Practical tools to reward your audience with visual excellence

A presentation by Ralph Michael Brekan,

Multimedia Producer, FLS International

Hi, I’m Ralph Michael BrekanI’m passionate about telling great stories that connect businesses with their customers.

I have over 20 years in visual communications, spanning a range of industries:

● Tech

● Education

● Real estate

● Fashion

● Entertainment

Employment history

IATSE Studio Mechanic

Universal Pictures, Lionsgate,

Warner Bros, et. al.

October 1997- September 2000

Design Coordinator

Star of India Fashions, Tempe, AZ

September 2000 - July 2006

Production Designer

Pasadena Playhouse, Lionsgate Pictures, 10K

Productions, Little Books, Little Films

July 2006 - July 2015

Multimedia Producer

FLS International, Pasadena,CA

July 2015 - Present

How many tools do you need, as a visual communicator, to surpass expectations on your visuals?

Just one! Your own imagination.(And a little help from your smartphone)

In 2018, with a little imagination, and the average smartphone, you can produce almost anything needed to VISUALLY COMMUNICATE corporate communications in a matter of minutes.

purposefully pause and notice thingschoose topics that you genuinely care aboutpurposefully try broader definitionsmake novel associationsexamine ideas that make you laugh

streams of thought and patterns of judgment are not inherently right or wrong; they are just what you think know, based primarily on patterns from your past

Make a deliberate effort to harvest, develop, and implement at least a few of the ideas you generate.

Attention - Escape - Movement

Free Tools:Adobe Spark Platforms: iPad, iPhone, World Wide Web

Piktochart: Platforms: Web (works best on Chrome and Firefox)

Google Street View: Platforms: iPad, iPhone, World Wide Web

Meet Alberto.

He recently joined FLS as an in-country

agent in Brazil, promoting study abroad

programs to potential students in his

home country.

Alberto knows the schools product and

value well, but fears the translated print

brochures and website do not fully

describe the study abroad experience.

Meet Marcos.

He recently was tasked with promoting

a new English language study programs

to agents and potential students.

Students who come to study speak

many different languages. Setting

realistic expectations to reduce

disappointment upon arrival is a

massive challenge.

Story for illustration purposes only

A language barrier left Alberto feeling frustrated and Marcos struggling to promote business.

Then, Marcos discovered

Adobe Spark

Marcos took video and photos of the

campus and classrooms with his

smartphone. He uploaded the video clips

and photos into the Adobe Spark app.

He’s able to create a branded landing

page, a promotional video and matching

social media post, all from his

smartphone, in less than an hour.

Web page

Video

Social Post

A simple solution

Alberto’s students were scared. What

was America like? They couldn’t fully

understand what to expect.

Alberto knew the the brochure was not

telling the full story, so he pulled out

his smartphone and showed the student

the Adobe Spark page and Spark video

Marcos made. He also showed the

student the matching Facebook post,

and subsequent student comments.

From newcomer to superstarThree out of four students Alberto enrolled applied to attend at Marco’s campus. He is able to show potential students the homestay accommodations and families they will stay with while they study in America.

The ease of visually communicating expectations has made Marco’s campus a favorite for Alberto to show new potential students.

Remember Marcos?

He’s been using Spark to promote the

new English language programs at his

center, and enrollments are up!

He sends a report to his supervisor back

at headquarters, so they can plan on

staffing operations based on enrollment

demographics.

Story for illustration purposes only

Meet Lucy

She’s the regional marketing director

for FLS at the headquarters in Pasadena.

Lucy plans and coordinates human and

material resources for each academic

term. She got the report from Marcos

that enrollments are up for the new

program. Lucy needs to show the board

members the value of the marketing

effort in the next board meeting.

A complex data set leaves Lucy feeling frustrated and to explain changes in business.

Lucy uses Piktochart

In the past, Lucy would labor hours

exporting sorted data from Excel to have

her designer create charts, graphs and

other visual representations of data in

Adobe InDesign.

After discovering Piktochart, she’s able

to create a branded charts, graphs and

other visual representations of data, all

from her laptop or smartphone, in less

than an hour.

Piktochart

Google Slides Powerpoint

Keynote

A simple solution

Lucy was on limited time and resources.

Her designer was working on next

seasons brochure and she wasn’t skilled

in InDesign.

With the meeting scheduled for the

next morning she quickly utilized

Piktochart to visually communicate the

data sets and market changes.

Remember Alberto?

He’s the new in-country agent in Brazil,

promoting study abroad programs to

potential students in his home country.

He’s been doing pretty well with the

assets Marco created in Spark, but

potential students are unfamiliar with

US geography and need assurance they

won’t get lost and they are choosing the

right environment to learn. Fear of the

unknown is a massive objection to

overcome.

The potential students fear of the unknown present a difficult objection for Alberto to overcome.

Google Street View

Alberto knows a picture is worth a

thousand words.

He’s able to pull up the campus location

on Google Maps and show the student

not just where the campus is located in

the USA, but give the potential student a

360° virtual tour, that Marcos created

with the Google Street View app for his

campus using his smartphone.

Google Maps

Google Cardboard

Desktop/Mobile

Google Street View

An interactive solution

Alberto’s students were really scared.

“What was America really like?” they

think, “these videos and pictures are

cool, but where exactly am I going?”

Alberto knew the the marketing

materials were compelling and the

student was interested, but he was so

scared of the unknown. So Alberto

pulled out his smartphone and showed

the student the Google Street Views.

Where both video and text are available on the same page, 72% of people would rather use video to learn about a product or service.

Source: http://www.insivia.com /

Online video accounted for 74% of all online traffic in 2017. Video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more.

97% of marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service. Video content holds attention and

evokes emotions

Spark is a one-stop shop for creating sleek graphics, web stories, and animated videos is incredibly easy to use. - CommonSense.org

Adobe Spark makes creating professional-looking social posts, webpages, and presentations a snap. - PC Magazine

A useful set of tools for creating graphics and visual stories for social media, Adobe Spark delivers nice results pretty easily. - CNET

Adobe Spark has been an alternative, mobile-friendly solution to using Adobe’s powerful editing and creation software for free, without resorting to piracy. ~ The Verge

Spark creates branded web content on mobile devices

Piktochart makes it seem very easy with its beautiful templates for every context. The infographics I design on Piktochart help my content be more relevant and creative. - G2Crowd

Piktochart gives you the heads up on how to use infographics effectively. - Huffington Post

Piktochart provides tools that are geared towards empowering designers to create impressive, web publisher-ready infographics. - financesonline.com

The design is fantastic, with modern, charming icons and fonts, and it's not too difficult to make seriously high-quality infographics with Piktochart.

- commonsense.org

Piktochart provides data visualization

Because modern phones and tablets have a whole host of sensors inside, Street View can leverage them to provide a uniquely-immersive experience on mobile devices. - AndroidCentral.com

The app also contains a private gallery where shots taken with the app are located. The images stay private unless the user decides to publish them on Street View. - ZDnet.com

The new (Street View) app will allow "people all over the world to contribute their own published photo spheres through a seamless world map of landscapes, landmarks, business interiors and more."

- Charles Armstrong, Google Maps product managerGoogle Street View hosts

interactive 360° media

What you can do nowUse your smartphone to take 360° panoramas of your business, product or event venue to create virtual tours at Google Street Views.

Use Adobe Spark and encourage your colleagues to create and share content via websites, email and social media.

Import datasets into Piktograph and watch them come to life as stunning visuals for print, presentations and the web.

Need more tips & free resources? Feel free to connect with me online:

www.RalphBrekan.comLinkedIn.com/in/BrekanArts

Facebook.com/RMBrekanTwitter.com/RalphBrekan

Ralph@FLS.net