustration is effective. However, it often evokes less emotion than a picture or video.
  • Screenshots/demo: Give your audience some insights into your service/product from a different perspective. You can support your claims. For example, by showing the number of sales or reviews.
  • Memes: Evoke positive emotions from your target audience. Humor is always effective. – Animated post: A visual with animations in it. Text flying in, zooming in on an image, etc.
  • GIFs: Seems to be hot again. In the nineties, PowerPoints were loaded with them and in 2000 is was old-fashioned. In the world of presentations and online they are back!

Facts

• Quicker: Visual content is processed 60.000 times faster
• Emotion: A post with an image can evoke a certain ‘feeling’, a feeling that will make the attitude towards the brand change
• More effective: 65% of people are visual learners and, on top of that, 90% of the information that enters the brain is visual. Therefore, it makes sense to use that to which people are naturally drawn.
• More results/reach: Visual content is shared more often, so more exposure of the brand.

Tools, Tools and more Tools

Canva for almost everything

One of these tools (the most well-known tool) is Canva. With Canva, you can create almost everything that has to do with visual content: a logo, business card, social media visuals, posters, invitations, etc. The only thing you can’t create with Canva is a video. Canva has a drag-and-drop system that makes creating visuals very easy. You don’t need technical knowledge! There are a couple of tools that work quite the same as Canva, Visme and Crello, for example. As you can tell from our comparison, Visme has more features than Canva and Crello. This is the reason that we will discuss and use Visme in our training.

Prezi for storytelling

Another tool that we will be using in the training is Prezi. Present Savvy is one of the twenty Prezi Experts in the world. That is why we are the ideal partner to help you learn to use this tool. We believe that Prezi is one of the innovators within the world of presentations. For example, you can work in the cloud with Prezi.

Visme, content visualisation specialist

The tool Visme can be compared to Canva, the previous tool. In a great way, the tools work in the same way, but I would recommend Visme to designers that have more experience with designing presentations. Despite the many design options, it takes some insight in the many adaptions you can do within the tool. However, you can see that they’re still developing and have amazing templates.

Adobe is progressing

Adobe is adapting to the needs of the market. They, too, have launched three new tools: three tools that are a part of Adobe Spark (Spark Post, Spark Video and Spark Page). With Adobe Spark, you can easily create social graphics, web pages and short videos.

For marketeers and communications specialists

The best marketeers and communications specialists are the ones that can adapt to the continually changing circumstances the best. The marketeer needs to be a content marketeer and a designer nowadays, too. The world is at your feet and you need to keep running. With these developments, you can instantly give shape to your creative ideas as a marketeer. Design for non-designers!

Tips for designers

Designers that make use of traditional programs can also make use of other tools, because the new tools don’t require you starting from scratch.

• Get your inspiration from the templates
• Use the tools for a start when dealing with a tight deadline or smaller budget
• Use the tools as a first draft and/or briefing
• Ask a marketeer to create a draft in one of the tools

Get going with these tools yourself?

Present Savvy has been approached by the Competence Factory to develop a training about the changing landscape of visual content creation. What exactly has changed in this area? Which shift has had the most impact? Which consequences does this have for today’s marketeer? Aside from learning to pick tools, you will also learn how to use them and how to quickly create attractive content with them. Curious as to what else you can learn with this training or want to participate? Click here to visit the Competence Factory’s website and we might see you during one of our training days!