Working in Digital Media – Week 12

Natural Hey guys,

This weeks guest speaker was Fiona Harte. Fiona is involved with the marketing side of the Palm store online.

Fiona has spent the last 15 years in Marketing. At the moment she is focused on E-commerce. Fiona is required to drive and deliver financial targets and to get loyal customers to sign – up with Palm online.

The Palm Online Webstore is available in 16 different countries . And to those 16 countries they provide mainly mobile phone accessories, they do not sell the palm pre because of a contract that they have with the shops that sell their phones. With selling to all those countries , alot of people attempt fraud online to try get products for free. Palm has to undergo some measures to tackle this aswell as Laws for online marketing. Some of them are Data protection, Brand and Trademark Protection, Copyright,Can-spam Act(USA Only) and Accessibility  for the visually impaired.

Another aspect that Fiona has to deal with is to drive traffic to the website. The 4 main areas traffic come from are;

• Search Engine
• Natural (People now of the website and type the address in themselves)
• Word of Mouth
• Advertisements

Fiona is given a quota that she has to reach of a certain amount of visits per day. When the visits are low or sales are low then Fiona can put a special offer online such as 20% of a product. Also if sales are low on a product or if the product is no longer being produced and they want to get rid of them until they sell the new ones then they could have a sale.

Also another form of advertising is in Social media such as facebook, although there is alot of mixed opinions because facebook is like a persons personal page so alot of people dont like to see adverts. Some companys like the idea of using facebook because fans will get alerted of a new status immediatly.

Todays lecture was ok, Im not really interested in marketing to be honest, well not the business side of it anyway.  But Fiona was a good guest speaker , she knew anything she was asked . And in my opinion , advertising on social networking sites is not good.

Well guys im afraid my term has come to an end, I am just about to complete my first year of college, I cannot wait to see what the 2nd has in store. Alot more blogs to come so stay tuned.

Until next semester ,

Bye

Working in Digital Media Interviews

Hey guys,

This weeks guest speaker was Maria brown. Maria is a Careers Developement manager here at ITB. Maria is going to talk to us about interview skills.

Preparation

There is alot of prepartion that you must put into an interview, here are some key ones:

• Know everything that you put on your C.V , nothing worse than being asked about your C.V and not knowing the answer
• Research the company – Make sure you know at least the basics about the company, Go online and look at the website and if possible talk to somebody that works there.
• If possible research as much as you can about the postition that you are going for and know what will be required of you.

The Interview – For the interview make sure that you are dressed smart and be organised or you wont be getting the job.

You can never quite know what  you will be asked in the interview but there are some basic and common questions of which you will probably be asked a couple . So learn the answers to these :

• What are your stong points?
• What are your weak points?
• Why should we hire you?
• Why do you want to work for this company?
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?
• What type of people do you find it difficult to work with?

Note: when answering questions try not leave an answer on a negative and try finish it off  positive.

And that was all for the Lecture, then i went off and done my interview. It went pretty good , i mean i am normally hate interviews and presentations but i was prepared and i felt alot more comfortable about 3 – 4mins into the interview.

Hope i get good results.

Until next year,

Bye

Working in Digital Media – Week 10

Hey guys,

This weeks Guest speaker was Robbie Ward from BPM Media. BPM is company that helps influence people into buying certain products through Digital Media. The companys name BPM stands for Beats Per Minute.

Beats Per Minute

Actually a cool thing to note is that BPM Media is located like 5mins walk from my house which is pretty cool.  BPM Media does alot to influence a consumers choices for a company, they do this through Audio, Video and Interactivity. An Example of each would be:

Audio – Play certain songs in a Coffee shop to get people to sub consciously make them eat and drink faster so that they clear the table for the next customer quicker. Or in say for Example Tesco’s they would play really catchy songs to get a customer to stay in the shop longer which most likely means the customer will spend more money. Because 70% of Purchases are only decided when in store.

Video – They put up music videos in pubs with the Name of the Artist and Songs added below the video.

Interactivity – They Have a scrolling message bar under the Music videos where people can text something in and it gets displayed on the screen shortly after, For example a person could text happy birthday to a friend and they would see it up on the screen in a nightclub or pub.

Also they have started using TVs as a menu so that a menu could be changed within about 10 minutes if it needed to be instead of having to print up a new one. They can also display certain special offers at certain times of the day, For example a breakfast special could be displayed from 9am -11am and then it would instantly change to a lunch time offer until 1pm.

So Pretty much BPM Media is a company that helps promote special offers or certain products or just get people to stay in a certain place longer so that they will spend more.

I really enjoyed this weeks lecture, i am very interested in this type of area of work.

Until next week,

Bye

Working in Digital Media Outing !

Hey guys,

This week we got to go on a trip instead of sitting in a boring lecture room. Thank God it didnt rain on us, very unusual with our weather but hey im not complaining.

So this week we went on a trip for a day to two places, the dail and the science gallery at trinity college.

The Dail

Well we all met at the Dail bright and Early outside the Dail and waited like 30mins for last minute (Or last 30 mins) people lol. Once everyone was there , we went inside and got some tea and waited around for our tour guide of the dail.  Once our tour started i felt better about being in the dail because the tour guide really was brilliant.  We went all over the Dail , we even went in the dail chamber below

The Dail Chamber

The dail chamber is where all of the big debates go on. Its pretty much where all of the politicians shout over each other and the loudest gets heard. We then walked all over and up and down so many stairs, We saw a painting of every taoiseach  up on the walls to, We also saw the old money which i havent seen since i was a kid , it was great to see it again . Definately prefer our old money to the euro.We saw alot of interesting stuff in the dail and i was told so many facts that i got it all mixed up. And thats was pretty much the trip, it was just really long because we went all over the place.

After our tour we all went our separate ways for lunch.

After lunch it was off to the Science Gallery in Trinity College. below

Science Gallery Trinity College

Once at the Trinity Science Gallery we got a tour of the Exhibition that was on. It was the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef. It is basically a coral reef nitted up out of various materials such as different types of plastic. In fact its hard to imagine so here are some photos of it:

Coral Reef

Coral Reef Mix

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project was based on hyperbolic space which to be honest is extremely hard to understand and i just got confused when the tour guide was explaining it so i just walked around on my own and admired some of the work that had been done. And that was pretty  much it for the day . The Exhibition was smaller than i would have thought.

Well to be honest i thought the day was a waste of time, I mean i am a creative Digital Media Student so why do i want to go to the dail. And the Hyperbolic Crochet Reef project just wasnt my cup of tea, I didnt like it at all. I thought that day was a waste, I would have preferred some free Mac time to do Project work. But awell hopefully our next trip is more fun.

Until next week,

Bye

Working in Digital Media – Week 8

Hey guys,

This week we had no speaker :(, We had to watch a video .

So this week i shall be blogging about Simone who worked atSimone is a designer from Rome, Italy .Simone is so well known for his Unique style charcters

Tokidoki creates clothes styled from there unique characters.

Simone started creating his characters by using Adobe Illustrator but later learned how to draw them in flash so that he could animate them.After Simone learned flash he then started his own website which can be found at http://www.tokidoki.it/ . The website was originally a porfolio to showcase his work but it later transformed into a Brand.  Because his work was so unique Simone got alot of freelance work . Because he got so much freelance work it helped his brand grow bigger and bigger. Simones work is highly inspired from japan.

One thing that Simone said that stuck to me was ” Do not be afraid to be insecure and want yourself to get better and to always be humble because there is always someone better out there.”

I dont really get as much info from watching a video because being honest i lose concentration from watching a video.

Until Next week,

Bye

Working in Digital Media – Week 7

Hey guys,

This weeks guest speaker was Fiona Kelly . Fiona is a Digital Media Artist who graduated with an honours degree in Interactive media in DIT.  Fiona works as a Designer. She has her own website to showcase her work which can be found at http://www.glimmer.ie

Fiona began our lecture with a quote which i thought was really clever .

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it.”

Basically it means take bits and pieces from other peoples work and make it your own and its ok to get inspired from others work aslong as you use it in your own way.

Fiona has worked on alot of different logo’s and websites

Here are some Examples of her work :

Click the images to visit the websites

Dublin Gay Theatre Festival

Dublin Gay Theatre

Fat Kitty Films

Fat Kitty Films

Scooter Island

Scooter Island .com

Puca

Puca

I really like alot of the work that Fiona has done , it has inspired me. During the lecture Fiona gave us a couple of tips, She told us about

Smashing magazine is mainly about tutorials, it has hundreds of photoshop and flash tutorials

She also told us about

iStockphoto is a website where you can buy privilages to Stock photography

I really enjoyed Fiona Kellys Lecture this week, Im really interested in Design, Especially design based in photoshop. Fiona told us to look everywhere for inspiration even in one of the most random places.

“Talent is the Desire to practice”

Until next week,

Bye

Working in Digital Media – Week 6

Hey guys,

This week sadly our guest speaker couldnt make it, But dont worry im still going to Blog of course.

We were given some companys and asked to pick one and blog about it and i chose Troika Design Group.

Troika Design Group

Toika are a design and branding agency based in Hollywood, CA. Troika likes to bring brands to life through the best of what design provides: a distinct impression a of brand’s and value.

Troika have based alot of their work on adverts for Tv shows , with information on when its on mainly and a picture of some of the actors. Troika Focus on making the picture real dramatic which is good because its mainly an ad for a drama. They do this by selecting certain point of view photographs and creating alot of contrast on peoples faces and using certain Lighting techniques. Here are some examples:

Glee

Lie to me

Tonight

As you can see Troika have worked with alot of big companies , to name a few : ABC, Fox and Starz

Troika mainly focus on Network Branding

Fox

Network Branding is branding made between the Tv Station and its audience. Troika have Re-branded Fox many of times now and each time they do it the design gets better than the last. I really wish RTE and TV3 with get some work by Troika done.

Thats pretty much all for this week as we didnt have a guest speaker and i would have love if a guest speaker from this area was in as i am thinking towards this direction for a career when i finish college.

Until Next week,

Bye

Working in Digital Media – Week 5

Hey guys,

This weeks guest speaker was Emma Wade. Emma is an artist mainly in dublin but tours around the country sometimes.To be exact Emma is a visual artist. Emma mainly works on new ideas for art which are brilliant. Emma graduated fromthe institute of art and design in Dun Laoghire, when she graduated she worked in a design company for 2 years. After this emma moved to dublin. Then in 2005 she went to the irish museum of modern art and it was then that she decided she wanted to be an artist.

One year later Emma had created a Mat which when stepped on let out a loud cheer to lifen a persons day up. Emmas inspiration for this idea actually came randomly , because she lived near a stadium and one morning when she woke up she heard the noise of a crowd cheering and thought to herself wouldnt it be nice to wake up to that every morning. And the outcome was this :

A little lift

The device worked by a pressure pad on the ground under a mat with speakers on either side. When pressure was put on the map a loud cheer would come from the speakers. I personally think this is a great idea and would love to see it around sometime. Be great if it was at the door to a shop .

After this Emma came up with a new idea called Rexotrek, which was a project that let people see the world form a dogs point of view.

If you would like to check this project out for yourself then here is a link to the website: http://www.rexotrek.com/

RexoTrek

To actually see the project people had to get on there hands and knees to get inside which brought people to Dog’s height. Once inside the saw a video being projected onto the wall.  The video was a point of view for a dog out at the beach. Emma made this video by getting her parents Dog and attaching the video camera to its collar and bringing the dog to a beach , the Dog was called rex and thats where the project got its name from.

Emma then done a 3 month unpaid internship in New york where she learned Photoshop and Sound Engineering Skills. When she finished the 3 months she returned to dublin where she started work in Space Studios.

Then Emma produced a number of Exhibitions to date , But my personal favourite is H.U.G.S which stands for        Human Utopian Generation System.

H.U.G.S

If you would like to see more work by Emma you can head over to her website at : http://www.emmawade.com

Until Next Week,

Bye

Working in Digital Media – Week 4

Hey Guys ,

This week our guest Speaker was Ian Cudmore from Chutney Films.

Ian started off with talking about what he done after he left college as we dont know what will happen when you finish college and embark out into the world.Ian graduated from NCAD in 2006 from Industrial Design and product design. After that he went into trinity college to study music and media technologys.Ian done the course in trinity to learn more about music and video.After he completed the course he started to play around with video alot , which made him reconsider video as a career. Which brought Ian to a very good point which made me happy i am doing this course, he said that we were in a better postion than most people currently in the industry because we are learning about all aspects of the media where as the people in the industry now mainly only learned one aspect for example just audio or just video.

So after the course at trinity , Ian worked for 3 months at One productions, where Ian mainly had to focus on making flash ads. After that he moved to a company called Hyper Production Company which unfortunately closed down. Because the company was closed down Ian had no job so he decided to do freelance work which had never thought of. Ian started to experiment and done stuff by himself and just practiced really. After a while Ian started making music videos on his own which he really enjoyed doing. But then he started doing them as projects for people .

One of those people was a scottish artist called James Yorkston.  Ian sent the video through myspace and he didnt really expect anything back, but the got in contact with Ian and they liked what he had done and asked him if he would go on a tour with James and make a documentary for him. Ian happily accepted and after that the request just seemed to keep coming for him to do projects.

Ian met a guy called Donall Dineen through james which introduced him to Lisa Hannigan who is a musician/singer.

Here is Lisa’s Youtube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/lisahannigan#p/u/10/fyXmp-FiPJo

Ian created some music videos for Lisa , It was low budget and he didnt get much money but he benefited because of the experience. In fact one particular video the Ian had done was spotted by an american Tv talk show host which invited Lisa onto the show.

After this Ian was asked to make a pilot of Maeves show which they had gotten comission for which was a four part series. It was low enough budget and there was a small crew but there was much better equipment this time. Ian consider this as his first real production job. The time it took to make the show was approximately 4 months. He also had a piece of stop motion in there which took him 12 hours. It was only after this that Ian started to call himself an Editer.

Ian then bacame an Editer with scratch films and edited a show called the school. He learned from this that for every 20 hours you film , you only use 1 hour. He also told us to make sure to be organized because we may need our old footage in years to come.  Ian told us about how hard it is to get commission for making tv shows and he told us about his time with RTE . And currently he is working on We Own The Streets

WE OWN THE STREETS

The reason Ian is doing We own the streets is because it is a quicker and easier way to get a job at RTE.

After Ian Told us about We Own The Streets the Lecture was pretty much over.

I Thought that this lecture was worthwhile and really enjoyed it and i hope Ian does good in RTE’s Storyland

Until Next Week,

Bye bye

Week 3

Hi all,

Sadly this week our guest speaker couldnt make it 😦

But luckily last year’s group recorded all the guest speakers so we watched one of those videos.

The guest speakers name was Edward Melvin.

Edward is a project manager at ICAN .

This is a link to the company’s website;  http://www.ican.ie/flash/ .

He started off his talk telling us about how he got in the digital media sector.

He told us of when he was in college and worked on a bi-monthly news letter and of all the deadlines it came with. This helped him practice for his job today.

Edward is in charge of making sure that all of the staff have everything completed online and within the deadline.

ICAN is a Digital Advertising Company.

They help their clients with decisions and advise them on the design.Some of the services that ICAN provide include Web Design,  Search Marketing , Online Pr  and Project and Campaign Management.

ICAN mainly focuses on Advertising.

Employeses at ICAN

1 Managing Director

7 Creative

7 Production

5 Client Services

3 Media

2 Search Marketing

1 Accounting

Why would People want to Advertise Online?

It is very simple. They know how many people saw the Ad, They know how many people clicked on the Ad and the know how many people bought a product directly through thatAd.

And people are using the internet more and more. If you got an Ad up on googles main page then 300 million people would see it, If you got an Ad up on a bus then only a couple of thousand people would see it in a day.