Hello,

Welcome to the March edition of Creative Connections. This month’s focus will be on images for your content. Our society has become more visual over time which is why blogging has turned to video blogging and podcasts are so popular. Whether you are creating video content, text based content, or podcasts you will require images.

In this Creative Communication I am going to offer some tips on how to create images for your content. As mobile phones become the main stay of devices for people and platforms adapt to those devices creating one image and expecting it to work across all platforms won’t work. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn all use landscape formats. Instagram, and others use portrait formats for images. Facebook cross platforms for both styles of images. So let’s get into creating graphics for your content.

Bruce

What is your issue with content creation? Leave me a message by clicking below.

I use Illustrator to create my graphics for my podcasts and videos. Some people may use Photoshop or Canva is another popular program. I have found a great way to save time is to set up templates ahead of time. I create one template that is landscape format and one that is portrait format. In programs like Illustrator or Photoshop you can have layers for different items. One layer may have the image, one layer the text, one the logo, etcetera. I set all the items up ahead of time and just move them around based on the image I use.

For each piece of content you are creating a landscape image and portrait or square image for your piece of content. I even use the same image for both. You may also want to create additional generic images that do not have items like text or titles so that you can use those for multiple pieces of content. I hope the tips help you with your content creation.

Good luck!

Bruce

Check out the video to enhance the idea above.

Organizing Your Photos

As you create photos for your content you will start to get many on your device or computer. Sorting them into albums has worked for me on both my mobile devices and computer. For instance I have a whole album of pictures with me as I take a lot of selfies. I call this album Profile Pictures and when looking for an image of me for a blog post or social media I can look through and find the appropriate image. Organizing your mobile device photos into albums has been a big time saver for me when looking for an image. Below is an image of the albums I have on my mobile devices.

If you don’t have Photoshop or some other professional program then here is a good app to create images on your mobile device. The app is free and allows you to take your images, size them in various sizes for different platforms and then add text and other items onto your images. You can find the app in the APP store or at Add Text To Photos!