Communicating visually on a shoestring
Designing a campaign visual can be daunting, especially when you have to prepare it on a small budget. In this article, you will find free tips and user-friendly platforms making it easier to create posts, clips and videos.
The world is but a canvas to our imagination
Visual content is an integral part of campaigns and 80% of marketers use images on social media. Whether you’re posting to Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, visuals are an effective way to attract the reader’s attention and increase engagement. But what do you do if you do not have a graphic designer at hand who could help convey your message?
Canva is an online social media graphic design tool that offers free templates for logos, slides, banners and preparation of photo presentations. You can choose from 100 free layouts and 250,000 customisable templates. The platform is easy to use and lets you create high-resolution visuals in the right format.
Working at a fast clip
Video is an eye-catching medium, and 87% of digital marketers use it. You can get the message out quickly, showcase products and call for action. Studies even discovered that it can “generate 1200% more shares than text and image combined.
David Hughes, Managing Director at marketing agency Hogarth Worldwide advises: ‘’If a video is for a social campaign a ‘how to’ video with an unknown potential audience for example – then it should be executed quickly and cheaply, but you should definitely consider a refresh with a larger budget if it proves to be popular”
Filming, however, requires knowledge of the equipment, framing, camera functions, lighting, sound and storage. Even the production of a cheesy, short video can require a significant amount of time and training. Let’s start with the basics.
Image quality
A quality image depends on several factors.
Sharpness: The image should look clear focussed, not blurry or noisy.
Contrast: Dark parts of an image have to appear close to black, while light areas should look similar to white without burning the image.
Vibrance: You want colours to appear vividly and lively instead of dull.
Saturation: Vibrant colours must also show the intensity of the colour. Red should appear fiery and reddish. The opposite would be a greyish tone.
For short clips, we recommend you buy a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera. It gives you more control over the image quality because it comprises professional features such as an integrated stabiliser, lower f stop (focal length of the lens), changeable lenses for aperture, different frame times per second and sensor quality. If you cannot afford a DSLR camera, consider using your smart phone with a stabiliser.
Whichever device you have available, plan ahead. Before you start filming, ask yourself if you want to add a specific background. If this is the case, you could get a green screen. Secondly, when you are filming with your mobile phone, make sure that your video is of high quality. Full HD, 1080p or 1920 x 1080 pixels has become the industry standard for a digital video that does not exceed your storage space. This is also the common screen resolution for smartphones. 1080p means the files require much less computing power to work in editing. Lastly, consider filming from different angles. That will help you when you edit afterwards in case some footage is not good enough to use. If you don’t have time and if you need a more advanced level of help in a short period such as animations (2D or 3D), professional voice-over, or copyrighted music, you can check out Fiverr. Fiverr is a platform where you can find freelance designers or expert animators to help upgrade your video.
The Youtube channel of the Social Media Examiner presents extensive tutorials for filming with smart phones.
The sky is an infinite movie
If you worry about editing, you are right that it is easier said than done. You can take advantage of the prevailing free tools that are now standard on all phones and computers such as Imovie, windows video editor, VideoPad, or openshot. But if you can spare 15 minutes for a tutorial and €10/month you can also use a more simplified platform called Lightworks which is one of the easiest editing tools for beginners.
Another option is DaVinci Resolve. The professional platform is used at film schools, and runs on MacOS, Windows, and Linux. It offers a whole bunch of different functions free of charge and combines editing, colour correction, visual effects, motion graphics and audio support in post-production. It is not as good as Final Cut or Adobe Premier Pro for editing footage or sound but has a solid free version and free learning tutorials.
Each platform has a different video guideline for posting or paid advertisements. This means that we have to take the necessary time and adapt the footage to the technical specifications of each social networks sometimes separately. The MP4 (MPEG-4) or mov video format is universal and an ideal choice for both social media and websites. The most broadly used codec is H. 264 for compression, but other codecs (DivX and Xvid) are also used in some cases. The best audio Frequency is 48000 Hz and the audio bitrate should be a minimum of 128 kbps.
Sometimes the long list of social media platforms can become overwhelming. If those concepts in the beginning are too complicated , you can check Qscan which offers a basic scanning for your video at a reasonable price. The aim is to ensure that the video files meet international delivery standards.
As campaigners we often face pressure to demonstrate our worth. Fortunately, more and more applications exist that help turn quickly-recorded footage into stunning content despite a shoestring budget.
Three tips to communicate visually on a shoestring
Design stellar posts, posters and leaflets with Canva templates.
Create authentic clips with a mobile phone stabiliser or a DSLR camera.
Enhance your videos with the free version of DaVinci Resolve.
- written by Elif Akyüz, elif[at]thedandeliongroup.eu
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