Power Creative Blogs

New YouTube Channel Design – What Marketers Should Know

jcarter — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:10:29 +0000

New YouTube Channel Design – What Marketers Should Know

Jenny Carter | Feb 10, 2012

YouTube has rolled out a new channel design. Currently, you can switch to and from the new design. However, on March 7, 2012 the migration to the new design will be mandatory and automatically switched over for all existing channels.

What Changes

With the old design, many brand channels use header banner images that contain specific web and social links. The new design changes the approach to layout by the following:

There are no separate banner images used in the new channel design

The channel content can be pushed down up to 150 pixels to expose the background image as desired. (This used to be handled by a separate banner image.)

The other notable change is the addition of a Featured Tab, complete with four template options provided by YouTube.

”The Featured Tab is an optional tab that can be used for displaying your Playlists, Channels, and/or videos from a Playlist in a straightforward and easily editable way.”

Options include:

This allows for more flexibility in how you display content, giving more prominence to different types of content depending on your specific needs.

What Doesn’t Change

Much of the core content on your channel will not change, and will migrate to the new design without issue. The following content will remain unchanged:

Videos
Playlists
Comments
Subscribers
Like
Account Settings
About Content

For a full list, see What Automatically Migrates to the new Channels design after I opt-in?

YouTube has provided channel owners with more options for how to display content, while making the migration process to the new design as easy as possible.

See the complete New Channel Design Guide.

If you see any good examples of brands using the new design in creative and unique ways, feel free to share them here.

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Partly Cloudy With A Chance Of ....

ddry — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:17:01 +0000

Partly Cloudy With A Chance Of ....

Dan Dry | Feb 8, 2012

Snowfall in the Louisville area has been very light this winter. In fact including the .3 inch that fell overnight, we now have received only 2.1 inches for the 2011-2012 winter season, which is far below the yearly 14.7 inch average for the area. Nonetheless, the dusting provided some very beautiful images as captured here by Power Creative Senior Photographer Bill Miller.

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The Year In Review 2011 - Photos by Ted Wirth

ddry — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:06:52 +0000

The Year In Review 2011 - Photos by Ted Wirth

Dan Dry | Dec 29, 2011

Please enjoy some of our favorite photographs by Staff Photographer Ted Wirth that he shot during 2011.

Pictured above:

Ripple Effect. Client - Power Stock

Pictured below (left to right):

Kentucky Derby Week, Churchill Downs Chaps. Client - Churchill Downs

Drive. Client - Kent School of Social Work, University of Louisville

Campus Gate. Client -University of Louisville 2011 Annual Report

Hands of Time. Client - Kent School of Social Work, University of Louisville

Water Drop. Client - Power Stock

U of L Women's Basketball. Client - University of Louisville

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The Year In Review 2011 - Photos by Bill Miller

ddry — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:26:08 +0000

The Year In Review 2011 - Photos by Bill Miller

Dan Dry | Dec 27, 2011

Please enjoy some of our favorite photographs by Senior Photographer Bill Miller that he shot during 2011.

Pictured above:

A very unusual "birdseye" view of Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium during the University of Louisville vs Marshall University football game. Image editing and retouching by Sr. Imaging Technician Brad Bird. Client - University of Louisville

Pictured below (left to right);

Kentucky Derby Week, Churchill Downs Twin Spires. Client - Churchill Downs

Baseball Closeup. Client - Power Stock

Summer Shoes. Client - Lennox

Range Top. Client - GE Appliances

Over the Range Oven. - GE Appliances

Fresh Peppers. - GE Appliances

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2011 – In Review : Photos by Craig Schneider

ddry — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:00:16 +0000

2011 – In Review : Photos by Craig Schneider

Dan Dry | Dec 21, 2011

Please enjoy some of our favorite photographs by Senior Photographer Craig Schneider that he shot during 2011.

Pictured above;

From Years Gone By – Citystates Group, Owensboro, KY

Pictured below:

Countertop Breakfast – GE Appliances

Sharing a Laugh – GE Appliances

Dave Lennox – Lennox

Office Chic – Lexmark

Egg Basket - Power Stock

The New Look of Clean – GE Appliances

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Autumn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

ddry — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:56:34 +0000

Autumn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dan Dry | Nov 11, 2011

Power Staff Photographer, Ted Wirth's Fall images provide a nice illustration for one of my favorite poems, "Autumn" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

With what a glory comes and goes the year!

The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers

Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy

Life's newness, and earth's garniture spread out.

And when the silver habit of the clouds

Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with

A sober gladness the old year takes up

His bright inheritance of golden fruits,

A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.

There is a beautiful spirit breathing now

Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,

And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,

Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,

And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.

Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,

Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales

The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,

Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life

Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned,

And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,

Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down

By the wayside a-weary.Through the trees

The golden robin moves.The purple finch,

That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds,

A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,

And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud

From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings,

And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,

Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.

O what a glory doth this world put on

For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth

Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks

On duties well performed, and days well spent!

For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves,

Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.

He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death

Has lifted up for all, that he shall go

To his long resting-place without a tear.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807-1882

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Halloween Dissection....

jeckert — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:22:01 +0000

Halloween Dissection....

Joel Eckert | Oct 28, 2011

Halloween Dissection, by Chris Harkins.

Halloween is one of the most fun holidays we have in the year. For artists, it gives us an opportunity to explore creative avenues not often traveled. So when brainstorming for this year's Halloween greeting, it only seemed appropriate to feature zombies. Zombies are in!

View Finished Project on our youtube channel here!

This little project had all of the components of a full-sized production, just miniature in scale. Even at a mere 20-second play time, a lot of resources can be wasted without first deciding on how to frame everything. It all starts with pencil and paper. Once I established the framing, I modeled, surfaced and placed each prop into the environment. Organic objects like the grass and trees were created using GrowFX for 3DS Max. This fantastic plugin gives you loads of options, but is still simple enough to use efficiently. Experimentation was fun. The trees basically consist of a trunk segment, a few levels of branches and leaves - all with various modifiers for twist, noise and wind.

One particularly exciting part of the micro-project was to utilize interoperability between 3 Autodesk applications: 3DS Max, Softimage and Mudbox. There is not one application that does everything the best - all applications have their strengths and weaknesses. The key is using the strongest tool for the job, whatever that may be. The challenge is then doing so efficiently, making sure the data shared between them crosses over correctly. For example, the undead hand was a hand I pulled from an old character of mine - an old Softimage project. I made some adjustments to the fingers to bjeckerte boney and longer in Max, then exported that hand into Mudbox to paint on some textures to make the hand look undead - basic projection painting. I rigged and animated the hand in Softimage, because I'm more familiar with Softimage rigging/animation and find it to be superior to Max's solution - at least for my purposes. I exported the tombstone, ground plane and camera into Softimage (via interoperability feature) for reference. Once animated in Softimage, I exported the animation as pointcache and applied that data to the hand back in 3DS Max.

The more challenging part of this short was breaking the hand through the dirt. My initial approach was to simulate a dynamic breakup using Softimage ICE/Lagoa, but for time and ease, I ended up with a very simple solution of creating an animated broken dirt object animate around the hand via shape animation. I also added some simple pflow particles to explode from the impact as the hand pushes through. This treatment might not hold up under a sunny day, but the moonlight haze of an zombie apocalyptic eve is very forgiving.

Compositing all of the render layers together was fairly straight forward. I wanted the environment to be thick and creepy, so I rendered out 2 separate vray environment fog passes; one for low fog and one for a larger, thinner air fog. Both passes were animated with a fractal noise offset, to give the impression the fog slowly rolls by. The VRay renderer is powerful and pleasant to use. It's fast, consistent and easy to understand. On top of that, I was able to easily output render elements for aiding the compositing stage. For example, I wanted to tweak the color of the hand and was able to do so with a matte layer of just the hand. In post, I could quickly tweak most anything after hours of rendering. The composition is combination of color corrections, fog adjustment layers and some other fancy effects.

For the final touches, music and sound effects were created by Joel E. This was intentionally kept this a little bit cheesy to fit with the 50's horror movie style. Little animations like this are great excursions because you can bundle research/development and play time into one product, without tight restrictions on time or budget. Below are some screen grabs from the different apps used for those who are interested. Happy Halloween Everyone!

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Topics: 3D, grow fx, Halloween, zombie

Mobile University – An Overview #Mobiu2011

jcarter — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:13:30 +0000

Mobile University – An Overview #Mobiu2011

Jenny Carter | Oct 20, 2011

Armed with smartphones, iPads and other essentials, a Power Creative team recently hit the road for Mobile University 2011, a conference hosted by the Heartland Mobile Council in Chicago. Our goal was to discuss innovation in the mobile sector and gather insights into the behavior of the “new” mobile consumer.

We heard from many brand innovators, mobile marketers, strategists and researchers. Among our favorites were:

Julie Ask (@JulieAsk)
VP Marketing & Business Development, Forester

Julie gave an industry overview of current happenings in the retail mobile space. Her expertise in mobile commerce gave insight on what to expect and how to prepare for the mobile future. Trends included:

Targeted, real-time marketing within retail locations. (They can get as detailed as what aisle you are in!)
Retailers and Brands are selling an experience, not just a product.
As devices continue to become more sophisticated (multiple camera views, [need another example], etc.), marketers will leverage the technology to offer a customize experience to each consumer.

Edwin Wong
Director of Market Research, Yahoo!

For the first time, Edwin presented his Mobile Modes study, which took a closer look into mobile internet usage to answer the what, why, when, and how questions of behavior of mobile consumers. Very interesting talk and a nice guy to boot!
http://advertising.yahoo.com/article/mobile-modes.html

A few takeaways from his study included:

“The mobile phone has evolved from a utility device to a copilot in life.”
71% of users want a PC and a mobile device
1/3 of mobile phone usage occurs within the home
#1 mobile activity is still checking email
20% of all video is accessed from a mobile device

We also had the opportunity to interact with new and upcoming technologies like:

Google Wallet http://www.google.com/wallet/

Purchase retail goods using your mobile device for payment. No wallet needed!

Lockitron https://lockitron.com/

Lock and unlock your front door using your mobile device. Perfect for hotels, rentals or if you just have your hands full.

Cadillac Interactive Window

An interactive version of a retail window sticker, giving the ability to view the car in different colors in a 360-degree view and calculate payments.

Even heard the debut of “Mobile 101” from the SEO Rapper (aka, Chuck) who combines sound digital strategy with his love to rap and entertain. http://youtu.be/jBlBSldgJOA

The team and I will do our best to post specific takeaways, experiences and insights gathered from attending the conference and speaking with our peers. So many topics to cover, so little time!

Topics: Mobile Marketing, mobile strategy

The True Meaning of Friendship

ddry — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:24:19 +0000

The True Meaning of Friendship

Dan Dry | Oct 13, 2011

On a recent morning Friendship House located in Old Louisville was filled with activity. Friendship House is run by Christian Care Communities, Kentucky’s largest faith-based not-for-profit provider of affordable senior retirement living and long-term care for older adults. CCC was founded in Louisville in 1884 to take care of widows and orphans, and now serves older adults through an extensive network of retirement communities. The University of Louisville's Kent School of Social Works works hand in hand with CCC and Friendship House. Power Creative Staff Photographer Ted Wirth documented a typical morning at the House, and his photographs displayed here truly capture the spirit of the residents.

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jQuery Mobile for Rapid Prototyping and Development

mrasnake — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:44:41 +0000

jQuery Mobile for Rapid Prototyping and Development

Matthew Rasnake | Oct 10, 2011

When developing web-based applications for mobile devices, or even just simple web sites, sometimes it pays to travel the beaten paths, use the familiar tools, and aim for the known landmarks. The mobile space is constantly changing, however, and finding your way through a project often requires a bit of intrepid exploration and trailblazing. It also helps to have the right tools.

For that reason, we're always keeping our eyes open for new technologies, processes, and shortcuts to help us give our clients the best answers to their questions and to their customer's needs. Tools like the jQuery JavaScript library (and Prototype before it) have enabled us to more effectively and efficiently meet our goals and find those answers.

Another such tool is the jQuery Mobile web framework, which we've watched since it was first announced. Alpha versions showed early promise, but weren't stable enough for our projects. We've revisited it recently, however, and found the last few beta versions before the 1.0 release full-featured and stable enough to base a small project upon.

Like many frameworks and JavaScript libraries, jQuery Mobile provides its own web development paradigm, including a new navigational model and URL structure. Its greatest benefit to us, at least initially, was in facilitating the rapid prototyping of a touch-enabled mobile interface. The framework provides a solid base that is already cross-device and size/resolution agnostic, and that also works in desktop browsers.

Prototyping with jQuery Mobile, we assembled a basic HTML page—containing all the elements our application would eventually utilize—which was automatically rendered in a touch-compatible mobile interface merely by including the framework. The built-in visual themes provided an appealing—if basic—graphical style that our creative team used as a rough guide for graphical requirements, features, and flourishes.


jQuery Mobile provides attractive base styles	Final design evolved from built-in components and themes

The primary benefit, however, was seeing how all the pieces functioned together, and how the navigational model affected page flow. It allowed us to hone our goals and plans even as we enacted them, and all without resorting to wireframes or relying on traditional mockups.

We also took advantage of some built-in features of the jQuery Mobile framework that we otherwise might not have considered due to time constraints or because the effort of developing them from scratch would have outweighed the benefits.

Small changes, enacted in real- or near real-time let us shape the project like a sculpture, taking a functional prototype from first-code to production quality.

See it in action

Topics: JavaScript, jQuery, rapid prototyping