10e20 Blog

I have a confession to make. I am a celebrity gossip addict. I love to look at pics and see what people are wearing. While browsing one of my favorite sites yesterday I came across what looked to me like pay dirt for some great link bait.

Target famous celebrities and bloggers that millions of people read and consume, get exposure for your brand, and LINKS. Looking at it a bit closer, I see some missed opportunity that could have been capitalized on and began to realize that this probably wasn’t intentional link bait (in our world-the Internet world) at all. More “attention-bait”.

Magazines, newspapers, colleges, government, have been employing “attention-bait” since the beginning of media.

First, the story itself is not featured on the site, which forces a link to the homepage. Perez Hilton (one of the most popular blogs on the interwebs) actually wound up linking out to a newspaper article about the article to give his readers a sense of what it was about.

Keeping with the theme of the creative process and linkbait graphics it seems like a good time to see whats going on with blogs and some good uses of graphics and photography. Some bloggers don’t even use images, and this is fine because not everything needs it, but some do and here’s to the ones who do it really well!

There are lots of great resources being created everyday by bloggers in our industry and others. Aside from the obvious entertainment and Hollywood people watching sites like Perez and the like that have specific photos that are the pull, other bloggers, if they use images, have to get creative to a degree to give their content that edge.

This is sometimes supported by eye catching graphics or cool looking photography that draws the reader in further if they weren’t already sold by the title, idea or creator of the content alone.

Last week I touched on the creative process and how I create linkbait graphics for articles and content. Relating to the creative process, check out this interview from PingMag with San Francisco-based Stan Zienka who is the design director of branding with the agency Attik. Some great insight into his process.

Today I am going to take a look at a particular site and see what the approach to creating graphics or using photography is for them.

For this example, I am using Newsweek and a specific article on Internships and Careers. Newsweek seems to just use photography and does it sparingly. At least it uses a great source, Corbis, for these photos.

I reviewed many articles and couldn’t find any custom graphics. Maybe they don’t have the resources or time to create specific images for the content. It is much easier to just pull some stock photos and crop here and there.

When it comes to an article having a few eye catching graphics tied in with it or one that has none- I tend to favor the one that can support or add to the content visually.

If I see a cool header graphic on an article or piece of content I may already be interested in then that keeps me on and reading that much longer.

How are these graphics made?

The creative process can be a mysterious elusive creature. The best idea often comes from deep in the unconscious and when you are asked how you came up with it, you are not %100 sure.

But there seems to be a fusion of imagination and analysis that when combined allow the designer or artist to create and therefore be creative. A bit of the left brain and a bunch of the right brain.

This year Halloween it isn’t just for children to dress up like their favorite cartoon character or movie superhero. Nor is it just for pet owners to dress up the family dog. Today some of your favorite logos are dressing up, and playing along in this masquerade.

Yahoo came as Google, or was it Ask that dressed as MSN? I forget… have a safe Halloween and enjoy these logo mash ups!

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If you’re in an area that finds it hard to build natural links what do you do? You create bait and attract or catch the links whether this is done on purpose or as a happy accident. The best way to do this is with content that is directed at a specific audience and has appeal.

Images and visual aids add to this appeal or can be the whole lure altogether. Eye tracking visualization software studies have shown that viewers move across the content on a screen very very fast. What is to keep them there? Unless the content is of interest to them they will move on to the next page and continue the search.

Lets face it, people view and read on the screen much different than the printed page. If you have appealing or ‘juicy‘ images for the eyes to feast on then that just may be the difference for a viewer to stay and read further.

Some things are easier to do than others when manipulating type. Here is a quick tutorial on how to transform and distort your type in an easily scalable way with a vector mask.

This works on the same premise as distorting or transforming a basic shape. When you convert a text layer to a shape a vector mask is applied to it and ables you to make many transform functions. Very quick, very easy, very effective.

Step 1. Create a new layer with your text on it. Experiment with various widths and styles. For exaggerated distortions I find that a thick or Bold Condensed type form works best.

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Step 2. With the type layer selected go to Layer/Type/Convert to Shape.

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More text style tips! Text styles are a great way to get away from the same solid color on a background and add some subtle ‘pizazz’ to the type.

For this tutorial we will need a photograph or an illustration to go behind the text that we will be applying the style to.

Step 1. Place your photo on the first layer and create a new layer for the text. Use a large font and fill it with black.

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Step 2. With the text layer selected apply a new Layer Style of Inner Glow to it. Select black as the color for this and set the Blend Mode to Multiply.

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Text styles are always a great way to get away from the same solid color on a background and add some flair to the type.

Text style is used to further express the mode of a piece. Chrome could be considered mechanical or cool. This technique can be applied to text, an object or shape to add a cool chrome effect.

Step 1. On a new document created a letter in white on a darker background with a large point size. I am using 287 points and the font is Myriad Pro.

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Step 2. Go to Layer/Rasterize/Type.

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Step 3. Hold down Control and click on the Text Layer. This will select the outline shape of the letter.

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Nondestructively adjusting the exposure in certain areas of your image can be a very beneficial technique to use.

You create a 50% gray layer with a blending mode like Soft Light. Then with the Brush tool on a lower Opacity, paint in the Burns and Dodge with Grays and Blacks.

Step 1. Create a new layer on your document and go to Edit/Fill. Use a setting of %50 Gray.

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Step 2. Set the Layer Mode to Soft Light.

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Step 3. Select a large Brush and lower the Opacity to about %20. With Black selected as your Foreground color begin to paint in your Burning, the areas you would like darker.

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Step 4. Select White as your Foreground color and paint in the area you would like Dodged in your image, this will lighten up the areas.