According to research by The Creative Group, 21 percent of advertising and marketing executives interviewed plan to expand their teams in the second half of 2015. This compares to 33 percent in the first half of the year and 12 percent one year ago.
The majority (65 percent) of respondents said they expect to maintain staff levels and hire primarily to fill vacated roles in the next six months.
“With continued demand for creative talent and a shrinking pool of skilled applicants, it’s more important than ever for companies to move quickly when hiring, or they risk losing out to more nimble firms,” said Diane Domeyer, executive director of The Creative Group. “Offering competitive pay and perks that support work-life balance can be instrumental in attracting candidates with hard-to-find skills. Salaries that were competitive even a year ago likely need to be re-evaluated.”
The national study was developed by The Creative Group, a specialized staffing service for interactive, design, marketing, advertising and public relations professionals. It was conducted by an independent research firm and is based on more than 400 telephone interviews — with approximately 200 marketing executives randomly selected from companies with 100 or more employees and 200 advertising executives randomly selected from agencies with 20 or more employees.
Marketing and Advertising Specialties in Demand
When executives were asked in which areas they plan to add staff in the second half of 2015, they reported a range of specialties. Creative/art direction and account services topped the list (27 percent each), followed by content marketing and interactive media (26 percent each).
Advertising and marketing executives were asked, “In which of the following areas do you expect to hire in the second half of 2015?” Their responses:
27% Creative/art direction
27% Account services
26% Content marketing
26% Interactive media
25% Brand/product management
25% Web/design production
25% Media services
25% Public relations
24% Digital marketing
23% Marketing research
22% Print design/production
21% Customer experience
21% Copywriting
21% Social media
18% Mobile design/development
(Multiple responses were permitted.)
Recruiting Challenges
Recruiting remains difficult for advertising and marketing executives: Forty-two percent said it is challenging to find skilled creative professionals today, up one percent from six months ago.
Hiring managers at large advertising agencies (100+ employees) and large marketing departments (1,000+ employees) expect the greatest difficulty, with 55 percent of respondents in each group reporting it is somewhat or very challenging to find the talent they seek.
When asked which areas are most difficult to fill, the top responses were brand/product management and account services.
Survey: Many companies plan to add creative and marketing staff through year-end (PRNewsFoto/The Creative Group)
About The Creative Group
The Creative Group (TCG) specializes in placing a range of highly skilled interactive, design, marketing, advertising and public relations professionals with a variety of firms on a project, contract-to-hire and full-time basis. More resources, including online job-hunting services, candidate portfolios and TCG’s blog, can be found at creativegroup.com.
DESIGNERS. MakerShed.com, the official online store of Make: and Maker Faire, has added the new Sprout desktop design platform by HP to its list of featured products. Customers can now purchase Sprout in Maker Shed.
Sprout is the world’s first immersive computer, which enables consumers to bring their projects to life through 3-D scanning, touch experiences, and high performance hardware and software.
“This computer is an incredibly innovative tool for Makers,” said Sonia Wong, General Manager of Commerce at Maker Media. “We’re proud to have it available in Maker Shed because it’s changing the way people create and use technology for projects from art and design to prototyping.”
HP Sprout
The initial idea for Sprout started as a collection of hardware and software to deliver a 2-D experience, but it grew into a powerful 3-D platform. With this type of creative computing technology, this computer has been able to break down the barriers between physical and digital, changing the way Makers engage and interact with the world around them.
“Our goal was to use Sprout to create new computing experiences by reimagining the way people collaborate and create projects,” said Eric Monsef, head of highly immersive systems at HP. “We designed it with Makers, artists and innovators in mind, so we’re excited that it’s now available at MakerShed.com.”
For under $2,000 customers can own this all-in-one computer for designing and creating projects. Users can capture real world objects in 3-D and apply and edit them from either Sprout’s touch screen or touch pad in an instant. With such a simple user interface, Sprout makes getting creative easy and fun for all ages. The computer is incredibly powerful, boasting an Intel Core i7 Processor, 1 terabyte of storage and a Windows operating system.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Maker Media is the publisher of Make: magazine and the producer of Maker Faire. It also develops “getting started” kits and books that are sold in its Maker Shed store as well as in retail channels. The Make: brand caters to a universe of more than 25 million makers collectively across its Make: magazine, makezine.com, Maker Faires, and Maker Shed properties.
Idomoo, a leading provider of Personalized Videos, has launched its Dynamic Storybuilding Suite as part of the Idomoo Personalized Video (PV) Cloud Platform. This will allow agencies and marketing teams to easily create personalized videos on their own. The new solution bundles all of the steps in the process (creative, design, animation, rendering, and distribution) into an easy-to-use system for automating and streamlining the personalized video creation process.
“Personalized video has been proven to significantly increase customer engagement and conversion results across many industries and we are now bringing this capability to every business,” said Yaron Kalish, Co-Founder and CEO of Idomoo. “We are using our vast industry knowledge to automate the personalized video creation process, allowing marketers to reap the benefits of this technology while eliminating the numerous pain points involved in the process.”
More than 50 creative agencies used the beta version of Dynamic Storybuilding Suite to independently build thousands of personalized videos that can deliver exceptional customer experiences to their clients. Among the agencies already working with the Idomoo Cloud platform are Ogilvy, RAAP, Switch Video, DDB and Pink Banana, who have created videos for brands such as T-Mobile, Cadbury, BBVA, Hubspot, Coca-Cola and more.
“Idomoo’s platform has enabled our agency to provide our clients with the ability to communicate with their customers and user base in a manner which allows them to foster a deeper personal and emotional connection,” said Russell Garn, Associate Creative Director of RAPP (an Omnicom company). “Our agency worked with Idomoo to create the award winning campaign for Barclays and we look forward to leveraging Idomoo’s technology in order to build future campaigns.”
The Storybuilding Suite allows businesses of all kinds to change the way they interact with their customers through its ability to tell adaptive stories, applying business logic to decide which scenes will be shown and in which order. Idomoo’s Storybuilding Suite features an advanced Web-based wizard tool to build and customize the video as well as choose ready-made video scenes that are ready to be plugged in to the video flow; an After Effect plugin to build additional scenes; Data Integration allowing for data upload from any data source; the Idomoo Player for optimized experience from mobile and desktop; and a Landing Page Builder that offers easy configuration of the destination landing page.
The Dynamic Storybuilding Suite is part of Idomoo’s next generation Video Cloud Platform, which also includes Idomoo’s Full Service personalized video offering and Dynamic Video Ads, as well as Video Templates.
Tips, tricks and documentation for using Idomoo’s PV Cloud are included in Idomoo Academy, an online knowledge repository.
In keeping with their mission of “changing the world through digital experiences,” Adobe has launched a milestone release of its flagship Adobe Creative Cloud tools and services. They also announced the availability of the new Adobe Stock content service.
The 2015 release of Creative Cloud includes major updates to Adobe’s desktop tools, including Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and InDesign CC. It also provides new connected mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Adobe Stock is the first stock content service to be integrated directly into the tools creatives use every day.
Adobe Stock Content Service
Adobe Stock makes 40 million photos, vector graphics and illustrations accessible directly within CC desktop apps. You can launch Adobe Stock with CC desktop software, add watermarked images to Creative Cloud libraries, and then access and work with images across multiple desktop and mobile tools. When ready to license an image for finished work, you can do it directly within the CC desktop software application. You can also edit a watermarked image in an applications such as Photoshop CC. When licensed, the edits are automatically applied to the purchased full-resolution image.
Based on the acquisition of stock content provider Fotolia earlier this year, Adobe Stock is available in 36 countries and 13 languages worldwide, including the US, UK, Australia and Japan. It is expected to be available in India in the near future.
Because Adobe Stock is a standalone service, you don’t have to be a Creative Cloud member to download, purchase, or sell stock images. You can buy single images as needed or purchase a monthly plan.
If you are a Creative Cloud member, you can save up to 40 percent when you add an Adobe Stock annual plan to your Creative Cloud membership.
Adobe Stock may shake up the $3 billion global stock image market, because Adobe customers not only contribute to stock image services but are also regular purchasers of stock content. An estimated 85 percent of creatives who buy stock content use Adobe tools. More than 90 percent of stock content sellers use Adobe software to prepare photos and images.
Photographers and designers who contribute content to Adobe Stock can access a worldwide community of stock content buyers and receive industry-leading rates for content.
According to David Wadhwani, senior vice president of Digital Media, “Adobe Stock extends Creative Cloud’s value as a vibrant global marketplace.” When accessed through Creative Cloud, the new service simplifies the buying and selling of stock content.
“Our customers–the best photographers and designers on the planet–will have the opportunity to contribute millions of new photos and images to Adobe Stock,” says Wadhwani. “This is really going to raise the bar in the world of stock content.”
Improvements to Creative Cloud
Wadhwani believes Creative Cloud 2015 is Adobe’s most powerful and comprehensive release to date.
Since Creative Cloud was introduced in 2012, Adobe has championed the idea that mobile devices should be integral to the creative process, with free companion mobile apps working seamlessly with CC desktop tools. Adobe has now released Brush CC, Shape CC, Color CC and Photoshop Mix on Android for the first time, bringing connected mobile workflows to millions of creatives worldwide. Adobe has also updated many of its popular Creative Cloud mobile apps for iPhone and iPad, including Adobe Comp CC, Photoshop Mix, Photoshop Sketch, Illustrator Draw, Brush CC, Shape CC and Color CC.
In addition to these updates, Adobe debuted Adobe Hue CC. Hue CC provides an easy way to capture and share production- quality lighting and color schemes — for video, film and broadcast — by using an iPhone camera and then applying these light and color moods into a Premiere Pro CC or After Effects CC project.
At the heart of Creative Cloud is Adobe CreativeSync, a signature technology that intelligently syncs creative assets: files, photos, fonts, vector graphics, brushes, colors, settings, metadata and more.
With CreativeSync, assets are instantly available, in the right format, wherever designers need them — across desktop, web and mobile apps. Available exclusively in Creative Cloud, CreativeSync means work can be kicked-off in any connected Creative Cloud mobile app or CC desktop tool; picked up again later in another; and finished in the designer’s favorite CC desktop software.
Advances in Desktop Tools
With the 2015 release of Creative Cloud, Adobe magic and Mercury performance provide speed and technology breakthroughs across 15 CC desktop applications:
Photoshop CC: Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Photoshop CC introduces Artboards, the best way to design cross-device user experiences in a single Photoshop document and quickly preview them on a device. Photoshop CC also includes a preview release of Photoshop Design Space, a sleek new work environment focused on the needs of mobile app and website designers.
Lightroom CC: Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC both gain the new Dehaze feature, which appeared first in October 2014. Dehaze eliminates fog and haze from photos, including underwater shots, for startlingly clear images. Haze can also be added to a photo for artistic effect.
Premiere Pro CC: The new Lumetri Color panel facilitates powerful color corrections using intuitive sliders and other simple controls. Morph Cut makes it easier to deliver polished interview content. It smoothes jump cuts in talking-head shots to create a cohesive, polished sequence.
After Effects CC: A new Uninterrupted Preview allows artists to adjust the properties of a composition and resize panels without impacting playback. Also, the ground-breaking Adobe Character Animator brings 2D figures to life using a webcam to track facial movements, record dialog and apply movements in real time onto a pre-configured character.
Illustrator CC is now 10 times faster and 10 times more precise than CS6. Powered by dramatic boosts to its Mercury Performance Engine, users can now pan and zoom smoothly without delays. With the new Chart tool (preview), designers can create beautiful custom charts and share them with others via CC Libraries.
InDesign CC gets its own Mercury performance surge. Zooming, scrolling, and paging through complex documents is now twice as fast. InDesign now also allows users to publish and distribute documents with a single click.
Dreamweaver CC has new responsive web design capabilities that let designers quickly lay out and build production-ready sites that adapt to any screen size.
Adobe Muse now includes instant access to premium fonts from TypekitAdditional updates to these and other CC desktop applications make this one of Adobe’s biggest releases in years.
Creative Cloud for the Digital Transformation of Enterprises
Adobe’s expanded Creative Cloud enterprise offering includes enterprise-grade administration, security, collaboration and publishing services for design-driven brands, businesses and large organizations.
These enhancements are designed to help large commercial, education and government customers who want to speed the development and publishing of customer experiences, as part of their digital transformation strategies.
The new enterprise edition of Creative Cloud includes all the product features from the Creative Cloud 2015 release, plus expanded security options and deep connections with Adobe Digital Publishing Solution (DPS) and Adobe Marketing Cloud.
Two new security capabilities ensure protection of corporate assets, including customer-managed encryption keys and a new managed service hosting option, which offers dedicated storage behind a customer’s firewall.
Creative Cloud for enterprise also supports an upcoming release of DPS, empowering existing teams in organizations to rapidly design and publish mobile apps without writing code.
A public beta of this major update to DPS is available this week, with more information available here. Content from Creative Cloud for enterprise also syncs with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), a key component of Adobe Marketing cloud, to accelerate marketing campaigns by streamlining creative-to-marketing workflows.
DESIGNERS. Digital printing has empowered you to bring new levels of customization to retail, office, and residential spaces. Two recently publicized projects might enable you to do even more.
DEEP: 3D Wallpaper from twenty2
In a partnership with students at Pratt Institute, the wallpaper-design firm twenty2 developed DEEP, a curated collection of 3D wallpapers. The wallpaper-design project was part of a graduate design seminar on interactive pattern and ornament created by Yale Architect and Pratt Institute professor Sarah Strauss.
As mentors to the program, Krya Hartnett and Robertson Hartnett of twenty2 encouraged students to push the design limits of pattern repeat and dimension. Some of the most innovative designs from the students have been brought to life and are printed in the twenty2’s Litchfield, Connecticut studio.
According to a story posted on International Business Times, researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have developed printed electronics that can transform walls into digital devices that include miniature speakers, microphones, switches, and sensors.
With the electronics printed on your wallpaper, you can talk out loud to command your devices. The walls will then transmit your request or ask for further instructions.
Smart wallpaper could be helpful for elderly people who are living alone. People who fall and hurt themselves can ask the walls to contact the right people for help.
NTU Professor Joseph Chang told IBTimes UK that “Essentially we can print full, complex electronic circuits on any substrate, including paper, aluminum, and plastic film.”
Imagine what you could design with electronics on those types of materials. For example, residential windows could be overlaid with transparent film that includes circuits. Milk cartons could let you know when the milk is expired. Smart patches could monitor your heart rate or other vital signs.
What would you do with 3D wallpaper, smart wallpaper, or flexible materials printed with electronics?
In the Internet’s early days, the “worldwide web” didn’t really start expanding until enough programmers had been trained to develop websites. Likewise, 3D printing can’t reach its full potential until more people have been trained to design all sorts of 3D-printable products.
One company that is helping to foster the growth of the 3D design community is CGTrader.com Founded in Lithuania in 2011, this 3D model marketplace now has 150,000 registered users and unites 3D modeling professionals from around the world.
Recently CGTrader.com passed a significant milestone in terms of growth. The number of models uploaded by CGTrader members rose from 10,238 in March, 2013 to more than 104,000 in March 2015.
3D-printable models are available in many categories, including aircraft, animals, household, science, architecture, gadgets, art, and fashion.
“Today, a novice consumer can go our site, download almost anything they can imagine, and send the file to a local 3D printer to pick up their model,” said Dalia Lasaite, CMO of CGTrader. com “Or, they can send the file to online printer and have the model shipped to them.”
Art, jewelry, and miniatures are currently generating the highest number of transactions.
“We started CGTrader to create fair and transparent working conditions for 3D professionals and have been uncompromising in our goals to always put the designer first,” said Marius Kalytis, CEO and founder of CGTrader.com.
While the massive publicity about 3D printing may have seemed a bit overblown at times, it has succeeded in encouraging more people to learn 3D design skills.
“While low-end 3D printers are underutilized by mainstream consumers, we believe the industry is just a few years away from producing consumer products with industrial 3D printers at mass manufacturing prices. This will create immense demand for 3D content and design skills,” said Dalia Lasaite, CMO of CGTrader.com
Advice for Designers
Contributors to the CGTrader website come from very different backgrounds from all over the world. Designers can join for free and keep all the proceeds from their first sale. A 10% royalty fee is charged to continue selling the model on the site.
According to Lasaite, “Most designers are entrepreneurial and ambitious. Many of them are working as freelancers.”
Some designers and teams of designers are doing quite well financially, she notes, “Their main business is selling stock models, and they are living off it. Typically they have large portfolios of high quality models.”
For creative professionals who want to make money creating 3D-printable models , she offers these suggestions:
Think how you could create a large number of models with a high level of quality.
Specialize in your favorite field.
Think about your buyer.
Invest in model presentation.
As some of the earliest participants of the site have learned, patience and persistence can pay off. It’s unrealistic to expect to make a lot of money from a single model.
As your experience in designing 3D models grows, you may also find job opportunities through CGTrader.com. Some site visitors turn to CGTrader.com to commission specific types of projects.
The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York promotes itself as “Where Creativity Gets Down to Business.” A college of the State University of New York, FIT has been providing career education in art, design, business, and technology for more than 70 years.
For the second consecutive year, Kornit Digital collaborated with FIT on a design challenge for fourth-year student in FIT’s Textile/Surface Design program. One goal was to give students insight into environmentally friendly textile production methods that don’t compromise on design concepts and use of color.
For the challenge, the students were asked to create original designs related to the concept of sustainable, local short-run textile production. Along with the sustainability-themed design, the students submitted an explanation of the concept and an image of how the design could be applied to a garment. For the judging process, Kornit used their Allegro production system to produce 10 yards of each design.
The three winners of this year’s FIT design challenge were Hyuna Kim, Konchok Bercholz and Elena Kanagy-Loux. In addition to receiving cash awards, the winners will have the textile designs printed on fabrics and replicated as fashion items.
The students’ work was judged on several factors including: the concept, the effectiveness and marketability of the design; and the conceptualized fashion application.
Judges included: Leslie Baker, associate designer for Bon-Ton Stores’ Relativity Brand; Vanessa DeSousa, development manager of Prints and Embellishments for Diane von Furstenberg; Tom Cody, principal of Tom Cody Designs; Melissa Niederman, art director of The Style Council; and Joe Castaldo, president of The Style Council.
Representatives of Kornit Digital included: Paul Borucki, managing director of Kornit Digital North America; Jim Manelski, North American wide format business development manager; and Erin Doty, who is the company’s North American Art Director and Project Manager.
Hyuna Kim won first place in the Sustainability Design Competition at Fashion Institute of Technology.
With the Kornit Allegro single-step industrial print system, designers can immediately materialize their designs on any fabric at with no minimum yardage requirements and at the highest industrial print quality and standards. Unlike other textile-printing processes, the Kornit Allegro industrial print solution doesn’t require pre-treatment or post-treatment processes. As a one-step printing process, the Allegro is ideal for the trending on demand, close to market, short run local production and sampling.
Representatives of Kornit Digital congratulate the three winners of the Sustainability Design Compeition: Konchock Bercholz, Hyuna Kim, and Elena Kanagy-Loux..
“Our collaboration with FIT demonstrates an important example of how Kornit Digital can nurture the growth and developing expertise of tomorrow’s designers with the help of state-of-the-art technologies that are changing the way creativity is brought to life across all fabric types. The Kornit Allegro is the perfect system for this scenario with its truly sustainable production methods enabling designers and manufacturers to generate their concepts from start to finish in the shortest cycle time,” explains Merav Zimmerman, Kornit’s product marketing manager for the Allegro. “We are proud to continue this collaboration with FIT and we certainly plan to continue with it in future years as greater awareness increases both the need for versatility in high quality digital print and greener working practices.”
“The liaison with the Fashion Institute of Technology demonstrates how our ground-breaking single-step digital printing system aligns with creative processes where sustainability plays an increasingly important role,” comments Paul Borucki. “We see a growing demand worldwide for greater education into the potential for using more eco-friendly printing methods and this collaboration endorses the importance of environmental awareness within fabric designs in the future.”
About the Kornit Allegro
Kornit Digital develops, manufactures and markets industrial and commercial printing solutions for the garment, apparel and textile industries, including designers, manufacturers, apparel decorators, and fashion brands.
Using Kornit’s Neo-Pigment inks, the Allegro offers a single-step printing solution that works with multiple types of fabric and with no additional finishing process. Its integrated fixation process removes the need for pre-treatment, steaming or washing, making it a truly environmentally friendly solution that meets the most rigorous environmental regulations, including OekoTex 100 standard and GOTS approval. The process reduces energy and water consumption and the creation of waste.
Kornit Digital is a global company with offices in the US, Asia Pacific and Europe, Founded in 2003, Kornit Digital now serves customers in more than 100 countries.
