With so many different hats to wear, balls to juggle, and fires to put out (in addition to a bevy of other workplace idioms) the Human Resources department is largely considered one of the most high-pressure and stressful places to work within an organization.
DOES YOUR IN-BRANCH DIGITAL NEED A REBOOT?
Digital signage in banks is commonplace but are you making the most out of your solution? About 80% of banks are using digital signage but is it having the impact it is capable of? Download our white paper for the steps you can take to reboot your in-branch digital including crafting a media strategy and delivering great content.
The post Does Your In-Branch Digital Need a Reboot? appeared first on Blog by Convergent .
“Design is thinking made visual.” – Graphic designer Saul Bass
Digital signage has its own design discipline. It’s not the same as print, or web, or television. Digital signage design needs to bring focus and context to a brand’s story without some of the usual tricks – such as using sound with video. And it calls for a specific infrastructure for production and delivery unlike that for print, web and video.
As a matter of fact, since it’s dynamic and motion-oriented, digital signage design has more in common with two other fields of design – animation and movie titles – than with those that make little to no use of movement. And because of that, we’ve learned and applied lessons from masters in those fields to make digital signage more engaging – and ultimately create signage that does its job more effectively.
Motion design makes the experience better
Graphic designer and Academy Award winner Saul Bass was best known for his design of movie title sequences and posters. During his 40-year career, he worked for some of Hollywood’s most prominent filmmakers, including Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese and Alfred Hitchcock.
His title designs illustrate the role of graphics and motion in setting the stage for a movie. If you’ve seen Hitchcock’s Vertigo, for example, you’ll remember the whirling graphics that open the film and invoke the disorientation of the main character, played by Jimmy Stewart. The title design establishes the movie’s mood and themes and explains that character’s state of mind without using a word of dialogue to do so.
The point of good motion design is to make the audience’s experience better without watchers even knowing how that was accomplished. Someone familiar with film certainly could articulate why Vertigo’s opening works. But the average viewer will immediately get caught up in the movie without needing to understand anything at all about motion design.
The same is true of digital signage. We use motion design principles to engage people in our signage and its messages. The principles play out on screen in a subtle way that most viewers won’t notice and might not be able to explain, but when used right, they pack a big punch.
Digital signage and Disney princesses
You may not be surprised to learn that many of the motion design principles we use to create digital signage came from the home of Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Peter Pan: The Walt Disney Company.
Two Disney master animators, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, introduced 12 basic principles of animation in their 1981 book, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. No matter the style of animation, those principles can be seen in almost any motion-based design, including that for digital signage.
Four of the most important ones — those we employ every day in our work for clients — are:
In this example, we use the composition of the screen and our ability to span messages over time to bring order and logic to the message, making it easier to grasp and remember.
We use a good slow pace to bring the products onto the screen just long enough to understand the visual and then introduce the message in such a way that there is proper read time, but at a pace that makes the whole message make sense.
This is an exaggerated example of headphones spinning, but shows how slowing or speeding up a movement makes it more impactful and interesting.
Watch how the ball bounces and moves. Without the natural attention to movement, it would look unrealistic, but as we add arcs to the move, it gives the ball weight and dimension.
In this final example, these and many other principles are used to create a memorable impression in the viewer. Sometimes the principles are more exaggerated and other times less noticeable, but overall, if you compare two messages – the first one , which ignores the principles and the second one, which utilizes them – the difference make a huge impact.
If you’re wondering why your digital signage seems a little awkward, examine it with those four principles in mind. You might find that one, two or all of them need attention. The changes might be subtle; the differences in engagement and the success of your signage won’t be.
If you’re attending the Digital Signage Expo at the end of March and want to learn more about digital signage design, join Adam for his workshop, Powerful Design Principles for Creating Compelling Content .
The post On the Move: Using Motion Design to Create Compelling Digital Signage appeared first on Blog by Convergent .
Save yourself the headache and use our 13-step checklist. We’ll easily guide you through the phases below to get your solution up and running.
The post A By-The-Numbers Approach – Checklist appeared first on Blog by Convergent .
We human beings are a brainy bunch. Our brain is the largest relative to body size among all other vertebrates. The cerebral cortex is greatly enlarged in humans and is the seat of complex thought. But in today’s modern world, it’s easy to forget that the brain has been key to our continued existence.
“The brain . . . is designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment and to do so in nearly constant motion (to keep you alive long enough to pass your genes on). We were not the strongest on the planet, but we developed the strongest brains, the key to our survival,” says this article
on how the brain works.
One important element of that survival is the way in which our brains evaluate movement. Our bias towards motion has its roots in the crucial fight or flight response and is still important now. Simply put, when something moves, we are hardwired to notice and perceive it as a potential threat, so we pay close attention to it.
This is true even today, when such threats have shifted from the sabre tooth tiger to modern stresses such as traffic – or even situations that don’t involve movement, such as a tense conversation with your boss or disagreement with your spouse. The reaction is still the same: we note the threat and we respond to it, both physically and emotionally.
There are several corollaries to that biological imperative, according to this research paper on unexpected changes in direction:
• The direction of movement also is significant: motion towards you suggests a threat, while motion away may or may not spell trouble.
• When something changes direction, its intentions for good or evil may also have changed, so we notice it.
• Speed and acceleration have a similar impact. Faster movement can increase your perception of a threat, so it’s more noticeable. Changes in speed also grab attention, especially when they happen closer to you.
• In another connection to our biological roots, when we notice something move, we pause and watch it. “One of the survival strategies that humans and many other mammals developed was to freeze in the face of danger. Any movement could possibly attract the attention of a predator, which would invariably reduce their chances of survival,” according to this article .
In addition to minimizing the chances of early man becoming dinner, this freeze response “also allowed our ancestors to assess the situation fully and choose the best course of action.”
So, to summarize, movement attracts attention and causes us to pause and assess its relevance to us, while lack of motion does the opposite. Is there any wonder why the motion of digital signage garners 400% more eyeballs than traditional signage (Intel )?
The punchy motion we use in creating digital signage, particularly at the beginning of messages, is designed to take advantage of the impact movement has on us. How messages move on and off screen, whether they speed up or slow down, the addition of video: all play off our instinct to attend to movement, including standing still and watching what captures our attention. Motion creates a sense of urgency – in this case, not to run from a predator, but to walk into a store and buy.
So, a static sign is much less likely to catch our attention; to the modern shopper, it simply becomes part of the environment, like wallpaper. Is it time to swap out static for digital signage solutions? Only if you’d like a response from your customers.
For more specifics on movement and its role in our work, check out our previous blog, On the Move: Using Motion Design to Create Compelling Digital Signage .
The post The Human Brain: Hardwired for Motion appeared first on Blog by Convergent .
Consider this: every second an office position remains unfilled – your company hemorrhages money.
